Galaxy Tab E 8.0--11GB of storage used with no files stored

[IronHorseDriver]

Hello All,

Newbie here. I have a Galaxy Tab E 8.0 with 16GB of storage. I only have about 5GB of available storage, as it is showing nearly 11GB of storage used even though I have nothing stored on the internal memory. I looked through the hidden files that are showing, but cannot find any memory hogs. Any suggestions?

 

[svim]

First off, if you haven't just rebooted your Tab in while, do that. Then if you go into the Settings >> Storage menu (give it several seconds to index the internal storage), go through the various items and see what you might be able to clean out. Do you have a lot of apps installed? Uninstall the ones you just don't use. (And don't just use the Uninstall button, Use 'Clear data' first, then 'Uninstall') Also, if there's a significant amount space taken up by caches, you might want to just wipe those -- caches necessary but non-vital, and typically get flushed and re-created as apps use them but if something gets corrupted an app's cache might just continue growing. (Not likely but possible).
If you're sure you don't have a big photo or music library, or something like that stored, try installing this 'DiskUsage' app from the Play Store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage&hl=en_US
It shows you a graphical image of the things residing in your internal storage and might help determine what's going on. Samsung includes a basic file manager app too so you can use that to delete or move your files/folders around (within limits as some directories are not accessible unless you're Tab is rooted). Look for the 'My Files' app in your app menu.
Oh, and don't forget to just allow for several GBs being used for the Android operating system itself. That has to be there and there's not much in this situation that you can do about anyway.

 

[Bearium2]

Just a lurker here.
@svim: Thanks for the tip about "Diskusage", downloaded it, good piece of kit.

B.