Phantom device memory usage

[fishter]

I recently had to factory reset my I9100G because I was unable to receive email due to the device memory being full. I moved a many apps as possible to the SD card and removed some of those that could not be moved. It made little difference.

now I've reset I have loads of free space but it's rapidly filling up even though I've installed no apps.

What's going on, and how can I stop it?

(And how go I take a screen shot so I can track the memory usage?)

Fishter

[greenman]

First the screen shot.
On Gingerbread press menu + power at same time- it can be tricky.
On ICS press & hold volume down + power

Regarding memory filing up, I find that rather surprising as you have 16GB of space.
That takes a lot of filling through everyday use.
Video's would eat into it, but you could always send those to an external sd card.

[fishter]

It's the Device memory that's filling up. That's only 2GB. Here's a shot:

You can see that the applications use of the Device memory is small.
I haven't taken pictures or video since my factory reset, so that can't be filling the memory.
Anyone got an explanation for this behaviour?

[greenman]

Without knowing what you have installed it's difficult to guess, but I would install History eraser to clear out any cached files that you don't need.
To give an example your Internet file is twice the size of mine, which is probably due to cached sites you have visited and searches.
For comparison I've used 507MB and have 1.5GB free (almost the reverse of yours)
BTW pictures and video should not be cleared in a factory reset.

[fishter]

Installed and used History Cleaner - no change in the used memory.

Last week (straight after the reset), the used memory was tiny - less than 100MB, a few days later it was at 300MB, now it's at 1.4GB. You can see from the image that the Apps only take up a small amount of room (at the right of the grey bar). I have no idea what the remainder of that grey bar is representing or why it is continually increasing.

[greenman]

The figure on the left 1.4GB used - is the amount of memory taken up by your apps and accompanying data.
The figure on the right 596 MB free - is the amount of memory left empty.

[fishter]

If that truly is the data to accompany the apps then I'm very surprised.

I've done another reset and the used memory is back to 68MB used. Here's my minimal install:
updates to Google Play, GMail, Google Maps, Voice Search, YouTube
Barcode Scanner
Google Authenticator
GiffGaff APN
Juice Defender (Plus)
Juice Plotter

That's it.

Memory usage then stands at 80MB. I'll keep this updated with progress in working out what is eating my space!

[fishter]

Today there were 7 apps that wanted updated. I haven't installed any new ones since the list in the previous post.
Total usage is now 124MB.
I've taken no photos/videos and 3 screenshots.
I used Google Navigator for a while, so that may have cached a map or two.

[anujsingh001]

Hi, Even I had this problem. I had a minimal installation of applications on my device. Soon I got a message that the device memory is full. I deleted some of the applications and managed to free some 100 MB of space. This exhausted in a day and the full memory message again flashed up. Frustrated, I had to do a factory reset. It showed 1.91 GB free space. Its been only 4 days now and the free memory is just 1.14 GB and its continuously decreasing.

Please let me know in case you manage to find a solution for this.

Anuj

[Harshkumar]

I am also facing same problem. Till yesterday my used space was 535 MB today used memory is 1.75 GB. Wondering how this is possible?? I feel this problem has come after downloading update file for Linkedin. After downloading the update file when you click "update" it shows error message "not a system file".