Galaxy A3 storage doesn’t make sense, please help!

[LimeGreenCrocs]

Hi! So my phone's had basically no storage for the last year or so, but over the last few months it's been so bad I've had to clear the cache every time I want to open a Samsung app. I've moved everything possible onto an SD card, but still the 16 GB internal storage has been mysteriously filled up by 15.9 GB of stuff. Today I found the breakdown of what's supposedly taking up all the space, and I'm really confused. It doesn't make sense!

• The numbers on the device maintenance says I have 3.1 GB of apps (which seems about right) on my internal storage, but on storage settings it says I have 8.6 GB
• Storage settings claims I have 1.4 GB in the secure folder, even though I have nothing in there, and when I click to see what's in the secure folder it says I have 14.6GB of files and 1.3 GB of other apps???
• Storage settings says I have 417 MB of images when I only have 66 MB
• etc etc
• And the numbers on storage settings doesn't even add up to the 15.9 GB of space all of this mystery stuff is supposedly taking up, it's more like 17 GB

If someone has any idea what's going on and what I can do about it, please help!

Thank you so much!

[BandOfBrothers]

It can certainly be a conundrum on how our phone's storage fills up sometimes not making full sense.

If this was my phone @LimeGreenCrocs I would consider in order....

Turn the phone Off and then from a set series of button presses go into the phone's system files and clear the system cache. No info is lost this way.

If this does not help then as a very last resort back up and remove any relevant Sd card and factory reset.

Just as a side note to anyone reaching this thread my recommendation is to choose a phone with as much storage space as you can afford as this section can soon fill up with what a phone collates over time.

And take into account that a good chunk of the storage space is taken up with the Android Os with some of it being gated off for future updates too.

🌈 Stay Safe & Stay Alert.  🌈 

[Je655]

It looks like your apps have alot of data or cache file in them go to Setting>apps and sort them by size. You may need to manually clear the cache for each app or clear the data if you dont use it often. If you have apps you dont use uninstall or disable them (if you disable an app make sure to clear its data also)

Hope this helps

[FalkonWN]

I do have similar problem, however when using DiskUsage to find perpetrator, I found out, that internal memory mysteriously shrunk from 16 GB to 10 GB...

Now, that I'll try to find those missing 6 GB, but maybe there is someone who may have some idea, where I should look...

 

[milimu]

Hi, i have the same issue (only 10GiB) and should be 16. Have you found out the issue?

[myaddis]

Hey All,

Try navigating to the internal (phone) DCIM folder, and there may be a hidden folder called .thumbnails

Unfortunately, I cant get to this on my pc, even when showing hidden files, but found on my Samsung Galaxy A3 (2016) that it has 9k+ files inside.

Whist this folder is safe to delete (reading other forums) I'm trying to find a way to save whats inside without losing the images.

I hope this helps you