"Storage Space Running Out" even though plenty of storage remains?

Question

I've got a Samsung Galaxy i9000 equiv(T959) that has recently been showing "Storage Space Running Out". I have been running Cyanogen 10.1 for a couple of years without any problems, until now. But I have 400M free on my system partition and 3G on my SD partition.

From other posts I have read, options include:

• deleting all logs in /data/log
• *#9900# and selecting delete dumpstack
• using adb shell to delete everything in /data/log
• moving apps to the SD partition

However my /data/log foler is empty! (checked with ES file explorer and even Terminal Emulator). And I have 400M free on the system drive!

With 400M free on my system drive (confirmed both with DataUsage and Storage Use), I do not understand where these messages are coming from! I've tried wiping davlik cache, but that has not made a difference either.

Everything I have read points to log files being the culprit, but nothing I have run seems to detect any log file taking up room.

In the meantime, I can't seem to use the gmail client/app anymore (unable to sync), so cannot send or receive email.

I know that this may seem like a duplicate question, but I cannot find any postings that deal with this issue when there is actually significant space left on the device (>25%!).

From Terminal:

df:
Filesystem       Size   used    Free
/dev             198.5M  32K    198.5M
/mnt/secure      198.5M  0K     198.5M
/mnt/asec        198.5M  0K     198.5M
/mnt/obb         198.5M  0K     198.5M
/cache           17.5M   2.3M   15.2M
/radio           16M     14.3M  1.7M
/datadata        422M    395.6M 26.4M
/system          393.7M  334.4M 59.3M
/data            1.5G    1.1G   396.9M
/efs             12.5M   5.9M   6.6M
/storage/sdcard0 13G     9.5G   3.5G

There are also some app-specific mount points that I don't believe have value to list here.

Answer 1

As Alexandar already pointed out, there are different partitions involved. The "400MB on your system partition" (actually, there's only ~ 300 MB free) have no effect here at all, as you cannot use them: /system is mounted read-only during normal operation, and mostly reserved for the OS and its core apps.

Let's walk your tree one by one:

• /dev, /system, /efs, /cache, /radio: these are "special locations" used by the system, and not available (directly) to your apps and your data.
• /mnt/secure, /mnt/asec, /mnt/obb: similarly.
• /data and /storage/sdcard0: your SD cards are not related to that error message.

• /datadata: here we go, this is the troublemaker: just 26.4M are free here. The error you're describing is triggered as soon as free space drops below 25 MB (or below 10% sometimes, which would be ~40 MB). No matter how much space is available elsewhere.

For actions to be taken, take a look at the insufficient-memory tag-wiki, which explains some more background and offers first-aid as well as links to related sources.

Answer 2

I have answered this here

Apps are stored on the /data partition, while the empty space you have is probably located on some other location, like internal SD card. Even if you have empty space elsewhere, apps couldn't be installed nowhere but on the /data partition.

There is a way to make /data partition bigger by resizing your partitions (I've done it myself), but it's not recommended if you don't know what you're doing, since you can end up making your phone unusable.

Try using df command in either Terminal Emulator or ADB shell, to see how much free space you have on each separate partition.

Answer 3

Cleaning all the junk and app cashe's fixes it for me when I have that problem being told I don't have enough storage when I actually do. Clear the cashe for each individual app if corning from the system storage doesn't work.