Try resetting your phone and if that works.

 

im alittle confused, you say 12gb is free on the phones 16gb and 1.5gb is free on the internal storage. the 16gb is the phones internal storage, maybe im misreading it or something?

 

The 16GB is actually split into 14gb and 2GB I think.
I think I remember it showing up on my linux box as a 14.xGB filesystem.
The 2GB doesn't mount over USB, at least not stock...

T

 

I have the same problem and rebooting does not fix the issue.

under settings>SD card and phone storage, the internal phone storage is showing 181MB of available space.

what is going on?

 

may be you guys can try downloading free "ES File Explorer" from the Market. Run it, and under options there is a feature "SD Analyst" it shows what folders use what space. Maybe that info will help.

 

I'm having this problem right now also.

 

I noticed that the Captivate has a separate memory for running programs. The 16Gbyte internal memory and whatever capacity micro sdcard you may have installed is for programs and data STORAGE only. The phone uses different memory for running the apps. I believe the system memory for running apps is 512 Megs only. Here's my observations...

I cold-boot the phone from being completely off. The phone goes through its usual boot-up process then when it's ready, I run Advanced Task Killer (ATK). The ATK reports that I have about 120 Megs of RAM available and it shows at least a dozen apps running in the background (like AT&T Navigator and Instant Messenger). Right after the fresh boot-up, I then use ATK to kill the tasks. ATK then reports that I have about 190 Megs RAM available. The ATK is set to kill apps when I put the screen to standby so when I wake up the phone and use an app, ATK will kill it as soon as I put the phone back on standby. Here's the interesting thing. As I use the phone throughout the day I monitor the memory level and it will fluctuate up and down. As the apps get used on and off throughout the day and over a period of several days, the RAM level starts dropping lower and lower even though ATK reports that there are no background tasks running (other than system level programs). I've had ATK report available RAM as low as 30 Megs when seemingly nothing was running in the background (ATK didn't show any apps running). Some apps, like Google Earth will eat up a huge chunk of RAM when running, but as soon as you exit, it releases all the RAM back to the phone. I've seen the available RAM reported by ATK from 70 Megs available while running Google Earth to 180 Megs available as soon as I killed Google Earth app. Soooo.... this is what I believe is happening. Some apps use the RAM to generate data for itself as its running. When that app exits, it doesn't seem to be releasing all the RAM back to the system for other apps to use. It's called memory leak and it was a common problem with Microsoft Windows OS. Programs use RAM but doesn't give it all back when it's done with it. It causes memory fragmentation and makes the OS think it has less RAM available. Over a period of time, the RAM fragmentation caused the available RAM to get smaller and smaller.

Here's the simplest solution. Install ATK. I use the free version. Set the ATK security level to "Medium" so you won't kill system level programs only high level apps when you're done using it. Set the ATK to kill the apps when you put the phone on standby. Over a period of days, perhaps weeks, ATK will on and off kill apps and release RAM back to the phone but memory fragmentation will still occur, at least that's my opinion. You'll see the available RAM get smaller and smaller. When ATK reports that available RAM is around 30-40 Megs when apparently no apps are running, turn off the phone then turn it back on and have ATK kill all non-essential apps upon fresh reboot. You'll start the phone RAM fresh and you won't run into LOW RAM warning or apps failing to run properly due to LOW RAM condition. I've been doing this for at least a month now and my phone runs very well. I reboot the phone once a week on average when the RAM reading is low. Just my 3 cents worth of opinion.....

 

^^^Nice post, but what does available RAM have to do with the OP's issue with the SD storage?

 

RAM (memory) and storage are entirely different things.
Storage - CapFAQ

And your advice on using a task killer is not wise:
Task killers - CapFAQ

 

I had this EXACT problem, and I found that individual apps were sequestering too much data. I'm not that great with computers so I can't really say exactly how it works, but I think it has to do with the fact that the Captivate has 512 M ram, but only uses 256 M. Also, it seemingly has nothing to do with how you use your "storage".

What I did is click on the notification, which will bring you to the apps page (where you can uninstall and do other things to them under settings). Then I sorted by the apps that were using the most data, and cleared all the data associated with the apps (there's a button for this when you click on the apps). I only had to clear the Browser and LogsProvider, and it was completely gone.

EDIT: I also think that app killing won't really fix the problem as well as my solution does.

 

I have been using Task Killer for over 2 months without a single problem. I understand your point of view, but I also don't encounter "out of memory" or "out of storage" errors either because I keep the RAM clear of unnecessary programs. By the same token, rooting and loading up unauthorized ROMs into the phone isn't wise either because who knows what hardware/software incompatibility exists with that particular phone/unauthorized ROM. Just sayin'