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Low Space: All Droid Incredibles?

@bgrutter, yes you do come off sounding like an ass. However, I really don't have it in me to write a whole big thing after I already wrote once on this forum. The bottom line is, there is no fix. There are band-aids only, HTC tells you to wipe your phone ----officially that is the fix, based on all the research I have seen on forum post, from people who have called HTC customer service. **** I wrote a big thing anyway. Live with it, or get rid of the phone, or be smart and fix the issue for good. No need to rebut everyone's post, its rather rude.
 
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I am rooted, S-OFF and do encounter the "low memory" message from time to time.

The problem is definitely the cache space that HTC has devoted to appspace (not downloaded applications, mind you, although there is a relationship between number of downloaded apps and amount of space taken in the cache space).

The directory is \data\data and is limited to 150mb by the OS. When <10% (i.e. about 14.5mb) is free, the low memory warning appears.

You can use Cache Cleaner to do a clean up, but this does not always work. There is a beta program in Marketplace (and a thread about it over at xda-developers) called "NotEnoughSpace" that will:

1. Let you see which programs are hogging the most space;
2. Let you *move* portions of the programs files to a "hidden" partition monitored by NES. Not all applications like this, and you have to keep track of which one's your playing with, but assuming the major offenders, greader, Google Earth, etc. are the only one's you do this to, and you move back before updating or uninstalling, you should be good to go.
3. Create partitions on the SD card or in emmc for use instead of this limited 150mb space [this paragraph added 1/26/11]

When I most recently experienced this annoying warning, I used NES to move some stuff out of the cache, and freed up lots of cache space to make it go away.

It's an annoying problem if you're committed to HTC's approach. I do not know whether non-HTC ROM's (AOSP or other deodexed, non-sense ROM's) suffer from this limitation or not, because I'm using a Sense-based ROM fairly close to stock myself. I've never heard anyone with a Motorola Droid complain about it, but, then again, I only hang out in Incredible-based forums.

But, that is definitely a motivation for me to migrate further from stock, especially if I get verification that the 150mb limitation disappears.
 
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My family constantly sends pics to each other via MMS since we all live in different states. I always get the low memory warning when I have too many MMS pics or videos in a conversation. Once I delete the thread the warning always goes away.

I would rather keep all those conversations so I can go back to them and look through the pics but apparently they are being stored in that "data" folder with only 150mb. I need to wipe conversations about once every 2-3 months.

Without fail, it is always too many MMS messages for me that causes the warning. I wish there was an option to store them somewhere else.
There is a free app I downloaded today that is called "Save MMS". It allows you to see all the pics/videos in your messages and selectively send them to a pre-selected folder on your SD card. There's also a $1.29 app called "AutoSave MMS" by the same developer that automatically downloads all the pics/videos to your SD card. That might help you.

@bgrutter, yes you do come off sounding like an ass. However, I really don't have it in me to write a whole big thing after I already wrote once on this forum. The bottom line is, there is no fix. There are band-aids only, HTC tells you to wipe your phone ----officially that is the fix, based on all the research I have seen on forum post, from people who have called HTC customer service. **** I wrote a big thing anyway. Live with it, or get rid of the phone, or be smart and fix the issue for good. No need to rebut everyone's post, its rather rude.
I had a feeling that after walking away from my computer, that I'd be apologizing. I suppose that after reading crazydog's explanation, I came to the conclusion that there was no FIX. I would be dealing with this on a daily basis until I either purchased a none-HTC phone, or they constructed their phones differently. That made me rather irritable.

Sorry for taking it out on you. I think it was your "If you search around the forums..." comment that stuck with me after reading everyone else's posts. I felt a little like you were accusing me of being lazy. I try my best to research everything before posting, out of fear of such an accusation.

Anyway, I'm going to edit my previous post now that I'm less agitated. Sorry again.

You can use Cache Cleaner to do a clean up, but this does not always work. There is a beta program in Marketplace (and a thread about it over at xda-developers) called "NotEnoughSpace" that will:

But, that is definitely a motivation for me to migrate further from stock, especially if I get verification that the 150mb limitation disappears.

I am currently giving none-sense Roms a go, to see if it helps. If not, I might have to give NES a shot. Thanks.
 
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This will free up space and stop the errors, but only if you have root.

What is happening? (Credit to Cyansmoker)

You've checked your phone's vitals and it appears that it has plenty of space left, both internal storage and SD Card storage. So, what's happening?
Android allows your applications to store their data, primarily, in a dedicated partition whose size happens to be much smaller than even the phone's internal storage space. Generally south of 150 MBs.
This is the partition that fills up so quickly and that Android has been complaining about.

Link to the app.
The Nexus Beta

(Do not use the bar code. Its the one above the bar code. Its called NotEnoughSpace. It works just fine for the DINC)

About this ^^ application

This application's goal is to help you understand and possibly work around a common vexation of using Android; i.e. these messages:

"not enough space"
"Low on space. Application data space is low."

Help example:

start the app, click on "inspect & Optimize Data Directory" , you will see your apps, click on an app that uses a good amount of space, (I'll click google earth) you will see a folder called "lib", hold down "lib" and a menu will pop up, click on "Move to NES Partition" . Thats it :D!

Do this ^^ for any app you want (some might not work, but most do). If you want to reverse, just hold down the now grey out "lib" and click restore.

You will now have much more free space an no more errors.

For non Root user, you will have to wait for the update from HTC (yes, they do know about this bug) Sorry about that.







Ooops: I submited this, but was unaware of hgoldner's post above. My apoligizes hgoldner. I'll leave this up for simplification.
 
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Out of curiosity, is this a just a Sense issue? If I put Cyanogenmod on my phone will the 150mb limit go away? I had this issue crop up recently after installing a game that had a 80mb cache file. I still have a bit of space left after removing the game, but I was wondering if putting Cyanogenmod on my phone would eliminate this problem.

Also, in the "data/data" folder, is there any way to find out how much each folder has in it, without going into each one one at a time.
 
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There is a free app I downloaded today that is called "Save MMS". It allows you to see all the pics/videos in your messages and selectively send them to a pre-selected folder on your SD card. There's also a $1.29 app called "AutoSave MMS" by the same developer that automatically downloads all the pics/videos to your SD card. That might help you.

Thanks. Yeah, I use that to save the ones I want before deleting the threads. The issue remains though that the MMS's are being stored in the data folder so I constantly have to maintain my conversation threads to make sure they aren't getting too big. I hope Gingerbread addresses this issue.
 
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I have had this issue as well...I am stock, yet power user (well over 100 apps). I have removed apps to solve this, but generally, it has been a cache issue solved in other ways. I have never solved it by clearing any cache from the menu/settings/Applications screen (exception below).

Once I had it because I went to a sub-folder in my Exchange (HTC) email, and it synced a WHOLE bunch of email, which all went to /data/data. Once, I had to clean Dolphin HD cache (which I did get to from the menu/settings/applications area, but it just brought me into the app, where I should have gone first anyway, and that made a big difference.

If I ever root, it will be to fix this.
 
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I just got this message for the first time today. I've owned the phone for seven months. I still have 5 gigs free on internal storage, and a gig free on my SD card. I'm flabbergasted -- what a stupid way to hobble an otherwise awesome device. What's the point of all these gigs if I can't use them for all the apps?

I've removed several large apps (a few were over 10 megs) but it's still giving me the low space error. what the hell!
 
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I just got this message for the first time today. I've owned the phone for seven months. I still have 5 gigs free on internal storage, and a gig free on my SD card. I'm flabbergasted -- what a stupid way to hobble an otherwise awesome device. What's the point of all these gigs if I can't use them for all the apps?

I've removed several large apps (a few were over 10 megs) but it's still giving me the low space error. what the hell!

It's not the size of the apps. It's the data & cache associated with the apps. Still a stupid issue, but don't bother removing every big app you have. It'll only help if those are the apps that have the offending data usage.

I've just installed Cyanogen. I well report if/when I get the warning again. Nothing yet :)
 
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It's not the size of the apps. It's the data & cache associated with the apps. Still a stupid issue, but don't bother removing every big app you have. It'll only help if those are the apps that have the offending data usage.

I've just installed Cyanogen. I well report if/when I get the warning again. Nothing yet :)

ah I see, thank you for the clarification. Still, though, an asinine problem that should've been averted easily by HTC.
 
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For a brief follow up on the incorporation of Cyanogen, I've not yet encountered the problem. However, the data\data folder seems to have the same limitation. Don't know yet whether Cyanogen does a better job with memory management, though my Cache cleaner had been cleaning more cache from the SD card (a good sign to me).
 
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This has been happening more frequently to my phone these days. Last night it did not go away until I cleared the data on my contacts storage. (Note, this will will wipe all of your contacts. Hopefully, you will have them backed up in Gmail.) When I woke up this morning, the low disk warning was back. This time clearing the cache of City ID worked.

Does anyone know for sure if rooting will prevent this from happening?

Update: Just after posting this, I glanced at my phone and it's back again.
 
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This has been happening more frequently to my phone these days. Last night it did not go away until I cleared the data on my contacts storage. (Note, this will will wipe all of your contacts. Hopefully, you will have them backed up in Gmail.) When I woke up this morning, the low disk warning was back. This time clearing the cache of City ID worked.

Does anyone know for sure if rooting will prevent this from happening?

Update: Just after posting this, I glanced at my phone and it's back again.

Rooting alone won't help. You'd need to take some steps to move application data to a different location, or increase the /data/data/ partition.
 
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I, honestly, have 85-90 apps and have never seen the "low memory" warning.

That's not nearly enough. And it's not solely the number of apps.

I didn't get the low memory warning until I had about 180 apps. You have more room for apps. The 150 MB only limits the data storage the apps can use.

So, if you have 200 apps that do no data storage (no email, etc.) you most likely won't see the out of space warning.
 
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That's not nearly enough. And it's not solely the number of apps.

I didn't get the low memory warning until I had about 180 apps. You have more room for apps. The 150 MB only limits the data storage the apps can use.

So, if you have 200 apps that do no data storage (no email, etc.) you most likely won't see the out of space warning.

And with how Linux/Android handles cache/swap/etc spaces you are far more likely to have a problem if you have a few apps you use taking up alot of data compared to more apps each using less data. Easier to make room 5 mb at a time then 50mb.
 
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