"System" using 342GB storage?

Question

I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge in which I put a 400GB SanDisk micro-SD card to expand its storage space. Seems that didn't work though. The space is not available to me. And I can't really figure out why or how I can make this space available.

When I inserted the SD card, I selected that this SD card needs to be adopted as internal storage (I don't intend to take it out any time soon). And I had Android reformat it as it likes. However the storage app seems to be confused or the partitions messed up.

Bottom line, I'm not able to take more photos or transfer more music onto the phone because it's running out of storage.

Here's what the "Storage Settings" settings menu says about my disk usage:

367GB total used of 728GB
- Internal shared storage: 366GB used of 367GB
- - Apps: 845MB
- - Images: 483MB
- - Videos: 0
- - Audio: 19.50GB
- - System: 342GB
- - Other: 3.17GB
- - Cached data: 112MB
- SanDisk SD Card: 0.96GB used of 361GB
- - Apps: 2.71GB
- - Cached data: 40.42MB

Bold is my highlight. I don't understand why System is using 342GB or why it's counting the SD card double (the phone itself comes with 32GB built-in storage). Why is it not letting me store these files on the SD card?

I have Termux installed and here's the output of the df command:

Filesystem       1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs             1680128     4560   1675568   1% /
tmpfs              1816220      448   1815772   1% /dev
tmpfs              1816220        0   1816220   0% /mnt
/dev/block/dm-0  378585556  1006608 377562564   1% /mnt/expand/612126b2-7bab-4bf8-8a24-ebacec5b0c23
/dev/block/sda14   4233152  1095448   3121320  26% /system
/dev/block/sda15    197472      188    193188   1% /cache
/dev/block/sda18  25772320 25243840    512096  99% /data
/data/media       25772320 25243840    512096  99% /storage/emulated

So I understand that this /storage/emulated is the one that's full, but somehow in this /dev/block/dm-0 there is this 377.6GB of space being unused. How can I make that space available to me? I've got ADB installed on my computer if necessary. It seems that the only thing saved on the SD card is several apps.

Are you absolutely sure your SD card is not a fake card? What is the source...? I suggest testing it elsewhere if possible. — Natsu Kage, Jan 29 '20 at 00:16
I did test it in my computer using an SD card adapter before formatting it for Android. Windows showed it had 378GB of space and it had some SanDisk back-up utility on it then. I wiped it. It seemed normal to me then, so I'm pretty sure the SD card itself is (or was) fine. The source was bol.com, a common webshop here in NL, basically our Amazon. — Ghostkeeper, Jan 29 '20 at 00:55
Did you try unmounting and mounting it again? There might be software issues with this capacity as an adopted storage. I suggest using it simply as secondary storage. — Natsu Kage, Jan 29 '20 at 01:54
You have adopted the SD card as internal storage but data is not migrated. /storage/emulated is still on your actual internal storage (/data/media). // Android's storage reporting is not reliable. There come very frequent questions regarding the confusions caused by this. See my answer to How disk space is used on Android device? for some explanation. — Irfan Latif, Jan 29 '20 at 02:18
*How can I make that space available to me?* How to free Internal Storage by moving data or using symlink / bind-mount with Adoptable Storage? — Irfan Latif, Jan 29 '20 at 02:18
@Natsu We are talking about a Samsung device here. AFAIR Samsung does not support adoptable storage on any device, to force the users buy the more expensive version with more storage. — Robert, Jan 29 '20 at 10:54
@Robert not sure about Samsung but dev/block/dm-0 ... /mnt/expand/... shows SD card is adopted. — Irfan Latif, Jan 29 '20 at 11:04

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 30 '20 at 23:59

The answer was found through a comment by Irfan Latif here: "System" using 342GB storage? While I'd found this question prior to posting my own, I had dismissed it as being inapplicable since my df output is very different, and I hadn't found the menus shown in the screenshots there.

What I had to do is to go to Settings -> Storage -> The (almost empty) SD card. Then click on the grippy 3-dot menu in the top right, and select Migrate. You then get into the menu mentioned in the above answer (which was apparently supposed to show up when first installing the SD card, but didn't show for me). I moved the content, which took 15 minutes or so. And since then my phone indicates:

Internal shared storage: 344GB used of 367GB
SanDisk SD card: 26.32GB used of 361GB

When plugging in the phone, it now also indicates 334GB available space, and I can load more music and take more pictures.

Thank you for the suggestions, everyone.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 29 '20 at 18:28

0

if adoptable-storage is supported from this ROM, all new installed apps will go to microSD Card by default, as long as android:installLocation="auto" is defined in AndroidManifest.xml

check available disk space (of /data or /mnt/expand/*)
uninstall some apps
check available disk space
install some apps
check available disk space

you will see available disk space for /data increases

answered Jan 29 '20 at 18:28

alecxs

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The apps themselves are not really the problem. I moved apps back and forth in order to install this SD card. The problem is where my photos and music are stored. I put the music on there via USB cable from my computer, but they get stored apparently on the very limited 32GB internal memory now. – Ghostkeeper Jan 30 '20 at 23:24

"System" using 342GB storage?

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