Help? Android inorrectly states insufficient space. Used Space and Available space do not add up.

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Lacy

In Love Lv4️⃣
Member for 6 years
My Samsung Galaxy J3 Sky (Only 16GB storage around 11GB used up for the OS and Samsung default installs; a lot of it I will never use.) says that it has insufficient space even though there should still be plenty of room left. I don't know if this still has to do with emulated SD on Samsung smartphones, but that is about all I gathered from googling. I read a couple posts that suggested that only a small part of the apps/games are moved when you move them to the SD Card. I verified that even after moving the apps/games to my SD Card, a large portion was still left on the device storage. I can't even get updates now, without uninstalling, apps/games I want to keep progress off(no account linking).

My trouble is that I don't want to uninstall what I have on there, but I need more space so that I can try out other apps/games. I wouldn't mind getting rid of all the crapware/bloatware that is default on my device....the apps that I will never use, but from my understanding that procedure would require root and I am not near advanced enough to attempt that (well, I just want to possess advanced understanding before I do something like that, so I will have no regrets. I know there are one-click root apps available.). I know that I could format the SD card so that apps think it is all part of the main device storage, but if anything ever happens, I would have to reset my device to factory and lose a ton or find a tedious way to get everything backed up and restored later before doing it.

Does anyone have any advice on what I can do to ACTUALLY move these games/apps to the SD card to free up space? Or is that not really possible without rooting my device? :cry:
 

SusieQ

Hardcore Lv9️⃣
Member for 6 years
Re: Help? Android inorrectly states insufficient space. Used Space and Available space do not add up

Hello Lacy,
Android devices storage settings will say you may have "_ X" amount available, however, this is not the actual amount you can use, there is an amount of that reserved for apps that constantly update, such as weather etc. You can actually regain some space without uninstalling or losing ur saved games data, there's some games and applications that are saved by login. Such as Gmail, FB etc. You can go to your apps Section, select the apps that have saved data via login ( apps or games you can login to on a different device to access them ) clear all app data, you won't lose your saved emails or pics etc. You will only need to login again. You can also go to storage, clear all cached data ( recommend doing often) also go in to misc data, now do NOT clear all, if you have movies or music saved there leave those files alone, but you can delete the FB files etc. If you want a full info of which are able to clear safely pm me. I'll be happy to make you a video walkthrough.
Best Regards,
SusieQ
 

Lacy

In Love Lv4️⃣
Member for 6 years
Re: Help? Android inorrectly states insufficient space. Used Space and Available space do not add up

Thank you so much for your taking the time to reply with such a thoughtful response. My device has Android 6.01 Marshmallow on it. When I click on apps, settings, and storage, it shows I have 15.51GB used out of 16GB. When I click on internal storage, It shows 16GB Total Space, 501MB Available Space, 4.96GB System Memory, 11.83GB Used Space, 0.00 B Other, and 42.52 MB Cached Data. When I click on Used Space, the device calculates that I have 11.81GB for apps, 68.36 MB for pictures, videos, and 3.31 MB for audio. The cached data doesn't seem to be taking up much space (I even checked each large app individually and found no cached data to speak of.). Neither are pictures or videos. I put those on my SD card manually. When I click on Apps, the device then calculates how much space each app is taking up, but the result doesn't add up. It seems that moving those apps to the SD doesn't really move them at all, or at least not completely. Most of each app's data is left on internal space.

Is there anyway to edit an android version of a registry or config file that points to where this data is? Can I manually move it and just tell it where the new location is? What about all the default apps that I will never use? Is there some way to remove that stuff without rooting my device? It seems more clear to me every day that I need to get to the point of being comfortable with rooting this device if I want to decrapify it. :)

Lacy

P.S. I don't really want to have to install and uninstall over and over, juggling the apps and the little internal storage I have. There has to be a better way besides the software and hardware developer's. How about a Gentoo version of Android so that I can have complete control over what gets put on there and what resources and space are used tailored specifically to my device and my needs/wants? LOL!

In some time, I will come back when I am ready to root my device. I'm sure I'll have questions. Thanks again for your wonderful response!

***Edit***
I decided to just uninstall a bunch of apps. I doubt I will install them again. I'll just have to be more choosy with the apps I install. Too bad.
 

SusieQ

Hardcore Lv9️⃣
Member for 6 years
Re: Help? Android inorrectly states insufficient space. Used Space and Available space do not add up


If you still need help pm me mobile chat n I'll walk you through
 

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