We all laughed at that app called “Download SD Card 32 GB”.
Because there is one constant in the hardware we use: The available storage, which can be extended, too, but is then again fixed to a certain value.
Since I used Android smartphones, I liked to tinker with them and understand the inner workings of that operating system more and more.
The recent years I only used the devices and didn’t put too much effort into modifying and tweaking them.
So, now that I wanted to pull it off again, I decided to buy a new device. A tablet, because I would only use it inside the house. I went for the newest model, the freshly released Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 on Android 11 with the mere 32 GB internal storage space, as I didn’t want to overload it. Trusting it would bring me the benefits I wanted.
I got it, set it up and imported all the data I usually do and it was fine and a nice experience and then the storage was full.
This early? I barely surfed on it or downloaded anything! But the evidence showed I had a tremendous amount of so-called “System data”. So much, that I couldn’t install another app or receive another file via Bluetooth (for some instances it is still used).
It looked like this on the widely known app “DiskUsage”, before it was quickly fully blocked:
I might add that my device has only 32 GB of internal storage, which are reduced by about 10 GB of the core Android system data.
So 22 GB free to use, right? Right.
Now, I was at my wits end, deleting apps to make room and decluttering my WhatsApp Images by about 4,5 GB.
Nothing helped and one night I was certain I would go to the store and make an elaborate scene and switch to another device.
Though one thing, besides the unaccountable for “System data”, didn’t quite add up. And that was, that my tablet was still running smoothly, even though it shouldn’t, given the “full” storage space.
Some caches were still being written, some apps still worked, even though they shouldn’t. As if only a few operations really asked about free storage and others just wrote away.
Then I looked for one of those carefree options to exploit this and see what would happen.
My Nextcloud client seemed to be the right choice. So, on full internal storage, I downloaded over 13 GB of data from my Nextcloud.
It looked like this:
So, I accomplished it! I successfully expanded my storage capacity! 😀
And in the end, there were some different notifications and I felt that I really reached the limit of the internal storage. The tablet couldn’t even save a screenshot anymore…
Many forums I have roamed and many research only led to an understanding that this behavior (before the exploit) has been around for many years and affects several brands of Android devices.
Whyever Media Storage decides to allot twice as much data, I don’t know.
But after brutally overbooking the storage like that and then deleting all the downloaded data, it went to normal and didn’t fill up like that again.
All my hopes are towards the next software release, Android 12 namely, which might or might not fix this bug for whoever else is affected.
That is all for today, some technical breakthrough where no hope was left. 🙂
Edit, 15.01.22: It happens again, gradually, and is fixable the same way. Let’s hope the update makes it right…
Edit, 03.02.22: The Update X200XXU1AVAB/ X200XXM1AVAB seems to have fixed it.
