Why my (unrooted) /data partition appears to be empty?

Question

I am having some issue with my /data partition. Among other things, when I browse its contents with the Astro app, it appears to be empty. The phone has never been rooted and it has been factory-reset at least three times in the last hour, so I would expect it to be at least minimally functioning.

Why is the /data partition empty? When factory reset, is it not supposed to contain something? Is this the cause of my inconsistent (maybe they are not inconsistent: they are MISSING) UIDs?

PS: I am putting the unrooting tag even if the phone was never rooted, since I would like it to go back to its original state :-)

Answer 1

Without root Astro doesn't have permission to view the contents of the /data directory. It probably displays it as "empty" in an attempt to handle it gracefully, I would guess (but that's mostly a guess). It seems like a fairly sensible alternative to other solutions, though, aside from perhaps giving you a message that says "Permission Denied" or similar.