Root Is it safe to delete all files and sub directories in lost+found directory?

[Dawei64]

Hi guys,

Is it safe to delete all files and sub directories in lost+found directory?

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note which like many others Note owners it is in a downward spiral of losing internal memory. This means you have to uninstall applications to free up internal memory, but it keeps getting worse.

I have done all the things that are suggested...

Clear Caches, Move Apps to SD card, remove unused applications etc.

I even rooted the phone and went into the data\log directory and removed about 250mb of log files. That bought me a little time, but it continues to get worse.

I also installed CyanogenMod ROM, but the problem continues.


I believe that my "lost+found" directory may be the problem. There are over 350 sub directories and 760 files in this directory. I am guessing they are consuming over 1GB of my internal memory.

What exactly is the lost+found directory? What are the importance and significance of those files?

Can anyone confirm 100% that they are OK to delete?

Thanks

 

[argedion]

Lost and found is usually reserved for root to delete the files with in so as long as your root it should be ok to delete the files. It won't hurt anything.

 

[John Bean]

It certainly does no harm to the current system to delete the contents of lost+found but I'd be quite concerned about why it has any contents in the first place - it's not an Android thing but a (very) low-level Linux feature as a backstop against data loss when a failure occurs.

ASAIK lost+found is populated only when fsck ("file system check") finds errors in the file system and corrects them leaving chunks of unreferenced data that may be files. It makes new references and puts them in lost+found for human inspection and/or recovery later.

If it's still happening I'd suspect a hardware problem (or a very flakey ROM - unlikely), or some low-level binary below the level of the Android system that's meddling with things and breaking them.

 

[Dawei64]

It certainly does no harm to the current system to delete the contents of lost+found but I'd be quite concerned about why it has any contents in the first place - it's not an Android thing but a (very) low-level Linux feature as a backstop against data loss when a failure occurs.

ASAIK lost+found is populated only when fsck ("file system check") finds errors in the file system and corrects them leaving chunks of unreferenced data that may be files. It makes new references and puts them in lost+found for human inspection and/or recovery later.

Thanks John. I am certainly not the first that has this problem with a lot of crap in lost+found. In the thread below another guy has a similar issue. But I have no idea what is causing it. I will delete the contents of lost+found and see if that fixes the space issue.

http://androidforums.com/galaxy-s2-...torage-data-lost-found-directory-too-big.html

 

[Thom]

Thread moved from Android Lounge to sub-forum dedicated to this root-ed phone.

... Thom

 

[Dawei64]

Wow, deleting all the crap in lost+found worked big time. I just cleared an extra 1.5Gb of Internal RAM. So I now have a total of 1.7GB free. This definitely fixed the memory problem.

 

[bonjovi255]

Hi guys,

Is it safe to delete all files and sub directories in lost+found directory?

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note which like many others Note owners it is in a downward spiral of losing internal memory. This means you have to uninstall applications to free up internal memory, but it keeps getting worse.

I have done all the things that are suggested...

Clear Caches, Move Apps to SD card, remove unused applications etc.

I even rooted the phone and went into the data\log directory and removed about 250mb of log files. That bought me a little time, but it continues to get worse.

I also installed CyanogenMod ROM, but the problem continues.


I believe that my "lost+found" directory may be the problem. There are over 350 sub directories and 760 files in this directory. I am guessing they are consuming over 1GB of my internal memory.

What exactly is the lost+found directory? What are the importance and significance of those files?

Can anyone confirm 100% that they are OK to delete?

Thanks

how to find the location of sub directories in lost+found directory??

 

[NeneNotgonnasay]

how to find the location of sub directories in lost+found directory??

yes please how do we find it?

 

[swiftrobber]

thanks for this thread i saved lots of space. thanks again!