Free some space on phone's memory without DATA2EXT

Free some space on phone's memory without DATA2EXT

Although there is a2sd, that keeps the apks on the sd-ext some files are stored on phone's nand on /data partitionand if we install a lot of apks then you remain out of free space. WE DO ALL THIS WITH PHONE ON, NOT IN RECOVERY.

1st let's see how much free space I'm having:

# df -h | grep data /dev/block/mtdblock5 147.6M 76.7M 70.9M 52% /data 

As you can see I have left about 70 MB free. Lets see what folders eat my space:

# du -sk /data/data/* | sort -rn | head 18641 /data/data/com.navngo.igo.javaclient 14911 /data/data/com.opera.browser 6756 /data/data/com.google.android.gm 5194 /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts 3661 /data/data/com.htc.launcher 3083 /data/data/com.htc.googlereader 1276 /data/data/com.swype.android.inputmethod 1172 /data/data/com.android.settings 1144 /data/data/com.htc.android.mail 1084 /data/data/and.blogger 

Ok so it seems that iGO and Opera are eating 32 megs together. I'll leave data/data/com.google.android.gmalone since it's Gmail and I want to be more responsive by keeping its files to nand (I only have a class 4 card). Lets get to work. 1st we need to make a folder on sd-ext where to keep the files.

# mkdir /system/sd/.moreapps 

I made the folder .moreapps. Now let's move stuff and symlink them.

First we move them:

# mv /data/data/com.navngo.igo.javaclient /system/sd/.moreapps/com.navngo.igo.javaclient 

Then we symlink them:

# ln -s /system/sd/.moreapps/com.navngo.igo.javaclient /data/data/com.navngo.igo.javaclient 

Now we repeat the operation for opera. Move:

# mv /data/data/com.opera.browser /system/sd/.moreapps/com.opera.browser 

Symlink:

# ln -s /system/sd/.moreapps/com.opera.browser /data/data/com.opera.browser 

Now let's check again my free space.

# df -h | grep data /dev/block/mtdblock5 147.6M 51.8M 95.9M 35% /data 

Well it seems to me I gained 35 MB without uninstalling apps, without moving ALL of them to SD and experience some lags.

Now let's check if we made the symlinking right

# ls -al --color=none /data/data/com.opera.browser lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0 38 Feb 22 05:46 /data/data/com.opera.browser -> /system/sd/.moreapps/com.opera.browser 

Yap all seems right. Opera and iGO are working at same speed, I freed up some space. Everyone's happy.

The advantage of this method is that you can choose what to move to sd-ext you don't have to have all to sd-ext. Now make sure you don't name your folder in /system/sd "data" since a2sd script will move back on nand all its contents.

This method is recommend for GPS software, Browsers, Games, some apps you got from market. It's best to leave system apps there to avoid FCs or slowdowns. If anything goes wrong with your app after this you can always move them back. 1st you delete the symlink (rm /data/data/whatevar) then move it back.

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