How To Get Rid Of File System Limit? All Answers

Android’s user-visible file system is one of its advantages over iOS. It allows you to work with files more easily and open them in any app of your choice… as long as you know how.

Stock Android comes with a pretty watered-down file manager by default. Some manufacturers preinstall their own more powerful file managers on Android devices. Other times, you might need a third-party app to really get into the files on your phone. Here’s what you need to know.

Here’s how to access Android’s built-in file manager

If you’re using a device running stock Android 6.x (Marshmallow) or newer, there’s a built-in file manager…it’s just hidden in the settings. Go to Settings > Storage > Other and you will get a complete list of all files and folders in your internal storage. (If you want this file manager to be more accessible, the Marshmallow File Manager app adds it to your home screen as an icon.)

It’s a little different with nougat. The file manager is part of the Downloads app but is essentially the same. You can view certain file types — like images, videos, music, and downloads — from the Downloads shortcut in your app drawer. However, if you want to see your phone’s full file system, you’ll still need to go through Settings > Storage > Other. It opens the Downloads app with a previously hidden view that allows you to see all the folders and files on your device.

But like I said, it’s pretty flimsy compared to some of the options available on Google Play. If you just want to browse files and maybe move a thing or two here and there, it gets the job done without the need for third parties, which is nice. However, if you’re looking for something more robust, head to the Play Store.

For more powerful file management, install a file manager app

RELATED: Five Ways to Free Up Space on Your Android Device

Manufacturers like Samsung and LG offer more robust file managers, often called something simple like “My Files” or “Files”. However, there’s a good chance you’ll need to install your own file manager app – either your device doesn’t have one, or the app that came with it might not be up to date. Thankfully, there’s a huge selection of file managers on Google Play.

One of the most popular file managers on the Play Store, Solid Explorer is packed with powerful features like access to cloud accounts and the ability to run two Solid windows side by side in landscape mode (on any device!). It is also well supported and gets frequent updates with new features. Solid is free to try for two weeks, but after that you’ll have to spend $1.99 to keep using it. It’s worth the cost.

Understanding file system layout

Android’s file system layout is not the same as your PC’s. This is how it divides its memory:

RELATED: How to Set Up a New SD Card in Android for Extra Storage

Device Storage: This is the pool of storage you work with and access. You can access and modify all files here. Think of it a bit like your user directory on Windows, or your home directory on Linux or Mac. As with desktop operating systems, many apps put some data files here – not sensitive data like passwords and login information, but downloaded files and other cached items.

: This is the storage pool you will be working with and accessing. You can access and modify all files here. Think of it a bit like your user directory on Windows, or your home directory on Linux or Mac. As with desktop operating systems, many apps put some data files here – not sensitive data like passwords and login information, but downloaded files and other cached items. Portable SD card: Many Android devices also have SD card slots. You can insert the SD card into your computer or other device, load files onto it, and then insert it into your device (provided it’s formatted as portable storage and not internal storage). If you’re using a Marshmallow device and you’ve formatted your SD card for use as internal storage, it won’t show up separately in your file manager — it’s part of your device storage instead.

: Many Android devices also have SD card slots. You can insert the SD card into your computer or other device, load files onto it, and then insert it into your device (provided it’s formatted as portable storage and not internal storage). If you’re using a Marshmallow device and you’ve formatted your SD card for use as internal storage, it won’t show up separately in your file manager — it’s part of your device storage instead. Device root: Your Android device also has a special system file system that stores its operating system files, installed applications, and sensitive application data. Most file manager apps cannot change this file system for security reasons unless you have root access and a file manager that can use it. But you probably don’t have to do that.

Your device storage contains a series of folders created by Android. Some of these are created and used by apps for their cache files, so you shouldn’t mess with them or remove them. However, you can free up disk space by removing unnecessary files stored here.

However, others are designed to store your personal files, and you can change or delete files in them as needed. These include:

DCIM : Photos you take are stored in this folder, just like other digital cameras. Apps like Gallery and Photos will show photos found here, but this is where the underlying image files are actually stored.

: Captured photos are saved in this folder, just like other digital cameras. Apps like Gallery and Photos will show photos found here, but this is where the underlying image files are actually stored. Download: Files you download are saved here, although you can move them to another location or delete them altogether. You can also view these files in the Downloads app.

: Files you download are saved here, although you can move them to another location or delete them altogether. You can also view these files in the Downloads app. Movies, Music, Pictures, Ringtones, Videos: These are folders for storing your personal media files. When you connect your device to a computer, they provide you with an obvious place to put music, videos or any other files that you want to copy to your Android device.

You can browse these folders from any file manager. Simply tapping on a file brings up a list of installed apps that claim to support that file type. You can work directly with files and open them in apps just like on your computer.

How to copy files to or from a PC

RELATED: Android USB Connections Explained: MTP, PTP, and USB Mass Storage

Copying files to or from a PC is easy. Simply connect your Android device to a laptop or desktop computer using the appropriate USB cable – the charging cable that came with your device will work. If the Android device is in the default MTP mode (PTP is also available, and USB mass storage may be available on older devices), it will appear as the default device in your Windows or Linux file manager window. (If it doesn’t, you may need to tap the “Load Only” notification and change it to MTP.) Then your PC can view, manage, and move the files in your Android’s internal storage As you wish.

Macs don’t have MTP support, so you should install the Android File Transfer app on your Mac and use it to transfer files back and forth when you plug in your device. The app will open automatically when you connect an Android device to your Mac.

If you have an SD card, you can remove the SD card from your Android device and insert it into an SD card slot on your computer to access the files – provided you’re using it as “portable storage” and aren’t into it formatted internal use. The latter will not work on any device other than the one on which it was formatted for use.

For wireless file transfers, we like AirDroid. You can connect to your Android device over Wi-Fi with just a web browser and move files back and forth wirelessly. It’ll likely be a bit slower, but it can be a lifesaver when you’re on the go and don’t have a proper USB cable with you. Portal is also a quick and easy solution for transferring files from Android to your PC.

For simple tasks, a file manager isn’t even really necessary. Files you download can be used directly in the Downloads app. Photos you take appear in the Photos or Gallery apps. Even media files that you copy to your device – music, videos, and pictures – are automatically indexed by a process called “mediaserver”. This process scans your internal storage or SD card for media files and notes their location, creating a library of media files that media players and other applications can use. While a user-visible filesystem isn’t necessarily for everyone, it’s still there for people who want it.

In a computer, a file system — sometimes spelled file system — is how files are named and where they are logically placed for storage and retrieval. Without a file system, stored information would not be isolated into individual files and would be difficult to identify and retrieve. With increasing data capacities, the organization and accessibility of individual files becomes more and more important in data storage.

Digital file systems and files are named and modeled after paper-based filing systems, using the same logic-based method of storing and retrieving documents.

File systems can differ between operating systems (OS) such as Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux-based systems. Some file systems are designed for specific applications. Major types of file systems include distributed file systems, disk-based file systems, and special purpose file systems.

How File Systems Work A file system stores and organizes data and can be thought of as a sort of index to all the data contained on a storage device. These devices can include hard drives, optical drives, and flash drives. File systems specify conventions for naming files, including the maximum number of characters in a name, what characters can be used, and, in some systems, how long the filename suffix can be. In many file systems, file names are not case-sensitive. In addition to the file itself, file systems contain information in the metadata such as the size of the file and its attributes, location and hierarchy in the directory. Metadata can also identify free blocks of available space on the drive and the available space. File Tree Diagram Example A file system also includes a format for specifying the path to a file through the directory structure. A file is placed in a directory – or a folder in the Windows operating system – or a subdirectory at the desired position in the tree structure. PC and mobile operating systems have file systems in which files are stored somewhere in a hierarchical tree structure. Partitions should be created before files and directories are created on the storage medium. A partition is an area of ​​the hard drive or other storage that the operating system manages separately. A file system is contained in the primary partition, and some operating systems allow multiple partitions on a hard disk. In this situation, if a file system gets corrupted, the data in another partition is safe.

File Systems and the Role of Metadata File systems use metadata to store and retrieve files. Examples of metadata tags are: creation date

date changed

Last Access Date

Last backup

File creator user ID

Access Permissions

File size Metadata is stored separately from the file’s content, with many file systems storing the filenames in separate directory entries. Some metadata can be stored in the directory, while other metadata can be stored in a structure called an inode. In Unix-like operating systems, an inode can store metadata unrelated to the contents of the file itself. The inode indexes information by number that can be used to access the file’s location and then the file itself. An example of a file system that uses metadata is OS X, the operating system used by Apple. It allows for a range of optimization features, including file names that can be up to 255 characters long.

File System Access File systems can also restrict read and write access to a specific group of users. Passwords are the easiest way to do this. In addition to controlling who can modify or read files, restricting access can ensure that data changes are controlled and limited. File permissions such as access or feature control lists can also be used to moderate access to the file system. These types of mechanisms are useful for preventing access by regular users, but are not as effective against outside intruders. Encrypting files can also prevent user access, but is more focused on protecting systems from outside attacks. An encryption key can be applied to plaintext to encrypt it, or the key can be used to decrypt ciphertext. Only users with the key can access the file. With encryption, the file system does not need to know the encryption key to manage the data effectively.

Types of file systems There are a number of types of file systems, each with different logical structures and properties, such as: B. speed and size. The type of file system may differ depending on the operating system and the requirements of that operating system. The three most common PC operating systems are Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Mobile operating systems include Apple iOS and Google Android. Major file systems include: The File Allocation Table (FAT) is supported by the Microsoft Windows operating system. FAT is considered simple and reliable and is modeled after older file systems. FAT was developed for floppy disks in 1977 but later adapted for hard disks. While FAT is efficient and compatible with most current operating systems, it cannot match the performance and scalability of more modern file systems. The global file system (GFS) is a file system for the Linux operating system and a shared disk file system. GFS provides direct access to shared block storage and can be used as a local file system. GFS2 is an updated version with features not found in the original GFS such as: B. an updated metadata system. Both the GFS and GFS2 file systems are available as free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The Hierarchical File System (HFS) was designed for use with Mac operating systems. HFS can also be referred to as Mac OS Standard and was superseded by Mac OS Extended. HFS was originally introduced in 1985 for floppy disks and hard disks, replacing the original Macintosh file system. It can also be used on CD-ROMs. The NT file system – also known as the New Technology File System (NTFS) – is the standard file system for Windows products starting with Windows NT 3.1. Improvements over the previous FAT file system include better metadata support, performance, and disk space utilization. NTFS is also supported in the Linux operating system via a free, open-source NTFS driver. Mac operating systems provide read-only support for NTFS. Universal Disk Format (UDF) is a vendor-independent file system used on optical media and DVDs. UDF replaces the ISO 9660 file system and is the official file system for DVD video and audio as voted for by the DVD Forum.

File system vs. DBMS Like a file system, a database management system (DBMS) efficiently stores data that can be updated and retrieved. However, the two are not interchangeable. While a file system stores unstructured, often non-contiguous files, a DBMS is used to store and manage structured, contiguous data. A DBMS creates and defines the constraints for a database. A file system allows access to individual files at once and addresses each file individually. Because of this, functions like redundancy are performed at the individual level, not by the file system itself. This makes a file system a much less consistent form of data storage than a DBMS, which manages a data repository once defined. The centralized structure of a DBMS allows for easier file sharing than a file system and prevents anomalies that can occur when separate changes are made to files in a file system. There are methods to protect files in a file system, but for heavy security, a DBMS is the way to go. Security in a file system is determined by the operating system and can be difficult to maintain over time as files are accessed and authorizations are granted to users. A DBMS keeps security restrictions high and relies on password protection, encryption, and limited authorization. More security leads to more barriers to data retrieval, so in terms of general, easy-to-use file storage and retrieval, a file system may be preferred.

Organizing Data in a Traditional File Environment Computer systems organize data in a hierarchy that begins with bits and bytes and progresses to more complex groupings of data: Fields: Groups of characters, words, or a whole number

: Set of characters, words, or a complete number Records : Set of related fields, describes an entity (a person, place, or thing about which information must be kept – each characteristic of an entity is an attribute

: group of related fields, describing a (a person, place or thing about which information must be kept – each characteristic of an entity is a File : group of records of the same type

: Group of records of the same type Database: Group of related files

Figure 6-1

FIGURE 6-1 THE DATA HIERARCHY A computer system organizes data in a hierarchy that begins with the bit that represents either a 0 or a 1. Bits can be grouped to form a byte that represents a character, number, or symbol. Bytes can be grouped to form an array and related fields can be grouped to form a record. Related records can be collected to form a file and related files can be organized in a database. In most organizations, the traditional approach to information processing meant that databases and other systems tended to grow independently without an enterprise-wide plan. Accounting, finance, manufacturing, human resources, and sales and marketing have all developed their own systems and data files.

Figure 6-2

FIGURE 6-2 TRADITIONAL FILE PROCESSING

Using a traditional approach to file processing encourages every functional area in an organization to develop specialized applications and files. Each application requires a unique data file, which is likely a subset of the master file. These subsets of the master file result in data redundancy and inconsistency, processing inflexibility, and wasted storage resources. Problems arising from the traditional file environment include: Data redundancy: duplicate data in multiple files resulting in data inconsistency, different values ​​for the same attribute

: duplicate data in multiple files, resulting in different values ​​being used for the same attribute Program Data Dependency : changes in programs that require changes to the data

: Changes in programs that require changes to the data. Lack of flexibility

Bad security

Missing data exchange

It’s a bit difficult to explain in just one sentence what exactly a file system is.

That’s why I decided to write an article about it. This post is intended to provide a general overview of file systems. But I’ll sneak into the lower-level concepts as well, as long as it doesn’t get boring. 🙂

What is a file system?

Let’s start with a simple definition:

A file system defines how files are named, stored, and accessed from a storage device.

Every time you open a file on your computer or smart device, your operating system uses its file system internally to load it from the storage device.

Or when you copy, edit, or delete a file, the file system processes it in the background.

Whenever you download a file or access a website over the Internet, a file system is also involved.

For example, when you access a page on freeCodeCamp, your browser sends an HTTP request to freeCodeCamp’s server to retrieve the page. If the requested resource is a file, it is retrieved from a file system.

When people talk about filesystems, they might be referring to different aspects of a filesystem depending on the context – this is where things start to seem tricky.

And at the end you might be wondering: WHAT IS A FILE SYSTEM EVEN? 🤯

This guide will help you understand file systems in many contexts. I’ll also cover partitioning and booting!

To keep this guide manageable, I will focus on Unix-like environments when explaining the sub-concepts or console commands.

However, these concepts remain relevant to other environments and file systems.

Why do we even need a file system, you might ask?

Well, without a file system, the storage device would store a large block of data at a time, and the operating system wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

The term file system takes its name from the old paper-based data management systems where we kept documents as files and put them in directories.

Imagine a room with stacks of paper scattered everywhere.

A storage device without a file system would be in the same situation – and it would be a useless electronic device.

However, a file system changes everything:

However, a file system is not just an accounting function.

Disk space management, metadata, data encryption, file access control, and data integrity are also the responsibility of the file system.

It all starts with partitioning

Storage devices must be partitioned and formatted before first use.

But what is partitioning?

Partitioning divides a storage device into multiple logical regions so that they can be managed separately, as if they were separate storage devices.

We usually partition using a disk management tool provided by operating systems or as a command line tool provided by the system’s firmware (I’ll explain what firmware is).

A storage device should have at least one partition or more if required.

Why should we split the storage devices into multiple partitions at all?

The reason is that we don’t want to manage all storage space as one entity and for a single purpose.

It’s just like how we divide our workspace to separate (and isolate) meeting rooms, conference rooms, and different teams.

For example, a basic Linux installation has three partitions: one for the operating system, one for the user files, and an optional swap partition.

A swap partition acts as a RAM extension when RAM space is running low.

For example, the operating system can (temporarily) move part of the data from RAM to the swap partition to free up space in RAM.

Operating systems continually use various memory management techniques to ensure that each process has enough memory to run.

File systems on Windows and Mac have a similar layout, but they don’t use a dedicated swap partition; Instead, they manage to switch within the partition where you installed your operating system.

On a computer with multiple partitions, you can install multiple operating systems and choose a different operating system to boot your system each time.

The recovery and diagnostic programs are also located in dedicated partitions.

For example, to boot a MacBook into recovery mode, you need to hold down Command + R as soon as you restart (or turn on) your MacBook. This instructs the system’s firmware to boot with a partition containing the recovery program.

However, partitioning isn’t just a way to install multiple operating systems and tools; It also helps us separate critical system files from ordinary files.

No matter how many games you install on your computer, it will not affect the performance of the operating system because they are on different partitions.

Going back to the office example, having a call center and engineering team in a shared space would hamper the productivity of both teams, as each team has its own efficiency requirements.

For example, the engineering team would appreciate a quieter area.

Some operating systems, such as Windows, assign a drive letter (A, B, C, or D) to partitions. For example, the primary partition in Windows (where Windows is installed) is known as the C: or C drive.

In Unix-like operating systems, however, partitions appear as ordinary directories under the root directory – we’ll get to that later.

In the next section, we’ll delve deeper into partitioning and learn about two concepts that will change the way you look at filesystems: system firmware and booting.

Are you ready?

Let’s go! 🏊‍♂️

Partitioning schemes, system firmware and booting

When partitioning a storage device, we have two partitioning methods (or schemes 🙄) to choose from:

Master Boot Record (MBR) scheme.

GUID partition table (GPT) scheme.

No matter which partitioning scheme you choose, the first few blocks on the storage device always contain important data about your partitions.

The system’s firmware uses these data structures to boot the operating system on a partition.

Wait, what is the system firmware? You can ask.

Here’s an explanation:

A firmware is low-level software embedded in electronic devices to operate the device or boot another program for it.

Firmware exists in computers, peripherals (keyboards, mice, and printers), or even in home electronics.

In computers, firmware provides a standard interface for complex software such as an operating system to boot up and work with hardware components.

However, in simpler systems like a printer, the firmware is the operating system. The menu you use on your printer is the interface of its firmware.

Hardware manufacturers create firmware based on two specifications:

Basic Input/Output (BIOS)

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)

Firmwares – BIOS-based or UEFI-based – reside on non-volatile storage, such as a flash ROM attached to the motherboard.

When you press your computer’s power button, the firmware is the first program to run.

The job of the firmware is (among other things) to boot the computer, run the operating system, and give it control of the entire system.

A firmware also runs pre-OS environments (with network support), like recovery or diagnostic tools, or even a shell to run text-based commands.

The first few screens you see before your Windows logo appears are the output of your computer’s firmware, which checks the health of hardware components and memory.

The initial check is confirmed with a beep (usually on PCs) indicating everything is OK.

MBR partitioning and BIOS-based firmware

The MBR partitioning scheme is part of the BIOS specifications and is used by BIOS-based firmware.

On MBR-partitioned hard drives, the first sector on the storage device contains important data for booting the system.

This sector is called MBR.

The MBR contains the following information:

The bootloader, a simple program (in machine code) to initiate the first phase of the boot process

(in machine code) to initiate the first phase of the boot process. A partition table that contains information about your partitions.

BIOS-based firmware boots the system differently than UEFI-based firmware.

This is how it works:

As soon as the system is turned on, the BIOS firmware starts and loads the boot loader program (contained in the MBR) into memory. Once the program is in memory, the CPU begins execution.

Having the bootloader and partition table in a predefined location like MBR allows the BIOS to boot the system without having to deal with a file.

If you’re curious about how the CPU executes instructions located in memory, you can read this beginner-friendly and fun guide to how the CPU works.

The bootloader code in the MBR occupies between 434 bytes and 446 bytes of MBR space (out of 512b). In addition, 64 bytes are assigned to the partition table, which can contain information about a maximum of four partitions.

However, 446 bytes is not large enough to hold too much code. However, sophisticated boot loaders like GRUB 2 on Linux divide their functionality into parts or tiers.

The smallest piece of code, known as the first-stage bootloader, is stored in the MBR. It’s usually a simple program that doesn’t take up much space.

The job of the first stage boot loader is to initiate the next (and more complicated) stages of the boot process.

Immediately after the MBR and before the first partition begins, there is a small area of ​​about 1MB called the MBR gap.

The MBR gap can be used to place another piece of the bootloader program if needed.

A bootloader like GRUB 2 uses the MBR gap to store another layer of its functionality. GRUB calls this the level 1.5 boot loader, which includes a file system driver.

Stage 1.5 allows the next stages of GRUB to understand the concept of files instead of loading raw instructions from the storage device (like the first stage bootloader).

The second stage boot loader, now able to work with files, can load the operating system’s boot loader file to boot the respective operating system.

The logo of the operating system is displayed here…

Here is the layout of a storage device with MBR partition:

And if we enlarge the MBR, its contents would look like this:

Although MBR is simple and widely supported, it has some limitations 😑.

The data structure of MBR limits the number of partitions to only four primary partitions.

A common workaround is to create an extended partition alongside the primary partitions as long as the total number of partitions does not exceed four.

An extended partition can be divided into multiple logical partitions. Creating extended partitions differs depending on the operating system. In this quick guide, Microsoft explains how it should be done on Windows.

When creating a partition, you can choose between primary and extended.

After this is solved, we will encounter the second constraint.

Each partition can be a maximum of 2 TiB 🙄.

And wait, there’s more!

The content of the MBR sector has no backup 😱, which means that if the MBR gets corrupted for some unexpected reason, we have to find a way to recycle this useless piece of hardware.

This is where GPT partitioning stands out 😎.

GPT partitioning and UEFI-based firmware

GPT partitioning scheme is more sophisticated than MBR and does not have the limitations of MBR.

For example, you can have as many partitions as your operating system allows.

And each partition can be the size of the largest storage device available on the market – actually much larger.

GPT is gradually replacing MBR, although MBR is still widely supported on old and new PCs.

As mentioned earlier, GPT is part of the UEFI specification that replaces plain old BIOS.

This means that UEFI-based firmware uses a GPT-partitioned storage device to handle the boot process.

Many hardware and operating systems now support UEFI and use the GPT scheme to partition storage devices.

With the GPT partitioning scheme, the first sector of the storage device is reserved for compatibility with BIOS-based systems. The reason is that some systems might still use a BIOS based firmware but have a GPT partitioned storage device.

This sector is called Protective MBR. (Here the first stage bootloader would be on an MBR partitioned disk)

After this first sector, the GPT data structures are stored, including the GPT header and partition entries.

The GPT records and GPT header are backed up at the end of the storage device so they can be restored if the primary copy becomes corrupted.

This backup is called secondary GPT.

The layout of a GPT partitioned storage device looks like this:

In GPT, all boot services (bootloaders, boot managers, pre-OS environments and shells) reside in a dedicated partition called EFI System Partition (ESP) that can be used by UEFI firmware.

ESP even has its own file system, which is a special version of FAT. On Linux, ESP is located under the path /sys/firmware/efi.

If this path cannot be found on your system, your firmware is probably BIOS-based firmware.

To try it out, you can try changing the directory to the ESP mount point like this:

cd /sys/firmware/efi

UEFI-based firmware assumes the storage device is partitioned with GPT and looks up the ESP in the GPT partition table.

Once the EFI partition is found, it looks for the configured bootloader — typically a file with the .efi extension.

UEFI-based firmware gets its boot configuration from NVRAM (a non-volatile RAM).

NVRAM contains the boot settings and paths to the operating system’s boot loader files.

The UEFI firmware can also perform a BIOS-style boot (to boot the system from an MBR disk) if configured accordingly.

You can use the parted command on Linux to see what partitioning scheme is used for a storage device.

sudo parted -l

And the output would be something like this:

Model: Virtio Block Device (virtblk) Disk /dev/vda: 172GB Sector Size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size Filesystem Name Flags 14 1049kB 5243kB 4194kB bios_grub 15 5243kB 116MB 111MB fat32 msftdata 1 116MB 172GB 172GB ext4

Based on the above output, the storage device ID is /dev/vda with a capacity of 172GB. The storage device is partitioned based on GPT and has three partitions; The second and third partitions are formatted based on the FAT32 and EXT4 file systems, respectively.

Having a BIOS GRUB partition means the firmware is still BIOS-based firmware.

Let’s confirm that with the dmidecode command as follows:

sudo dmidecode -t 0

And the output would be:

# dmidecode 3.2 Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs. SMBIOS 2.4 available. …

✅ Confirmed!

Format partitions

When the partitioning is complete, the partitions should be formatted.

Most operating systems allow you to format a partition based on a variety of file systems.

For example, when formatting a partition in Windows, you can choose between FAT32, NTFS and exFAT file systems.

Formatting involves creating various data structures and metadata used to manage files within a partition.

These data structures are one aspect of a file system.

Let’s take the NTFS file system as an example.

When you format a partition in NTFS, the formatting process places the main NTFS data structures and the Master File Table (MFT) on the partition.

Okay, let’s get filesystems back with our new background on partitioning, formatting, and booting.

How it started, how it’s going

A file system is a set of data structures, interfaces, abstractions, and APIs that work together to consistently manage any file type on any storage device.

Every operating system uses a specific file system to manage the files.

In the early days, Microsoft used FAT (FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32) in the MS-DOS and Windows 9x families.

Beginning with Windows NT 3.1, Microsoft developed the New Technology File System (NTFS) which had many advantages over FAT32 such as: B. support for larger files, allowing longer file names, data encryption, access management, journaling and much more.

NTFS has been the standard file system of the Windows NT family (2000, XP, Vista, 7, 10, etc.) ever since.

However, NTFS is not suitable for non-Windows environments 🤷🏻.

For example, you can only read the contents of an NTFS-formatted storage device (like flash memory) on a Mac OS, but you can’t write to it unless you install an NTFS driver with write support.

Or you can just use the exFat file system.

Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) is a lighter version of NTFS created by Microsoft in 2006.

exFAT is designed for high-capacity removable media such as external hard drives, USB drives, and memory cards.

exFAT is the default file system used by SDXC cards.

Unlike NTFS, exFAT offers read and write support even in non-Windows environments, including Mac OS – making it the best cross-platform file system for high-capacity removable media.

So if you have a removable disk that you want to use on Windows, Mac, and Linux, you need to format it to exFAT.

Apple has also developed and used various file systems over the years, including

Hierarchical File System (HFS), HFS+ and recently Apple File System (APFS).

Just like NTFS, APFS is a journaling file system and has been used since the introduction of OS X High Sierra in 2017.

But what about file systems in Linux distributions?

The Extended File System (ext) family of file systems was created for the Linux kernel – the core of the Linux operating system.

The first version of ext was released in 1991, but soon after it was replaced by the second extended file system (ext2) in 1993.

In the 2000s, the third extended file system (ext3) and fourth extended file system (ext4) were developed for Linux with journaling capability.

ext4 is now the default file system in many Linux distributions, including Debian and Ubuntu.

You can use the findmnt command on Linux to list your ext4 formatted partitions:

findmnt -lo source,target,fstype,used -t ext4

The output would be something like:

SOURCE DESTINATION FSTYPE USES /dev/vda1/ext4 3.6G

File system architecture

A file system installed on an operating system consists of three layers:

Physical file system

Virtual File System

Logical file system

These layers can be implemented as independent or tightly coupled abstractions.

When people talk about filesystems, they’re referring to one of these layers, or all three as one.

Although these layers differ depending on the operating system, the concept is the same.

The physical layer is the concrete implementation of a file system; It is responsible for storing and retrieving data and managing space on the storage device (or more precisely: partitions).

The physical file system interacts with storage hardware through device drivers.

The next layer is the Virtual File System or VFS.

The virtual file system provides a consistent view of different file systems mounted on the same operating system.

So does this mean that an operating system can use multiple file systems at the same time?

The answer is yes!

It is common for a removable storage device to have a different file system than that of a computer.

For example, on Windows (which uses NTFS as its primary file system), a flash drive might have been formatted to exFAT or FAT32.

However, the operating system should provide a uniform interface between computer programs (file explorer and other apps that work with files) and the different mounted file systems (like NTFS, APFS, ext4, FAT32, exFAT and UDF).

For example, when you open your file explorer program, you can copy and paste an image from an ext4 file system into your exFAT-formatted flash memory—without having to know that files are managed differently under the hood.

This convenient layer between the user (you) and the underlying file systems is provided by the VFS.

A VFS defines a contract that all physical file systems must implement in order to be supported by that operating system.

However, this compliance is not built into the core of the file system, which means that a file system’s source code does not include support for every operating system’s VFS.

Instead, it uses a file system driver to comply with each file system’s VFS rules. A driver is a program that allows software to communicate with other software or hardware.

Although VFS is responsible for providing a standard interface between programs and various file systems, computer programs do not interact directly with VFS.

Instead, they use a uniform API between programs and the VFS.

Can you guess what it is?

Yes, we are talking about the logical file system.

The logical file system is the user-side part of a file system that provides an API that allows user programs to perform various file operations such as OPEN , READ , and WRITE without having to deal with storage hardware.

On the other hand, VFS provides a bridge between the logical layer (with which programs interact) and a physical layer set of various file systems.

A high-level architecture of the file system layers

What does it mean to mount a file system?

On Unix-like systems, the VFS assigns a device ID (such as dev/disk1s1 ) to each partition or removable disk.

Then it creates a virtual directory tree and places the contents of each device as separate directories under that directory tree.

Assigning a directory to a storage device (under the root tree) is called mounting, and the assigned directory is called a mount point.

However, on a Unix-like operating system, all partitions and removable media appear as if they are directories under the root directory.

For example, on Linux, the mount points for a removable device (such as a memory card) are typically located in the /media directory.

Once a flash memory was attached to the system and thus automatically mounted to the default mount point (in this case /media), its contents would be available in the /media directory.

However, there are situations when you need to manually mount a file system.

On Linux it works like this:

mount /dev/disk1s1 /media/usb

In the above command, the first parameter is the device ID ( /dev/disk1s1 ) and the second parameter ( /media/usb ) is the mount point.

Please note that the mount point should already exist as a directory.

If it isn’t, it needs to be created first:

mkdir -p /media/usb mount /dev/disk1s1 /media/usb

If the mount point directory already contains files, those files will be hidden while the device is mounted.

metadata of files

File metadata is a data structure that contains data about a file, such as

file size

Timestamps such as creation date, last access date and modification date

The owner of the file

Mode of the file (who can do what with the file)

Which blocks on the partition are allocated to the file

and much more

However, metadata is not stored with the file content. Instead, it’s stored somewhere else on disk – but linked to the file.

In Unix-like systems, metadata is in the form of data structures called inodes.

Inodes are identified by a unique number called an inode number.

Inodes are associated with files in a table called inode tables.

Each file on the storage device has an inode that contains information about it, such as: B. the time it was created, modified, etc.

The inode also contains the address of the blocks allocated to the file; On the other hand, where exactly it is located on the storage device

In an ext4 inode, the address of the allocated blocks is stored as a set of data structures called extents (within the inode).

Each extent contains the address of the first data block allocated to the file and the number of contiguous blocks the file occupied.

Whenever you open a file in Linux, its name is first resolved to an inode number.

The file system uses the inode number to get the respective inode from the inode table.

Once the inode is retrieved, the file system starts assembling the file from the data blocks registered in the inode.

You can use the df command with the -i parameter on Linux to view the inodes (total, used, and free) in your partitions:

df-i

The output would look like this:

udev 4116100 378 4115722 1% /dev tmpfs 4118422 528 4117894 1% /run /dev/vda1 6451200 175101 6276099 3% /

As you can see, the /dev/vda1 partition has a total of 6,451,200 inodes, of which 3% have been used (175,101 inodes).

To view the inodes associated with files in a directory, you can use the ls command with the -il parameters.

ls-li

And the output would be:

1303834 -rw-r–r– 1 root www-data 2502 Jul 8, 2019 wp-links-opml.php 1303835 -rw-r–r– 1 root www-data 3306 Jul 8, 2019 wp-load .php 1303836 -rw-r–r– 1 root www-data 39551 July 8, 2019 wp-login.php 1303837 -rw-r–r– 1 root www-data 8403 July 8, 2019 wp-mail .php 1303838 – rw-r–r– 1 root www-data 18962 July 8, 2019 wp-settings.php

The first column is the inode number associated with each file.

The number of inodes on a partition is determined when you format a partition. That is, as long as you have free space and unused inodes, you can save files to your storage device.

A personal Linux OS is unlikely to run out of inodes. However, business services that handle large numbers of files (like mail servers) need to manage their inode quota intelligently.

However, on NTFS, the metadata is stored differently.

NTFS stores file information in a data structure called the Master File Table (MFT).

Every file has at least one entry in MFT that contains everything about it, including its location on the storage device – similar to the inodes table.

On most operating systems, you can get metadata through the graphical user interface.

For example, on Mac OS, if you right-click a file and select Get Info (Properties in Windows), a window appears with information about the file. This information is retrieved from the metadata of the respective file.

space management

Storage devices are divided into fixed-size blocks called sectors.

A sector is the minimum unit of storage on a storage device and ranges from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes (Advanced Format).

However, file systems use a higher-level concept as a unit of storage called blocks.

Blocks are an abstraction about physical sectors; Each block usually consists of several sectors.

Depending on the file size, the file system allocates one or more blocks to each file.

Speaking of space management, the file system knows every used and unused block on the partitions, so it can allocate space to new files or get the existing ones when requested.

The most basic unit of storage in ext4 formatted partitions is the block. However, the contiguous blocks are grouped into block groups for easier management.

The layout of a block group within an ext4 partition

Each block group has its own data structures and data blocks.

Here are the data structures that a block group can contain:

Super Block: A metadata repository that contains metadata about the entire file system, e.g. B. total number of blocks in the file system, total number of blocks in blockgroups, inodes and more. However, not all block groups contain the superblock. Eine bestimmte Anzahl von Blockgruppen speichert eine Kopie des Super als Backup.

ein Metadaten-Repository, das Metadaten über das gesamte Dateisystem enthält, z. B. die Gesamtzahl der Blöcke im Dateisystem, die Gesamtzahl der Blöcke in Blockgruppen, Inodes und mehr. Allerdings enthalten nicht alle Blockgruppen den Superblock. Eine bestimmte Anzahl von Blockgruppen speichert eine Kopie des Super als Backup. Gruppendeskriptoren: Gruppendeskriptoren enthalten auch Buchhaltungsinformationen für jede Blockgruppe

Gruppendeskriptoren enthalten auch Buchhaltungsinformationen für jede Blockgruppe Inode-Bitmap: Jede Blockgruppe hat ihre eigene Inode-Quote zum Speichern von Dateien. Eine Blockbitmap ist eine Datenstruktur, die verwendet wird, um verwendete und nicht verwendete Inodes innerhalb der Blockgruppe zu identifizieren. 1 bezeichnet verwendete und 0 bezeichnet unbenutzte Inode-Objekte.

Jede Blockgruppe hat ihre eigene Inode-Quote zum Speichern von Dateien. Eine Blockbitmap ist eine Datenstruktur, die verwendet wird, um verwendete und nicht verwendete Inodes innerhalb der Blockgruppe zu identifizieren. bezeichnet verwendete und bezeichnet unbenutzte Inode-Objekte. Block-Bitmap: eine Datenstruktur, die verwendet wird, um verwendete und nicht verwendete Datenblöcke innerhalb der Blockgruppe zu identifizieren. 1 bezeichnet verwendete und 0 ungenutzte Datenblöcke

eine Datenstruktur, die verwendet wird, um verwendete und nicht verwendete Datenblöcke innerhalb der Blockgruppe zu identifizieren. Bezeichnet verwendete und unbenutzte Datenblöcke. Inode-Tabelle: Eine Datenstruktur, die die Beziehung von Dateien und ihren Inodes definiert. Die Anzahl der in diesem Bereich gespeicherten Inodes hängt von der vom Dateisystem verwendeten Blockgröße ab.

eine Datenstruktur, die die Beziehung von Dateien und ihren Inodes definiert. Die Anzahl der in diesem Bereich gespeicherten Inodes hängt von der vom Dateisystem verwendeten Blockgröße ab. Datenblöcke: Dies ist die Zone innerhalb der Blockgruppe, in der Dateiinhalte gespeichert werden.

Das Ext4-Dateisystem geht sogar noch einen Schritt weiter (im Vergleich zu ext3) und organisiert Blockgruppen in einer größeren Gruppe namens Flex-Blockgruppen.

Die Datenstrukturen jeder Blockgruppe, einschließlich der Block-Bitmap, der Inode-Bitmap und der Inode-Tabelle, werden verkettet und in der ersten Blockgruppe innerhalb jeder flexiblen Blockgruppe gespeichert.

Wenn alle Datenstrukturen in einer Blockgruppe (der ersten) verkettet sind, werden mehr zusammenhängende Datenblöcke in anderen Blockgruppen innerhalb jeder flexiblen Blockgruppe freigegeben.

Diese Konzepte mögen verwirrend sein, aber Sie müssen sie nicht bis ins kleinste Detail beherrschen. Es soll nur die Tiefe von Dateisystemen darstellen.

Das Layout der ersten Blockgruppe sieht so aus:

Das Layout des ersten Blocks in einer ext4-Flex-Blockgruppe

Wenn eine Datei auf einen Datenträger geschrieben wird, wird sie in einen oder mehrere Blöcke innerhalb einer Blockgruppe geschrieben.

Das Verwalten von Dateien auf Blockgruppenebene verbessert die Leistung des Dateisystems erheblich, im Gegensatz zum Organisieren von Dateien als eine Einheit.

Größe vs. Größe auf der Festplatte

Ist Ihnen schon einmal aufgefallen, dass Ihr Datei-Explorer zwei verschiedene Größen für jede Datei anzeigt: Größe und Größe auf der Festplatte.

Größe und Größe auf der Festplatte

Warum unterscheiden sich Größe und Größe auf der Festplatte geringfügig? You can ask.

Hier ist eine Erklärung:

Wir wissen bereits, dass einer Datei je nach Dateigröße ein oder mehrere Blöcke zugeordnet werden.

Ein Block ist der minimale Speicherplatz, der einer Datei zugewiesen werden kann. Das bedeutet, dass der verbleibende Platz eines teilweise gefüllten Blocks nicht von einer anderen Datei verwendet werden kann. Das ist die Regel!

Da die Größe der Datei kein ganzzahliges Vielfaches von Blöcken ist, könnte der letzte Block teilweise verwendet werden und der verbleibende Platz würde ungenutzt bleiben – oder mit Nullen aufgefüllt werden.

“Größe” ist also im Grunde die tatsächliche Dateigröße, während “Größe auf der Festplatte” der Speicherplatz ist, den sie belegt hat, obwohl sie nicht alles verwendet.

Sie können den Befehl du unter Linux verwenden, um es selbst zu sehen.

du -b “irgendeine-datei.txt”

Die Ausgabe wäre in etwa so:

623 icon-link.svg

Und um die Größe auf der Festplatte zu überprüfen:

du -B 1 “icon-link.svg”

Was dazu führen wird:

4096 icon-link.svg

Basierend auf der Ausgabe beträgt der zugewiesene Block etwa 4 KB, während die tatsächliche Dateigröße 623 Byte beträgt. Das bedeutet, dass jede Blockgröße auf diesem Betriebssystem 4 KB beträgt.

Was ist Festplattenfragmentierung?

Im Laufe der Zeit werden neue Dateien auf die Festplatte geschrieben, vorhandene Dateien werden größer, verkleinert oder gelöscht.

Durch diese häufigen Wechsel des Speichermediums entstehen viele kleine Lücken (Leerstellen) zwischen Dateien. These gaps are due to the same reason file size and file size on disk are different. Some files won’t fill up the full block, and lots of space will be wasted. And over time there’ won’t be enough consequent blocks to store new files.

That’s when new files need to be stored as fragments.

File Fragmentation occurs when a file is stored as fragments on the storage device because the file system cannot find enough contiguous blocks to store the whole file in a row.

An example of a fragmented and non-fragmented file

Let’s make it more clear with an example.

Imagine you have a Word document named myfile.docx .

myfile.docx is initially stored in a few contiguous blocks on the disk; Let’s say this is how the blocks are named: LBA250 , LBA251 , and LBA252 .

Now, if you add more content to myfile.docx and save it, it will need to occupy more blocks on the storage medium.

Since myfile.docx is currently stored on LBA250 , LBA251 , and LBA252 , the new content should preferably sit within LBA253 and so forth – depending on how many more blocks are needed to accommodate the new changes.

Now, imagine LBA253 is already taken by another file (maybe it’s the first block of another file). In that case, the new content of myfile.docx has to be stored on different blocks somewhere else on the disks, for instance, LBA312 and LBA313 .

myfile.docx got fragmented 💔.

File fragmentation puts a burden on the file system because every time a fragmented file is requested by a user program, the file system needs to collect every piece of the file from various locations on a disk.

This overhead applies to saving the file back to the disk as well.

The fragmentation might also occur when a file is written to the disk for the first time, probably because the file is huge and not many continuous blocks are left on the partition.

Fragmentation is one of the reasons some operating systems get slow as the file system ages.

Should We Care About Fragmentation these days?

The short answer is: not anymore!

Modern file systems use smart algorithms to avoid (or early-detect) fragmentation as much as possible.

Ext4 also does some sort of preallocation, which involves reserving blocks for a file before they are actually needed – making sure the file won’t get fragmented if it gets bigger over time.

The number of the preallocated blocks is defined in the length field of the file’s extent of its inode object.

Additionally, ext4 uses an allocation technique called delayed allocation.

The idea is instead of writing to data blocks one at a time during a write, the allocation requests are accumulated in a buffer and are written to the disk at once.

Not having to call the file system’s block allocator on every write request helps the file system make better choices with distributing the available space. For instance, by placing large files apart from smaller files.

Imagine that a small file is located between two large files. Now, if the small file is deleted, it leaves a small space between the two files.

Spreading the files out in this manner leaves enough gaps between data blocks, which helps the filesystem manage (and avoid) fragmentation more easily.

Delayed allocation actively reduces fragmentation and increases performance.

directories

A Directory (Folder in Windows) is a special file used as a logical container to group files and directories within a file system.

On NTFS and Ext4, directories and files are treated the same way. That said, directories are just files that have their own inode (on Ext4) or MFT entry (on NTFS).

The inode or MFT entry of a directory contains information about that directory, as well as a collection of entries pointing to the files “under” that directory.

The files aren’t literally contained within the directory, but they are associated with the directory in a way that they appear as directory’s children at a higher level, such as in a file explorer program.

These entries are called directory entries. Directory entries contain file names mapped to their inode/MFT entry.

In addition to the directory entries, there are two more entries. The . entry, which points to the directory itself, and .. , which points to the parent directory of this directory.

On Linux, you can use the ls in a directory to see the directory entries with their associated inode numbers:

ls -lai

And the output would be something like this:

63756 drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Dec 1 17:24 . 2 drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 4096 Dec 1 17:06 .. 81132 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 18 06:25 backups 81020 drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Dec 2 07:01 cache 81146 drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 4096 Oct 16 21:43 crash 80913 drwxr-xr-x 46 root root 4096 Dec 1 22:14 lib …

Rules for naming files

Some file systems enforce limitations on filenames.

The limitation can be in the length of the filename or filename case sensitivity.

For instance, in NTFS (Windows) and APFS (Mac) file systems, MyFile and myfile refer to the same file, while on ext4 (Linux), they point to different files.

Why is that important? You may ask.

Imagine that you’re creating a web page on your Windows machine. The web page contains your company logo, which is a PNG file, like this:

If the actual file name is Logo.png (note the capital L), you can still see the image when you open your web page on your web browser (on your Windows machine).

However, once you deploy it to a Linux server and view it live, you’ll see a broken image.

Why?

Because in Linux (ext4 file system) logo.png and Logo.png point to two different files.

So keep that in mind when developing on Windows and deploying to a Linux server.

Rules for file size

One important aspect of file systems is the maximum file size they support.

An old file system like FAT32 (used by MS-DOS +7.1, Windows 9x family, and flash memories) can’t store files more than 4 GB, while its successor, NTFS allows file sizes to be up to 16 EB (1000 TB).

Like NTFS, exFAT allows a file size of 16 EB too. This makes exFAT an ideal option for storing massive data objects, such as video files.

Practically, there’s no limitation on the file size in the exFAT and NTFS file systems.

Linux’s ext4 and Apple’s APFS support files up to 16 TiB and 8 EiB respectively.

File manager programs

As you know, the logical layer of the file system provides an API to enable user applications to perform file operations, such as read , write , delete , and execute operations.

The file system’s API is a low-level mechanism, though, designed for computer programs, runtime environments, and shells – not designed for daily use.

That said, operating systems provide convenient file management utilities out of the box for your day-to-day file management.

For instance, File Explorer on Windows, Finder on Mac OS, and Nautilus on Ubuntu are examples of file manager programs.

These utilities use the logical file system’s API under the hood.

Apart from these GUI tools, operating systems expose the file system’s APIs via the command-line interfaces too, like Command Prompt on Windows, and Terminal on Mac and Linux.

These text-based interfaces help users do all sorts of file operations as text commands – Like how we did in the previous examples.

File access management

Not everyone should be able to remove or modify a file they don’t own or are not authorized to do so.

Modern file systems provide mechanisms to control users’ access and capabilities concerning files.

The data regarding user permissions and file ownership is stored in a data structure called Access-Control List (ACL) on Windows or Access-Control Entries (ACE) on Unix-like operating systems (Linux and Mac OS).

This feature is also available in the CLI (Command prompt or Terminal), where a user can change file ownerships or limit permissions of each file right from the command line interface.

For instance, a file owner (on Linux or Mac) can configure a file to be available to the public, like so:

chmod 777 myfile.txt

777 means everyone can do every operation (read, write, execute) on myfile.txt . Please note this is just an example, and you should not set a file’s permission to 777 .

Maintaining data integrity

Let’s suppose you’ve been working on your thesis for a month now. One day, you open the file, make some changes and save it.

Once you save the file, your word processor program sends a “write” request to the file system’s API (the logical file system).

The request is eventually passed down to the physical layer to store the file on several blocks.

But what if the system crashes while the older version of the file is being replaced with the new version?

In older file systems (like FAT32 or ext2) the data would be corrupted because it was partially written to the disk.

This is less likely to happen with modern file systems as they use a technique called journaling.

Journaling file systems record every operation that’s about to happen in the physical layer but hasn’t happened yet.

The main purpose is to keep track of the changes that haven’t yet been committed to the file system physically.

The journal is a special allocation on the disk where each writing attempt is first stored as a transaction.

Once the data is physically placed on the storage device, the change is committed to the filesystem.

In case of a system failure, the file system will detect the incomplete transaction and roll it back as if it never happened.

That said, the new content (that was being written) may still be lost, but the existing data would remain intact.

Modern file systems such as NTFS, APFS, and ext4 (even ext3) use journaling to avoid data corruption in case of system failure.

Database File Systems

Typical file systems organize files as directory trees.

To access a file, you traverse to the respective directory, and you’ll have it.

cd /music/country/highwayman

However, in a database file system, there’s no concept of paths and directories.

The database file system is a faceted system which groups files based on various attributes and dimensions.

For instance, MP3 files can be listed by artist, genre, release year, and album – at the same time!

A database file system is more like a high-level application to help you organize and access your files more easily and more efficiently. However, you won’t be able to access the raw files outside of this application.

A database file system cannot replace a typical file system, though. It’s just a high-level abstraction for easier file management on some systems.

The iTunes app on Mac OS is a good example of a database file system.

Wrap up

Wow! You made it to the end, which means you know a lot more about file systems now. But I’m sure this won’t be the end of your file system studies.

So again – can we describe what a file system is and how it works in one sentence?

We can’t! 😁

But let’s finish this post with the brief description I used at the beginning:

A file system defines how files are named, stored, and retrieved from the storage device.

Alright, I think it does it for this write-up. If you notice something is missing or that I’ve gotten wrong, please let me in the comments below. That would help me and others too!

By the way, if you like more comprehensive guides like this one, visit my website decodingweb. dev and follow me on Twitter because, besides freeCodeCamp, those are the channels I use to share my everyday findings.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy learning! 😃

Volumes have a limit on the number of files they can contain. You can increase this limit with the maxfiles command, but you cannot decrease it once you increase it.

The storage system automatically sets the maximum number of files for a newly created volume based on the amount of space on the volume. The storage system increases the maximum number of files when you add a hard disk to a volume, up to a volume size of 1 TB. For volumes larger than 1TB, you must use the maxfiles command to increase the maximum number of files if needed. The requirement to manually increase the limit prevents a storage system with terabytes of storage from creating an inode file that is larger than necessary, thereby wasting disk space.

You may want to increase the number of files allowed if you receive an error message telling you that you are out of inodes (data structures that contain information about files). This should only be necessary if you are using an unusually large number of small files or if your volume is extremely large.

I just want to know if it is safe to enable these settings and what are the functions of the above settings.

Please answer.

I was suggested by Samsung customer support to use this code and enable Sec.Log, Silent Log, enable Debug for High and provide IMS logs while enabling SecLog and Silent.

A phone can start misbehaving a few months (or even weeks) after you unbox it. You need to clean your Android phone regularly – and maybe sooner than expected. When you use mobile apps every day, software runs slower, storage space starts to fill up, and background processes make it difficult to switch from one application to another.

It all starts so well. You get a shiny new mobile phone that uses the latest version of Android. Everything is great. But after a short time you complain: “My apps are crashing! My battery life is terrible! And I don’t have enough space to keep my photos!”

This aging process is more annoying on older Android phones like the Galaxy S6, as they’re generally more limited compared to current models, but it does happen on newer ones eventually — often when you’re in an urgent situation.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to clean up your phone, what features to disable, what settings to tweak, and how to optimize mobile apps to run more efficiently.

How to clear storage space on an Android phone

Tip 1: Clear cache for individual apps

The biggest impact you can have on Android performance is to clean up your mobile apps. In just five minutes of use, these popular apps collected hundreds of lavish items:

Facebook: 79 MB temporary cache files, 561 items

Instagram: 38MB temporary cache files, 151 items

Candy Crush Saga: 20MB temporary cache files, 40 items

These temporary files are required while the apps are running. However, the applications tend to forget to clean up the temporary files when they are no longer needed. The data only takes up unnecessary space.

To clean up Android apps individually and free up memory:

Open your Android phone’s Settings app. Go to Settings for Apps (or Apps & notifications). Make sure All apps is selected. Tap the app you want to clean up. Select Clear Cache and Clear Data to remove the temporary data. In this example, we only saved about 1MB, but other apps may have tens or hundreds of megabytes of trash files that accumulate over time.

Go through the list of apps and clear the cache files for each one.

Admittedly, this can be tedious if you have a lot of Android apps. To save time, automate this process by letting Avast Cleanup for Android do it periodically. In addition, you should decide which apps you really need and safely install them on your phone to limit their impact on internal storage.

Tip 2: Remove unnecessary Android apps

The more apps you install on your Android phone, the slower and cluttered it gets. You won’t notice it with one app, but after installing and using dozens of them, you’ll realize how much bloat you’ve accumulated — even on the latest phones.

Our Android app reports show which apps are the most taxing on your phone. So go through the list of apps, identify which ones are no longer needed and remove them. Last but not least, this makes it easier to find the applications that are important to you!

To uninstall unnecessary apps:

Open the “Settings” app on your Android phone and go to the “Apps” item. Go through the list of apps and see which ones you haven’t used in a while. Tap an app you no longer need and select Uninstall. Confirm with OK. Finished!

That’s the practical approach. To make life easier, you can use software that automatically detects apps you haven’t used in ages and batch uninstalls them. Of course, we recommend the free Avast Cleanup for Android.

After opening the Avast Cleanup for Android app, tap the Apps button and wait for the analysis to finish. Scroll down until you see the Rarely used apps category. Check them out by tapping See All. Go through the list of apps, select the ones you no longer need and use the blue button below to get rid of them all – in one fell swoop!

Tip 3: Sort and empty your Downloads folder

You can store many files, photos, and documents in your Android device’s Downloads folder. Sometimes they are downloaded automatically. Most of us rarely look at the downloads folder, which means it takes up a lot of disk space unnecessarily. You might be shocked how many items and gigabytes of internal storage can be completely wasted.

To empty your Downloads folder:

Open the Apps folder on your phone. From here, look for My Files or any other file explorer app. Tap Downloads. Tap and hold the downloaded files, e.g. B. Photos or APK files that you no longer need. Wipe them off your phone with the Delete button.

Tip 4: Use a dedicated memory cleaner app

As mentioned above, you can perform this cleaning ritual manually or let a housekeeping app do it all for you. Enter Avast Cleanup for Android. This free tool combs your phone from top to bottom. It wipes cache files, wasted folders and unused apps from your phone’s built-in data storage. It also removes app hogs from your phone’s memory (RAM). This is how it works:

Download Avast Cleaner for Android and launch the app. First, click the View Results button. This gives you instant tips on how to erase data from your Android phone. This includes thumbnails, empty folders, cached files and other invisible caches. Click Finish Cleaning and you have completed the basic cleaning task.

But this is just the beginning! From there you can (and should) dig deeper. Go back to the main screen and go to the Photos app to find similar looking photos, wasteful screenshots, and bad photos. When you are done with all the cleaning steps, you should find a virus removal app and make sure there is no malware on your phone.

Tip 5: Delete unused downloaded data like podcasts and videos.

You’ve probably found a lot more space on your phone by deleting app caches, irrelevant Android apps, and boring photos. On my own phone, 2GB of storage was wasted by this exercise.

But there is still more to do. The big difference comes from deleting (or at least verifying) the files that you downloaded and forgot about on your device. Here are some examples from my own phone:

Spotify : As a Spotify Premium user, I use the offline option extensively. However, by downloading my “Songs” lists, I have 17 GB of music stored on my phone. I minimized the footprint by reducing the sound quality of the songs and selectively choosing playlists.

Podcasts: I subscribe to about 15 podcasts, but I don’t listen to all of them, even when new episodes come out. As a result, hours of podcasts sit on my phone, eating up hundreds of MBs of storage! So I periodically go through the list of podcasts and delete the ones I don’t want to listen to. Also, each podcast has a setting to automatically delete those you’ve listened to; Make sure the setting is enabled.

YouTube Premium : I subscribed to YouTube Premium to download videos for offline and background use. So I regularly go into the YouTube app’s library, look at Downloads and delete the videos I’ve already watched.

Offline Maps: When I travel, I download huge maps to my phone and then forget about them. This is how I found my Google Maps app has grown to 2GB. You can and should declutter old maps.

Last resort: Perform a factory reset on an Android device

All the above advice should help you get your Android device running smoothly again. In most cases, cleaning the Android system frees up available storage space, improves performance and generally makes using the phone or tablet a pleasure again.

But sometimes that’s just not enough. In these difficult cases, you should erase your phone (after you’ve backed up all your important data, of course!). To factory reset your phone:

Open the Settings app. Tap General Management and then tap Reset. Select the Factory data reset option. On the last screen, confirm by tapping on Reset device and Erase all.

Why is your Android phone internal storage filling up?

Phones are like your bedroom closet. garbage accumulates. If you don’t tidy the closet as often, it will take longer to find what you need. And just like that leisure suit that’s cluttering up your closet (really, what were you thinking?!), sometimes it’s best to get rid of Android apps you no longer need.

When you surf the web or use a mobile app, temporary data and junk files are created – and these often remain on your device. The system memory eventually fills up. Once your phone runs out of space, this accumulation of junk causes slowdowns and other annoying problems, such as: B. Apps crashing.

That’s why it’s important to tidy up your phone and free up storage space. In this article, we will show you different ways to clean up your Android device. Some of these steps are pretty handy; others include automated utilities like Avast Cleanup for Android, which detects apps you haven’t used in a while and removes useless temporary files.

How to physically clean your phone

When it comes to keeping your phone sparkling clean, you don’t just have to worry about digital dirt. Over time, screens become smeared with dirty fingerprints, germs collect on cases, and charging ports and speakers become clogged with dust and dirt. And all that debris can affect your phone’s performance.

But if you’re not careful, you can damage your phone’s internal electronics or scratch the screen while physically cleaning your phone to keep the ports clear and everything in good condition.

Here’s how to safely and effectively polish your phone:

Turn off your phone and unplug any headphones, charging cables, or other accessories. Take your phone out of its case or protective cover. Fill a small spray bottle with one part distilled water and one part 70% isopropyl alcohol and shake to mix thoroughly. Spray the solution lightly onto a lint-free microfiber cloth. Be careful never to spray your phone directly or to wet the cloth too much. Gently wipe the surfaces of your phone with the damp, lint-free cloth. Use a dry cotton swab to wipe dirt from the nooks and crannies around your camera lenses, buttons, and mounting ports. Then wipe those areas again with the microfiber cloth. Your phone should now look brand new, but don’t forget to let it dry for about 15 minutes before putting it back in the case.

Spring cleaning, all year round

These steps should be performed regularly, not once a year (except for the factory reset option). By going through this checklist over and over again, you can prevent your phone from becoming clogged and unstable.

If you want to automate these things and just be done with them, get Avast Cleanup for Android to help you identify apps you no longer need, remove junk files, identify and remove unused photos, and much more.

Is your Android phone showing “Not enough available storage space” error when you use it? If this problem occurs, do you know how to deal with it? Here, you can read this post from MiniTool to know how to deal with it effectively.

My phone says there isn’t enough space, but I have space

Now let’s start with a real example as follows:

The total storage space of my app is 10MB and after installation less than 20MB is needed. In Galaxy Note I, when I update my app, it says there is not enough storage available, with 214MB of free space in the device storage (internal). It even happens when trying to download a new app. packet overflow

This is definitely an error related to not enough available disk space. What do you think about it?

As is well known, the internal memory of an Android device is never as large as it appears. For a device with 32GB storage, a lot of storage space is occupied by the operating system, pre-installed apps, as well as the wasted storage space that depends on how the operating system formats the storage medium.

Therefore, when you try to install or update an app on your Android device, you might be told that there is not enough storage space available, even though the app requires less storage space than is actually available on your Android device. (Sometimes an alternate version of an error similar to “This device does not have enough disk space to download” appears when downloading an app.)

However, there is actually enough space available to update or install your desired app but not enough space to run the process.

This is also the answer to the question “Why does my phone say memory is full when it isn’t?”.

Is your Android phone also suffering from insufficient storage space error? If so, don’t worry! You’re not the only one and we also get a lot of feedback that Android storage is running low, but that’s not the case. Here we will guide you through 7 simple solutions to fix this problem quickly.

Insufficient memory android fix

Solution 1: Clear app cache to free up storage space on Android

In general, lack of RAM is probably the main cause of running out of storage space for Android users. Typically, every Android app uses three sets of memory for the app itself, the app’s data files, and the app’s cache.

If the cache is too big, it will take up a large part of the storage space, although the occupied space is reported to be the free space on the Android device. In this case, clearing your app cache is a useful way to fix Android insufficient disk space error.

How do I clear the app cache? Follow the steps:

First open the settings from the start screen and then go to the applications or the application manager. Then you can see all the downloaded apps are listed on your Android device and how much space they are taking up. Tap Menu or More to sort these apps by size and see which one takes up the most storage space. Tap each app to view the storage space used by the app, its data (Storage section), and cache (Cache section). Tap Clear Cache to empty the cache and free up storage space. Repeat the same process for each app.

Tip: Here you can also tap Clear data to remove all app files.

In addition, you can also clear all cache files for all your Android apps together. To do this, navigate to Settings > Storage > Device Storage. Then tap Cache data and Clear to clear all cached data from all your apps.

After completing the above operations, you will not complain to us “My phone says not enough storage space but I have space”.

Solution 2: Transfer Photos/Videos from Android to Computer

When you find that your Android device is running out of storage space, one of the best solutions is to move some large files including photos, videos, audios, etc. to your computer to free up Android storage space. To do this, you need a third-party data transfer tool.

Fortunately, this free Android data recovery software – MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android developed by MiniTool team is worth recommending. This free tool can be not only the Android data recovery software to recover deleted files, but also the data transfer tool to save the existing files on a computer.

Besides, it can be used in all Windows OS including Windows 10/8/7 and supports multiple Android phones and tablets, e.g. B. Samsung, Huawei, Sony, LG, Google, etc. Now it’s up to you to download this freeware for data transfer to fix the insufficient disk space issue.

Free download

Step 1 Open MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android Free on your computer.

Which module do you need to select from the main interface, restore from phone or restore from SD card? Both are fine. If your photos, videos or music files are stored in Android internal storage, please click on the first section.

Step 2: Connect the phone that is running out of Android storage space to the computer using a USB cable. Then the analysis process will be performed on your Android device.

Note: Do not launch any other Android phone management software when using this freeware.

Step 3: In order to successfully save your photos, videos or other data to computer, you need to enable USB debugging by following the instructions based on the relevant Android version.

And then you should allow USB debugging on the computer. We recommend checking the Always allow from this computer option to avoid authorization next time.

Tip: In order to scan the files on your Android device, you need to root your device. This help document – In order to scan the files on your Android device, you need to root your device. This help document – How to root your Android device will show you some details.

Step 4: Choose a scanning method.

Quick Scan can be used to quickly scan your Android device, but it only allows moving contacts, text messages, and call logs to a computer.

can be used to quickly scan your Android device, but it only allows moving contacts, short messages and call recordings to a computer. Deep Scan is designed to scan the entire device so more files can be transferred, but this way takes a lot of time.

Here you should select Deep Scan to scan photos, videos and audios and save them to your computer in case of running out of disk space.

Step 5: Then MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android will start scanning your device. Then you will see that all the file types found are marked in blue. Just select the type of file you want to extract, check all items and click Recover.

Tip:

1. To move photos from Android to computer, you can click Camera, Screenshot, App Image or Image file type respectively and then perform file migration.

2. Not only the deleted files but also the existing files can be displayed.

3. You can click View Folders button to view data according to folder classification.

MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android Free Edition has a limitation: it only allows saving 10 files of each type at a time. If the phone storage is full, we recommend using the advanced edition to transfer more files.

After getting the license, click Register in the scan result interface and register this freeware.

Step 6: Click Browse to specify a save path, or save your selected files directly to the default location on your computer by clicking Restore.

After completing all the above steps, enter the Android phone and delete all the files you have saved on the computer. Then the insufficient storage error can be fixed.

When there are many pictures or videos saved on SD card and there is not enough space on the external storage, you can also use the Recover from SD Card feature to save deleted and existing files on your computer.

Connect the Android SD card to your computer. Select the target card to scan. Select the images or videos to save to the specified path.

Or you can connect your SD card to a computer and move files on the SD card to it directly.

Click to tweet

Solution 3: Save pictures and videos to external SD card instead of internal memory

Photos and videos take up a lot of storage space on the Android device. Not only can you move them to a computer, but you can also fix Android running out of storage space problem by saving your pictures or videos to an SD card.

If you already have photos and videos stored on the phone’s internal storage, you should first remove them from the SD card. After that, change the default storage for the pictures and videos to the SD card.

To do this, go to Settings > Camera Settings. Then select Save Location to change it to SD Card or Memory Card if the default save path is Device.

Solution 4: Uninstall unwanted apps

Sometimes the Android storage space is running low but it isn’t issue is caused by the overwhelming amount of data stored in your phone’s internal storage. If you have many apps on your Android device and you use them at the same time, the cache memory on your phone may become blocked, resulting in Android running out of memory.

In this case, you can uninstall some unwanted or unused apps to free up storage space. This process is very simple.

To uninstall an app, go to Settings on your Android phone and visit the Apps section to get a list of all the apps that have been installed on your device. You can also sort them by size. Then select the app you don’t need and click Uninstall to remove it.

If many apps need to be deleted, repeat the above steps to free up space and fix insufficient disk space.

Solution 5: Move apps from internal storage to SD card

Some of you may not want to uninstall any app and prefer to look for not enough available space for Android fixes without root. Here a good option is to easily move some apps from internal storage to your SD card. This can expand your phone’s internal storage and solve the app can’t be installed, there is not enough storage space issue.

Go to the settings menu on your Android device. Tap Apps. You can still arrange all apps in order by tapping Sort by Size. Then select the app and tap Move to SD card. Repeat the process to remove the apps that are taking up a lot of storage space.

Tip: Note that not every app can be moved to your SD card.

Solution 6: Use a cleaning app to free up Android storage space

Sometimes some junk files take up a lot of Android storage space, resulting in insufficient storage space on the device. In this case, you can use a cleaner app for Android to clean some junk files and optimize your device.

The app can be MobileGo, CCleaner, etc. Just download one from Google Play Store to remove cache, junk or unwanted files.

Solution 7: Factory reset your device

If you have tried all the above solutions but you still get the “Not enough disk space available” error, you can perform a factory reset to fix the problem.

Go to settings. Tap System > Reset or Backup & reset. Tap Factory data reset and Reset phone or Reset tablet. If required, enter your PIN, pattern or password. Finally tap on Erase everything.

Note that this method can erase all data stored on your Android device. Therefore, you should backup your important data first. What should you do if you forgot to backup beforehand and lost many important files after factory reset?

MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android can still be your good assistant. As a professional Android data recovery software, it can help to effectively recover deleted files including contacts, messages, videos, photos, music files and more on your computer.

Free download

Verdict

Does the Android phone or tablet encounter the issue of not enough available storage space while installing an app? Now it’s time to try the above seven simple ways to fix Android running out of storage space and optimize performance.

Having troubles using MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android to move files or recover data? Or do you have any suggestions to fix the insufficient disk space error? Please let us know by sending an email to [email protected] or by leaving your idea below.

If you break down the category, you can delete individual files or data. For example, under Audio, long-press one or more files and tap Delete. Or under Apps, tap the app’s name, then tap Uninstall to remove it from your phone. If you want to keep the app but reset it to a brand new state, you can tap Storage > Clear Data.

Some Android phones have a “Free up space” button at the top of the main storage screen. Tap it to see a list of files, including older files that you may not need.

On an iPhone, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage

This will bring up a small color-coded bar graph showing how much space you’re currently using and what’s taking up that space.

Below the bar graph, you’ll see suggestions for freeing up space, such as optimizing photos (more on that later) or removing iMessages with large attachments.

And below that is a more detailed list that identifies all the apps and data on your phone and how much storage space they’re taking up. Of course, photos and videos are common culprits, but you might be surprised to learn how many gigabytes are consumed by rarely used apps. With one tap, you can delete or “download” any unwanted attacker, freeing up the storage space used by the app but leaving the user data and settings on the phone in case you decide to reinstall them at a later date.

Has it ever happened that you just couldn’t delete a file from your Android phone despite many attempts? If yes, you are not the only one. There are many users who have dealt with the same problem. In this blog, we will first look at some of the probable reasons that could be causing this problem and then take a look at the possible ways you can go about dealing with the problem.

Why can’t I delete one or more files from Android?

There can be a few reasons why you are unable to delete files on your Android device or why you are unable to delete a file from your Android phone internal storage –

They harbor malware on your Android device

The file is an important “system file” that should not be deleted

The file is read-only/read-only

Things To Do When You Just Can’t Delete Files On Android

If you are unable to delete some documents on Android, follow these methods to fix the problem.

1. Check for malware

The first thing you should do when you are unable to delete a file from your Android phone is to scan your Android device for malware. There is a chance that you are harboring a potentially malicious file on your phone that is preventing your operating system from deleting it. And you should remove this file immediately before it destroys the other files on your Android phone.

Smart Phone Cleaner is a convenient way to get rid of such files. It is a powerful Android cleaning and optimization application that goes beyond the name and offers many security tools to optimize your device while protecting it from potential infections. It has a robust anti-malware engine that keeps an eye on your smartphone and protects it from malware and other vulnerabilities, including those that make it difficult for you to delete certain files.

Its advanced algorithms and constantly updated database automatically detect and suppress malicious files in the bud before they can cause further destruction.

Also Read: Other Best Anti-Malware That Can Help You Fight Malware

What does Smart Phone Cleaner’s anti-malware module offer?

Malware is automatically detected from the start.

Prevents you from installing applications from unknown sources.

Remove infections with a single click.

Scan your device for a privacy check.

Get detailed information about which apps read your personal data, track your location, access safe settings, calendar, etc.

Install Smart Phone Cleaner and keep your smartphone clean, optimized and protected!

2. Be careful with important system files

If the undeletable file isn’t malware, it’s probably a system file. Sometimes some files are vital for the functionality of your Android phone and hence should not be deleted. So in case you are unable to delete a file on Android, it might be an important file that contains app data or it could be an important system file.

3. Use your computer or laptop

Sometimes there are certain files that you want to delete from your Android phone internal storage but no matter how hard you try, for some reason you just can’t delete files from your Android phone internal storage or the file just keeps coming back again Even after multiple deletions.

And then you may need to take some advanced measures and use your computer or laptop to delete such files. That’s how it is done –

1. Connect the phone to your laptop or computer

2. Open File Explorer and click on your device

3. Navigate to the folder where you saved your file

4. Select the file, then press Shift and Delete

Also Read: Best Tool to Manage and Improve Android Performance and Optimization

4. Reboot your phone

Something as simple as restarting your Android can help you resolve the issue. That’s because sometimes such problems persist due to the accumulation of app cache and temporary files. A quick reboot would shrug these off and your phone may be able to fix the problem. Additionally, you can try to close all apps from recent apps.

Now check if you can delete the file you want.

5. Remove the write protection from your SD card

If you are unable to delete the file from the SD card of your Android device because it is read-only or a write-protected SD card, you can remove the write protection using Command Prompt in Windows 10 –

1. Insert the write-protected SD card into the computer

2. Once the SD card is mounted, type cmd in the Windows search bar

3. Choose Run as administrator

4. When Command Prompt window opens, type diskpart

5. Enter list volume. You can now see the list of all connected drives including your SD card drive. Make a note of it

6. Next, type select volume followed by the drive letter of your SD card

7. Now to remove the write protection on your SD card, type Attribute disk clear readonly

Also Read: How to Move Apps to SD Card on Android

6. Factory reset your phone

If none of the above steps seem to work and you just can’t get rid of the file on Android, it might be time to clean up your entire Android device. A factory reset would put your Android device in the same position it was in when you first got it out of the box. As a piece of wisdom, we advise you to create a full backup of your Android device so that in case of an emergency you can retrieve all the important data that you would otherwise have deleted from your Android device.

1. Go to Settings

2. Tap General Management

3. Tap Reset

4. Tap Factory data reset

5. Tap Reset

Note: The steps may differ depending on the Android phone model. The device used for this blog is a Samsung device.

Conclusion

There are certain files that we delete so that we can say goodbye to them forever, but if you are unable to delete such files, we sincerely hope that the above methods will come to your rescue. And if so, give us a thumbs up and share it with your friends. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. And if you have any questions, suggestions or feedback, feel free to leave them in the comments section below!

So, a new Android phone or tablet has just caught your attention and you want to update to the latest one as soon as possible. But what do you do with your old device? There are a number of options. You may want to give it away, trade it in with your carrier, put it up for sale, or recycle it.

Whatever decision you make, it is important that all of your personal information is deleted before you dispose of it. You don’t want to accidentally share your personal information with someone else. Leaving personal information on your old device can expose you to security and privacy risks.

So how do you properly erase your data from your old Android device without risk of leaving data residue? Is it enough to simply delete the files or do a factory reset?

Simply deleting files and doing a factory reset is not enough

Many people perform a factory reset to erase everything from their Android device before disposing of it or reselling it. The problem, however, is that a factory reset doesn’t really erase everything. According to a recent study by the University of Hertfordshire in collaboration with Comparitech, it was found that it is still possible to recover photos, emails, texts and other documents from a reset Android device.

Contrary to popular belief, deleting a file from your phone storage, SD card or computer hard drive does not actually remove the file. Permanent data erasure goes beyond simple file erasure commands that only remove direct references to the data disk sectors, and allows for data recovery using popular software tools.

The operating system (Android, Windows, etc.) uses a concept called indexing to keep track of where files are stored on a device. Every file on your device memory or storage has a pointer that tells the operating system where the file’s data begins and ends. It’s very similar to the index page in textbooks. When you delete a file, the operating system removes the pointer to that file (similar to deleting page numbers from the table of contents in a textbook) and marks the sectors containing the file’s data as available.

From the file system perspective, the file no longer exists on your storage device and the sectors containing its data are considered free space. However, until the operating system writes new data over the sectors containing the file’s contents, the files are still recoverable. A file recovery program can scan the device for these deleted files and recover them.

So if you are considering throwing away your old Android device, make sure you erase your personal data properly. In this article, we will show you how to securely erase your personal information from your old Android device before selling or recycling it to ensure it does not contain any personal information remnants. Below are five important steps you need to take to securely erase your data and combat data remanence. We guide you through each step in detail.

Here’s how to completely erase your Android phone before selling it:

Back up your data. Encrypt your data. Overwrite them with junk data. Remove your accounts, SIM card and memory card

Back up your data

The importance of backing up everything on your phone before deleting it cannot be overstated. Ideally, when backup to Google Drive is enabled, device settings, apps and app data, SMS, call history, and contacts are automatically backed up and synced to Google Drive. Otherwise, you must back them up manually.

To back up your data on any Android device:

You don’t have to worry too much about backing up your email. You can easily recreate it on your new device. Most email setups keep copies of downloaded emails on the server. If you are unsure, simply log into your email on another device to confirm the backups on the server.

When it comes to apps, Google has a record of every Android app you’ve purchased. As long as you switch to another Android device, you can download them again for free on your new phone. Better still, Google can also help you sync all your apps to your account. If you haven’t enabled it yet, you can enable it by going to Settings >> Accounts >> Automatically sync data. After that, go to Settings >> System >> Backup >> Enable backup to Google Drive. Some apps may have their own specific cloud backup storage. Others like WhatsApp rely on Google Drive if enabled. This will ensure all your data is ready to unpack when your new phone arrives.

One of the most important things to back up is your contacts. Luckily, Google makes backing up really easy. By backing everything up in Google Contacts, your contacts will follow you everywhere and sync with every new Android device. If you don’t already use Google Contacts, you can set it up by going to Settings >> Accounts >> Google Account >> Account Sync >> Turn on Contacts. See figure 1.0 below.

Another important piece of data that you want to backup is your photos, videos and music. There are several ways to do this, but the fastest and most effective way is to connect your phone to your PC or Mac using the USB cable that came with your phone. Mac users may need to install a small app called Android File Transfer for this to work. Once connected, you will find all your photos and videos in a folder called DCIM and your music files in a folder called Music. Now you can just copy these folders to your computer.

What about all your text messages, call logs, system settings, calendar events, playlists, browser bookmarks, etc.? To back them up, you can consider a third-party backup tool like Backup Your Mobile or My Backup Pro, which can back up your data to the cloud or your memory card and sync it back to your new device.

Encrypt your data

Encryption renders your personal information on your device in an unreadable or encrypted format; This means that even if someone tries to recover your data, they will not be able to access it. This step is necessary to ensure that if an experienced hacker miraculously manages to get your deleted data or some residue left after a full reset, he can’t make sense of it. Anyone trying to access the encrypted data will need a special key (PIN, password or lock screen pattern) to decrypt it, which of course they don’t have.

Most Android users rarely encrypt their phone data, probably out of ignorance or fear of slowing down their performance. According to one estimate, only “10 percent of the world’s 1.4 billion Android phones were encrypted, compared to 95 percent of all iPhones.” But these days, newer Android devices seem to come with encryption enabled by default. If your device is relatively new (Android 6.0+), it should almost certainly be encrypted by default. But if you’re getting rid of an older Android device, that might not be the case.

If your phone doesn’t have encryption enabled by default, you can manually encrypt it with just a few taps:

For Android devices running Android 5.0, navigate to Settings >> Security >> Encryption >> Encrypt phone. For Android 4.4 KitKat or lower, navigate to Settings > Security > Screen lock > Encrypt phone. Depending on the case, tap on “Encrypt phone” or “Encrypt tablet”. Please note that you will be prompted to plug in your phone for charging while the encryption process is in progress just to make sure it doesn’t turn off and cause errors. You will now be prompted to set a PIN, password or lock screen required to access your encrypted files.

Overwrite with junk data

If you want to be absolutely sure that nobody can access your personal data, you can overwrite your encrypted data with junk data, making it impossible for anyone, no matter how highly skilled, to recover your old data. This is like trying to overdo the pudding, but it gives you complete peace of mind that your personal information is irretrievable.

There are two ways you can do this. You can load your device with large files like video clips until the memory is full and then delete those files; or even better a special app from the Play Store like iShredder or Shreddit. These apps use shredding algorithm techniques to permanently digitally shred data. Once done, you can move on to the last step which is factory reset.

Remove your accounts, SIM and memory card

As part of the final preparation process, you want to make sure that you remove any accounts configured on your device before performing a factory reset. Factory data reset will not remove your accounts from this device. Depending on the exact model of Android phone or tablet, the steps to remove your Google account may vary slightly. For most phones, go to Settings >> Accounts >> Gmail Account >> Remove Account as shown in Figure 2.0 below. You may also want to go through all the apps and services you’re signed into and sign out. Remove any other email accounts set up on your device.

The next step is to remove your SIM and memory card so that they are not deleted or accidentally given to the next person. You can find the memory card either on the side of the phone or in the battery compartment. Make sure the phone is turned off, then remove the memory card.

Perform factory reset

Finally, you can perform a factory reset. When you factory reset your Android device, all data on your device will be erased and your phone will be restored to its original factory state, as it came from the factory.

First, let’s start by removing the Factory Reset Protection (FRP). Google introduced FRP in Android 5.0 Lollipop as an extra layer of security to prevent someone from resetting and selling your device if it’s lost or stolen. If you factory reset a phone with FRP enabled and try to set it up as a new device, you will need to provide the credentials for the last Google account configured on the device. If you don’t provide these credentials, the device will remain locked and you won’t be able to access it. Of course, that’s not okay, especially if you’re trying to sell it or give it away.

Disabling FRP is easy. Before you begin, check if you have a Find My Phone app enabled on your phone and disable it manually. On most phones, FRP is automatically removed when you factory reset your phone through Settings. This will automatically remove all associated accounts, freeing the phone from FRP.

Once the FRP has been removed, you can now proceed with the factory reset. The easiest way to factory reset your device is through the settings menu. The location of the factory reset option may vary slightly depending on the manufacturer. For most phones, you can factory reset your phone from the Settings app. Go to Settings >> General Management >> Reset >> Factory data reset as shown in Figure 3.0 below. You can check your manufacturer’s support site for device-specific instructions. Otherwise, you can try factory resetting your phone using the power and volume buttons.

You can confirm that FRP is disabled by trying to log back into the device after the factory reset. If it asks for the previous username and password, it means FRP is still enabled. If not, you’re good to go. You can now turn it off and repackage it for the new owner.

Erasing your Android phone: FAQs

Can I still access my data after resetting my device? The data on most Android phones is encrypted, which means it cannot be accessed after a factory reset. Therefore, if you sell your Android phone, you don’t have to worry about someone else accessing this information. While data backed up to the cloud is still accessible, you must sign in to an account (e.g. sign in to Google to access Google Drive documents). So as long as only you have the passwords, this backed up data is safe and inaccessible to others.

See also:

A Maximum system limits

A.1 System Boundaries

This appendix lists the system boundaries for the major components of this release. Refer to the DIGITAL UNIX Software Product Description (SPD) and the DIGITAL Systems & Options Catalog for hardware information specific to your individual processor.

You may be able to increase some of the system limits by changing kernel attribute values. Use the sysconfig command to view the current attribute values ​​and the maximum and minimum values. For information about changing attributes, see the System Administration Manual and the System Configuration and Tuning Manual, which also contain lists of adjustable attributes.

The following sections describe the system limits.

A.1.1 Installation Requirements

A standard installation of the DIGITAL UNIX operating system requires at least 525 MB of hard disk space (e.g. an RZ25 hard disk). This limit will change in a future release (see Section 8.27 for more information). The disk space required for a custom installation depends on the optional subsets you are installing. See Appendix B for subset size information.

A.1.2 Storage Limits

The storage limits are as follows:

Physical Memory Requirements The minimum amount of physical memory that DIGITAL UNIX requires is 24 MB, or 32 MB if you are using the Advanced File System (AdvFS). However, depending on your configuration and workload, you may need at least 64 MB for optimal performance. The system platform limits the maximum amount of physical memory. See the DIGITAL Systems & Options Catalog for more information on platform storage support.

Virtual Address Space Limit The default size of virtual address space available for each process is 1 GB. However, in many cases, the available swap space can be exhausted before this limit is reached. You can increase the available virtual address space to a maximum of 4 TB by changing the value of the vm-maxvas attribute in the vm subsystem. For more information on setting this attribute, see the System Configuration and Tuning Guide.

Page Size The physical page size is 8 KB and cannot be changed. The page size is hardware dependent and is set by the console at boot time.

A.1.3 Process Boundaries

The process boundaries for the system and for users are as follows:

Per System The maxusers attribute in the proc subsystem specifies the number of concurrent users that a system can support without taxing system resources. System algorithms use the maxusers attribute to size various system data structures and determine the space allocated to system tables, e.g. B. the system process table, which is used to determine how many active processes can be running at the same time. The default value assigned to the maxusers attribute depends on the size of your system. The default is 32 on systems with at least 32 MB of physical memory. The minimum is 8 and the maximum is 4096. The maximum number of tasks that can run concurrently on a system is determined by the value of the task-max attribute in the proc subsystem. The default value is 8213. The minimum value is 85 and the maximum value is 32768. The maximum number of kernel threads that can run concurrently on a system is determined by the value of the thread-max attribute in the proc subsystem. The default value is 16424. The minimum value is 160 and the maximum value is 262136.

Per User The maximum number of processes a user can create is determined by the value of the max-proc-per-user attribute in the proc subsystem. The default value is 64. The minimum value is 0 and the maximum value is 32767. The maximum number of threads a user can create is determined by the value of the max-threads-per-user attribute in the proc subsystem. The default value is 256. The minimum value is 0 and the maximum value is 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (2^64 – 1).

A.1.4 Device Addressing Limits

The limits for device addressing are as follows:

Device Access There are two types of disk device access: raw (characters) and buffered (block). For raw or character access, the uio.uio_offset structure field describes the byte offset within the disk partition. In this release, uio_offset is an unsigned 64-bit value that allows an offset of up to 2^64, or 18 exabytes. This value is converted to a physical block/sector number, which is the start position of data transfer. The physical block/sector number is delimited by the structure field buf.b_blkno. For buffered or block access, the buf.b_blkno structure field describes the block/sector offset within the disk partition and is a 32-bit signed value. Since this version supports a fixed block/sector size of 512 bytes as defined by DEV_BSIZE, the offset is limited to 1 TB.

Major-Minor Numbers ( dev_t ) Devices are identified by a major-minor number pair, where the major number identifies the device driver and the minor number identifies the device. In this release, this pairing is represented by a 32-bit value described by type dev_t. The main number part of dev_t consists of bits 20 through 31 (12 bits total). Because each device driver requires 12 bits for its major number, you can only configure 4096 device drivers in the system. The minor portion of dev_t consists of bits 0 through 19 (20 bits total). The device driver is responsible for interpreting these bits. A device driver that uses all 20 bits for device addressing can address up to 1048576 devices for each major number. For device drivers that support disk devices, some of the bits in the subdevice number represent the partition number. This release requires disk drivers to reserve the lower 6 bits for device attributes and partition numbers, and only supports eight partitions.

) SCSI/CAM Addressing Common Access Method (CAM) is an ANSI-proposed standard for a common software interface to the Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI). There are no limitations or restrictions within CAM for disk block addressing as the address is an incoming value. For SCSI-2, the Command Descriptor Block (CDB) defines the block number of the starting disk for the transfer. In this version, the 10-byte CDB reserves 4 bytes for the disk block address. This is an unsigned 32-bit value that allows 2^32 – 1 or 4 giga-sectors to be addressed. With a block/sector size of 512 bytes, this value corresponds to 2 TB. In this release, the SCSI/CAM driver can address a maximum of 64 buses, with up to 7 device targets for each bus and a maximum of eight logical unit numbers (LUNs) for each device target. According to these limitations, SCSI/CAM can address a maximum of 3584 devices.

Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) For complete information see: DIGITAL Systems & Options Catalog Product Description Literature Websites: http://www.digital.com/products.html

http://www.storage.digital.com

Disklabel Command The disklabel command specifies the partitions of a hard disk and their starting block/sector number. The starting block/sector number of a partition is defined by the partition.p_offset structure field, which is an unsigned 32-bit value supporting up to 2 TB of addressing, using a block/sector size of 512 bytes.

A.1.5 Device Restrictions

DIGITAL UNIX supports a maximum of seven devices per SCSI bus (eg, one host bus adapter and seven disks). The maximum number of SCSI buses supported by a system depends on the platform, but the DIGITAL UNIX operating system supports a maximum of 64 SCSI buses.

For all other device restrictions, see the DIGITAL Systems & Options Catalog.

A.1.6 Logical Storage Manager Limits

In this release, the Logical Storage Manager (LSM) supports a maximum of 768 disk groups and 256 drives, either in a disk group or in the entire system.

The LSM term volume refers to a virtual disk that represents an addressable range of disk blocks. File system data or raw I/O can be directed to a volume. This release supports a maximum of 1 TB of disk space in a disk group or system and a maximum volume size of 1 TB. The maximum number of LSM volumes supported is 4093 for all disk groups in a system, including 4091 non-system volumes and 2 system volumes (root or swap).

The LSM term plex refers to a physical disk, or set of disks, that contains a complete copy of a volume’s data. A mirrored volume consists of at least two plexes. In this release, the maximum number of plexes supported per volume is 8, and the maximum number of plexes supported per system is 4093 (or 4091 if root and swap volumes are not used).

The LSM term “subdisk” refers to a contiguous portion of a physical disk that can be stripped or concatenated with other subdisks to form a plex. A maximum of 4096 subdisks can be allocated to a Plex, and DIGITAL supports 4096 subdisks in each diskgroup or on a system.

LSM object names (e.g. volumes, plexes, subdisks and disk groups), volume attribute names (e.g. user and group) and dxlsm view names are limited to 14 characters.

A.1.7 File System Boundaries

The file system boundaries are as follows:

Advanced File System The term Advanced File System (AdvFS) refers to a single logical device, e.g. B. a hard disk, a hard disk partition or a logical volume. A file domain is a named set of one or more volumes. A fileset is a named and mountable logical file structure created in a domain. An active fileset is a currently mounted fileset. AdvFS supports a maximum file group and file size of 16 TB minus 512 KB, a maximum of 100 active file domains for each system, and a maximum of 256 volumes for each domain. However, since the failure of a single disk in a multi-volume file domain can render the entire domain inaccessible, DIGITAL recommends that you use a maximum of eight volumes in a file domain. Although DIGITAL UNIX supports an unlimited number of filesets per system, only 512 filesets can be mounted at a time. The maximum number of files in a fileset is 2^31 and is limited by the tag used to uniquely identify a file in a fileset. Due to a sequence number limit, a tag can only be used 4096 times; Therefore, the actual limit for files in a fileset decreases over time. Although AdvFS can support a page size greater than 13 bits, the maximum size of an AdvFS file and file set is 16 TB – 512 KB (2^32 * 2^31) with a 13 bit page size and a 31 bit Page number. AdvFS supports a maximum of 512 mounted file sets. However, each active file domain has a hidden mounted fileset that must be counted when determining the total number of mounted filesets. For example, if you have an active file domain with two mounted filesets, the file domain actually has three mounted filesets.

UNIX File System In this release, the UNIX File System (UFS) file size is limited by the amount of memory that can be addressed by the kernel buf structure. The buf.b_blkno structure field, defined as daddr_t , is a signed 32-bit value and specifies the block/sector offset within a disk partition. The DEV_BSIZE , block or sector size, is 512 bytes. Theoretically, a UFS file system could be 1 TB (2^31 * 2^9); However, DIGITAL UNIX only supports 128GB. The maximum size of an LSM logical volume also limits a UFS file system and file size. DIGITAL UNIX supports up to 2,147,483,647 UNIX File System (UFS) and Memory File System (MFS) mounts. The max-ufs-mounts attribute controls the maximum number of UFS and MFS mounts. The default value is 1000.

CD-ROM File System The size of CD-ROM file system (CDFS) files and file systems is limited by the CD-ROM media on which they are stored. Currently, the CD-ROM media supports about 600MB. However, DIGITAL UNIX will be able to support larger CD-ROMs as they become available. This version supports a maximum of 512 CDFS mounts.

Sparse files DIGITAL UNIX supports sparse files on AdvFS and UFS; Therefore, the size of a file can exceed the size of the file system in which it resides. The maximum sizes for sparse files are as follows: AdvFS – 2^44 – 512K UFS – 2^44 – 8

Network File System In this version, the theoretical maximum sizes of files that can be accessed via Network File System (NFS) version 2 and version 3 are as follows: NFS version 2 – (2 GB – 1 byte) NFS version 3 – 18 However, Exabyte ( 2^64 – 1) DIGITAL UNIX supports the following maximum file sizes: NFS version 2 – 2 GB NFS version 3 – 512 GB Also, an NFS file system is always limited by the size of the local file system being exported. A version 2 or version 3 NFS client can mount a maximum of 2048 files or directories.

Memory Mapped File Limit The maximum supported size of a file that can be mapped to memory without segmenting the file depends on the limits of the virtual address space, as documented in the section on memory limits.

Open File Limit The open-max-soft and open-max-hard attributes control the maximum number of open file descriptors for all processes. The default values ​​are 4096. When the open max soft limit is reached, a warning message is issued and when the open max hard limit is reached, the process is stopped. The maximum number of open files per process is 65,536. If you increase the maximum number of open files per process, be sure to adjust the value of the max-vnodes attribute. See Appendix E for information on increasing the open file descriptor limit. In addition, the maximum number of open files per process can be set between 64 and 4096 using the setrlimit function, or up to 65,536 by following the steps documented in Appendix E. File descriptor entries in each process’s file table are allocated dynamically after the initial 64 entries in the utask structure have been used.

File Locking Restrictions The DIGITAL UNIX file record locking service allows applications to lock any number of bytes in a file in the range 0 through 2^63 – 1 inclusive. File locking is supported by UFS, AdvFS, and both NFS version 2 and version 3. Because the NFS version 2 protocol suite only allows ranges to be specified with 32-bit numbers, it supports a file lock range from 0 to 2^31 – 1, inclusive.

Pathname Limits AdvFS, UFS, CDFS, and NFS support a maximum component pathname of 255 bytes and a maximum file pathname of 1023 bytes.

A.1.8 Network Boundaries

The network boundaries are as follows:

Pseudoterminals ( ptys ) The maximum number of supported ptys is 8192.

) LAT connections The maximum number of incoming LAT connections is 4800. The maximum number of outgoing LAT connections is 4000.

IP Alias ​​Addresses DIGITAL UNIX allows the use of up to 5,000 IP alias addresses before system performance degrades.

Packet Filter Limits The packet filter pseudo driver can support up to 255 filters open at the same time (each filter is typically associated with an instance of an application program). The packet filter can support a maximum of 255 devices. Use the pfconfig command to configure packet filters.

Network transfer rates For information on network transfer rates, see the Technical Overview.

A.1.9 Backup Utilities Limitations

The limitations for the backup utilities are as follows:

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