Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2020 October 27

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October 27

Storage on Android (again)

About a week ago I reported that I was getting messages saying that I was dangerously low on storage on an Android phone, and that some applications might not work. In fact, my email client, which is Outlook, wasn't synching. That is, it wasn't picking up incoming mail on the server. That was about a week ago. I will now rant that the usual advice that one is given about being out of storage doesn't help. The standard advice seems to be to add a storage card to my phone and move my images to the card. This would be good advice if the images were the problem. I have 613 MB of images on my phone, out of 16 GB of storage. I copied all of the images to my desktop computer, and so can delete them from my phone if necessary. Anyway, first, the email isn't synching, again, and it is now showing that I have 473 MB of storage free, as in about 15.6 GB in use again. What I was able to do a few days ago was to uninstall an app, TikTok, which I wasn't using anyway (aside from any questions about its nationality).

So I guess my question is whether there is any other way to free up storage besides deleting images (and 613 MB shouldn't be that large a chunk out of 16 GB) or uninstalling more apps. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:28, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I just diddled around and went into Storage Settings, and when I select the right button, it breaks down my 16 GB into pieces, of which 470 KB is available, and that is evidently not enough, and 5.7 GB for System Memory, and 810 MB for photos and videos (I knew that), and 298 MB for Music and Audio, and then 9.9 GB for Other apps, and 42 MB for Files. Okay. So Other Apps is what is tying up a lot of my storage. I open that up, and it shows 2.51 GB for Cloud, and 823 MB for Google Play services, and 664 MB for Chrome, and 436 MB for Google, and 289 MB for Facebook, and other settings that I am not listing. So now my question is whether I can do something about the 2.5 GB for Cloud, or any of these other things. Is there any obvious reason why I shouldn't free up a lot of this miscellaneous app storage?

Robert McClenon (talk) 00:41, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Next question. When I look at the storage usage for each of the apps, there is usually a button to Clear Cache, and a button to Clear Data. Are there any particular pitfalls or hazards that I should be aware of before Clearing Data? It appears that I generally can safely clear the cache. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:18, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Again, what does Cloud do that is using 2.5 GB? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:18, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Cached data is a local copy of data that is also held online. For example, all the emails you've viewed will be stored on your phone for a while. Likewise streaming music apps can store the audio files locally for off-line use. They can be safely deleted; the app will redownload the data if needed.

Data on the other hand has no copy on-line. It might be log-on data (password etc), in which case you'll be asked for it again. Or it could be draft emails which haven't been synced to the server, and will be lost if deleted. Be careful about deleting this.

LongHairedFop (talk) 09:27, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes. Thank you, User:LongHairedFop. That explains what the difference is between the cache and the data. Does anyone know what Cloud is doing with 2.5 GB?

I know in general what Cloud storage is. But what is this Cloud thing on my phone? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:08, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon, there's many cloud providers, who is your phone made by? If it's built in, it's likely one of their proprietary services Ed talk! 18:22, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

User:Ed6767 - Samsung. I think that I will go ahead and free up the data, because I don't want to be using cloud backup anyway. I am guessing that the cloud provider may be Samsung, or Verizon, the ISP, or Microsoft, or Google, because Microsoft and Google both try to do everything in order to make more money for themselves. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:04, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

A Lesson Learned

I still don't know what the Cloud application was or is, but I cleared the data and it freed up 2.5 GB of storage, which is a lot of storage when your phone has 16 GB. The lesson learned is, first, that the standard advice to buy a storage card to move your photos and videos to is fine if you have a storage problem and have a lot of photos and videos. That is often, although not always the reason for a storage problem, because videos are three-dimensional and so are BIG. However, that isn't always the reason for a storage problem. The second part of the lesson is to look to see if some app is for some reason using a lot of storage that doesn't seem to be necessary. I realize that clearing 2.5 GB of data was a little dangerous because it might have had some unknown function. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:13, 27 October 2020 (UTC)