storage reserved for thumbnails???

[AyamePasse]

I own a Galaxy Note 2, and use ES File Explorer and Ghost Commander as my primary file explorers. I'd had this phone only a few months before I noticed that when I use the tool to analyze my internal storage (available in ES), if there are thumbnail files, it will scan MORE than 100% of my 10gb internal storage, then tell me I have, for example, 1gb free space, 1gb of pictures, and, say, 8gb of apps, then in addition to that, it will tell me I have as much as 16gb of thumbnail files, totaling out at 26gb, instead of the 10gb my phone says I have access to. I thought maybe this was a mistake, but when I navigate to the DCIM folder in Ghost Commander (DCIM is where ES tells me the thumbnail folder is), sure enough, there's a thumbnails folder that is 16gb in size, and when I delete it, it frees up ZERO space.

I know gigs of space is used by Android OS and bloatware, but I've seen no one stating this same problem, where thumbnails appear to take up space that doesn't EXIST... Is there a huge portion of my internal storage that does not count toward the available storage because it is reserved for thumbnails? I see articles saying how to fool your phone into thinking the external SD is actually the internal storage, but I don't want to do that; I'd LIKE to free up all this space that thumbnail files can use, but I CAN'T. Is this possible? I have not yet rooted my phone due to it still being under warrantee... Would rooting it enable ME to use this space, rather than it being reserved for cache?

Note: Yes, I DO have a ton of pictures on my external SD. But I'm not annoyed at how many thumbs are being created. I'm annoyed that when I delete them, I reclaim zero space on either of my SD cards.

Oh, and its probably also worth noting that, while I DO have tons of pictures, I don't have 16gb worth that I'm aware of, and my folder with the bulk of my picture files is hidden, thus not showing up in Gallery apps (which I assumed were usually the cause of thumbnail files in the DCIM folder)...

 

[leeshor]

Welcome to the forum

The space used by thumbnails isn't really reserved just not normally available for you to see unless rooted. But I think this may help, if I understand the problem. Any folder (or the SD drive) that had media that you don;'t want cached in Gallery, (which is really where the cache is), can be excluded my putting an empty file in that folder named .nomedia (include the leading period).

Then go to the app manager, scroll to all and find Gallery. Tell it to clear the cache then restart. The cache will get built again for only what it see that doesn't have that file in the folder.

Then get this app (Clean Master) and run through all the options.

The .nomedia file will prevent building the thumbnail cache for those folders.

 

[AyamePasse]

Thank you for the info. Your answer helped, though maybe not quite as you intended. I'm not too bothered by it creating the thumbs (it doesn't hurt me if it creates them on space I can't use anyway), I'm just bothered by the fact that there're that many gigs of space I can't access. Soooo... That said, if I root my device (one day), I SHOULD be able to access that space for things like apps instead?

On a side note; the ".nomedia" tactic will probably come in handy for other reasons, such as (hopefully) helping my device to run better... Do I need to put it in sub-folders as well, or will putting it in the main folder include the subfolders?

 

[leeshor]

If you root that will give you access to the system area which is what you aren't seeing. In this case I don't think that will help much unless you want to uninstall some of the stock apps.

As for .nomedia you probably should only use that file in select folders you don't want indexed. Putting it in the root may interfere with other functions.

 

[AyamePasse]

Yes, I would only use the .nomedia file on my external sd card. But say I have a folder titled 'camera' on my external SD with a bunch of folders in it, all of which have pictures in them. Should I create the .nomedia files in the 'camera' folder, or do i need to create them in all the folders within the 'camera' folder to have all those folders be effected?

 

[leeshor]

I'm pretty certain it would only need to be in the camera folder. Try it out.