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Help Migration blocked by bogus "Insufficient Storage" SOLVED

pwabrahams

Well-Known Member
Dec 19, 2014
115
26
I'm trying to migrate my apps from an LG P705 with Android 4.0 to a new Motorola Moto with Android 5.1 using Motorola Migrate. According to the LG phone, I have 1.9 GB free and Motorola Migrate needs only 5.28 MB. Yet I still get the "insufficient storage" complaint. Since I seem to have plenty of free space on the old phone, getting rid of more apps there is unlikely to help the situation at all. I've tried to root the phone, but the rooting application itself runs into the same "insufficient storage" complaint.

I read somewhere that I might still not have enough of the right kind of free space, but I don't know how to determine what kind that would be, how much of it I have, and how much of it I need. Or, for that matter, how to get more of it.

The one hope I have is somehow to use adb, which I am able to run from my laptop, to jigger the system so as to get by this obstacle. Unsurprisingly, I can't run su from adb; it's not found.

How can I get migrate to install and run?
 
I'm beginning to think that the problem might be that when the installer tries to install an app and fails because of insufficient storage, it still reserves the storage it was trying to obtain. I've noticed that when I attempt an installation, I see an "installed" banner before I do anything, though the app is not on the list of installed apps. Thus I can't uninstall it.

I can see that Android 4.0 is a very lame system, but its very lameness seems to be blocking me from replacing it.
 
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Problem solved!!!!!

It seems that the problem was that I had set my device to install apps on the SD card, rather than in primary memory. I did that with adb and set-install-location. That was supposed to help fix my storage problems, but it had the opposite effect, preventing me from installing any new apps at all. This may only be a problem with older versions of the OS. But in any event, there seems to be a bug that prevents apps from being installed on the SD card (which has plenty of space) in Android 4.0.

The moral of the story is that if you're running out of space in internal memory, setting the install location to 2 may make matters worse. On the other hand, it may cure the problem on newer versions of the OS. Try it and see, but be prepared for either outcome.
 
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Glad you got it figured-out and thank you for reporting back, @pwabrahams!

Not sure that I saw your issue mentioned in any of the threads / links that I had researched for my The Insufficient Storage Problem thread you might have seen here in the AQ area, but it certainly is a valid (although hopefully relatively rare) instance/reason why folks might see this.

Cheers and have a great weekend!
 
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