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Help 128GB of Storage full but no files?

JC550

Lurker
Oct 21, 2020
2
0
Hi. My phone is telling me there is no space left in my Internal Storage but I've only used about 26GBs of storage. Every app I use tells me that my internal storage is full, but when I analyze it it can only find 26 gigabytes of information. There's 100GBs of data that I can't find anywhere. I know I don't have the entire internal storage full because the only things I have saved are those 26gigs. Cleaner and file explorer apps all show the 26 gigabytes of data I know I have but I can't find the other 100GBs anywhere. My analyzer only tells me I have 100GBs of "Other" but not where that is. I've used multiple different apps to try to find what is filling all this supposed storage but I can't find any files anywhere. I've checked the cache of Spotify and YouTube or other apps I use often and they are only a few hundred MBs. Any idea what's taking so much space on my phone?
 

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"Other" just means "stuff that doesn't fit the few specific categories I list", so I tend to regard it as a useless label.

One possibility is that something is storing a lot of data in the /data/data volume. This is what's used by apps to store their private data, so won't be visible to file browsers or similar. But 10s of GB does sound like rather a lot (it won't be 100 GB, because some of your 128GB is used by the system for the ROM, device firmware, recovery module, bootloader and all of the other gubbins that the phone needs to work, but even with Samsung, who tend to build big ROMs and be even more generous with the space they allocate to them, it won't be close to 100 GB - though it will be well over 10GB). So there's something fishy here.

A couple of things to try:

1) Do your phone's Apps settings (may be called "App Manager" on a Samsung) let you list apps sorted by size? That will be the quickest way of seeing whether there is something like this going on.

2) Let's try to get some information from apps that I know and trust. "Storage Truth" is a very simple little app (written by one of our moderators) that will, on an unrooted device, tell you the actual size of your /data partition (which is the bit of internal storage not used by the system) and how much is used/free. You may think you know this, but actually neither of the screenshots you show says 100GB is being used, just that about 27GB are used and there are only a couple left, so I'd like to get explicit confirmation on this point (I'll explain below). The other is "DiskUsage", which gives a pretty detailed graphical view of what is using the bits of your storage it can read: it won't tell you anything about system usage, but should let you spot if any app is a bit data user.

Now, the reason I wanted to confirm that there are actually 100GB used as opposed to only a couple free is I want to be absolutely sure that your device actually has 128GB. Because there's one other possibility that occurs to me (and apologies, but remember I only know what you include in your post so have to consider all possibilities): are you sure this is a real S20? If you bought it through your service provider or direct from Samsung then it will be. If you bought it second hand, as an import, or from a seller on an online market (including Amazon Marketplace), then the possibility that it isn't is a more serious one. And fakes often go to great lengths to make the phone and its user interface look like the real thing, and will program the system settings to lie about the device parameters, but they usually cut corners seriously, including installing less storage than they claim. So just to be certain I'd like to consider and eliminate that possibility as well.
 
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"Other" just means "stuff that doesn't fit the few specific categories I list", so I tend to regard it as a useless label.

One possibility is that something is storing a lot of data in the /data/data volume. This is what's used by apps to store their private data, so won't be visible to file browsers or similar. But 10s of GB does sound like rather a lot (it won't be 100 GB, because some of your 128GB is used by the system for the ROM, device firmware, recovery module, bootloader and all of the other gubbins that the phone needs to work, but even with Samsung, who tend to build big ROMs and be even more generous with the space they allocate to them, it won't be close to 100 GB - though it will be well over 10GB). So there's something fishy here.

A couple of things to try:

1) Do your phone's Apps settings (may be called "App Manager" on a Samsung) let you list apps sorted by size? That will be the quickest way of seeing whether there is something like this going on.

2) Let's try to get some information from apps that I know and trust. "Storage Truth" is a very simple little app (written by one of our moderators) that will, on an unrooted device, tell you the actual size of your /data partition (which is the bit of internal storage not used by the system) and how much is used/free. You may think you know this, but actually neither of the screenshots you show says 100GB is being used, just that about 27GB are used and there are only a couple left, so I'd like to get explicit confirmation on this point (I'll explain below). The other is "DiskUsage", which gives a pretty detailed graphical view of what is using the bits of your storage it can read: it won't tell you anything about system usage, but should let you spot if any app is a bit data user.

Now, the reason I wanted to confirm that there are actually 100GB used as opposed to only a couple free is I want to be absolutely sure that your device actually has 128GB. Because there's one other possibility that occurs to me (and apologies, but remember I only know what you include in your post so have to consider all possibilities): are you sure this is a real S20? If you bought it through your service provider or direct from Samsung then it will be. If you bought it second hand, as an import, or from a seller on an online market (including Amazon Marketplace), then the possibility that it isn't is a more serious one. And fakes often go to great lengths to make the phone and its user interface look like the real thing, and will program the system settings to lie about the device parameters, but they usually cut corners seriously, including installing less storage than they claim. So just to be certain I'd like to consider and eliminate that possibility as well.
I bought it from Samsung so it should be Good lol. The Storage Truth App also says I'm using about 106. This are the results both apps gave me.
 

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OK, so it's a genuine S20 - glad to eliminate that possibility ;)

So what DiskUsage is saying is that most of your space is used by apps (and their private data). A file manager won't see any of that, though I'd have thought that the system storage menu would show it.

The Gallery app taking up so much space is unusual, since mostly a Gallery is just displaying files stored elsewhere. And interestingly most of that space is labelled "trash". I'm not familiar with the Samsung Gallery app, but just from the naming that suggests that a lot of stuff has been moved into a "trash" or "recycle" bin that hasn't been emptied. Does the app have something like that?

In the Media, "Stuff" is presumably the name you gave to some folder, so that should be visible to a file manager. What's also a bit confusing is that it's showing your DCIM folder as 30GB, while your first screenshots said that was much smaller. What do you see if you select the DCIM folder in a file browser and then from the menu select "Properties", "Info" or "Details" (exactly what it's called depends on which file manager you use)? I have an exact agreement between DiskUsage and Solid Explorer, X-Plore and Root Explorer (the three file managers I tried this with), so it seems strange that your first screenshot, which seems to be from a file browser, should show 1GB but DiskUsage 30GB.
 
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