Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2020 October 18

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October 18

Moved from 13 October

I have moved the following from 13 October so that I can follow up. Right now, however, I am still or again low on storage. It wants to back up my files to cloud storage or OneDrive (which I think is cloud storage - is it?). I do not want cloud backup, and do not want to be told that I should use cloud backup. What I want is either to delete my old files, some of which I simply don't want, or to back them up to my desktop computer, which has a different order of magnitude of storage. I don't have a lot of pictures or video clips or other large stuff that I want to keep or back up. I really just want to delete things, or if I can't delete them, move them to a real computer. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:15, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, you have an app called "Settings" (with a gear icon usually). When you open it, it presents you a list near the bottom of which is "Storage" (or maybe "Battery and storage"). When you open "Storage", you'll see a list of storage devices that you have and how much you've left in each. You can explore each card from there to see what's taking up the storage and delete the files you don't need or if there is one card near full and another near empty, move around stuff that you do want.

To move your files to your computer, you could use onedrive as a middleman of sorts. Back your files up in onedrive which does provide free storage that should be more than enough for your purpose, then log into onedrive from your computer and download your files. To move files to your computer directly, the easiest would be if you have a data cable (though you could do wireless which is more complicated). Do you have a data cable which when you use to connect your phone to your computer, your phone notifies you that it's been connected to a computer and asks you what you want to do? If you do, you can select "transfer media files". Then you will see your phone listed among the storage devices on your computer and you can move around or delete files on its cards as you would other storage devices on your computer. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 14:53, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Usedtobecool. I already have been in Settings and in Device Maintenance, Battery, Storage, and Memory. Yes. First, for reasons that I don't want to go into, I do not want to use OneDrive. I will see what I can do from my computer end. It is showing the phone as a device. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:04, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I sort of think that "they", the hardware vendors, are trying to sell me more cards for my phone. As I said, I don't want to move data between cards on my phone. I don't want all of this data on my phone. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:04, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I may have more questions soon. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:04, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I answered one question that I may not have asked properly, and that is that it was trying to get me to Back Up my files, and by tapping things again, I was able to Delete the files that I didn't want to back up. So that is better. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:13, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, following up from Usedtobecool's comment, if you have a Samsung device, then under Samsung apps there may also be an app called MyFiles that offers file structure access with summarized categories for Images, Videos, Audio, Documents, Downloads, and Installation Files. Depending on the variation of Android, you may also have Settings->Device care->Storage and inside should be a similar summarized listing of Documents, Images, Videos, Audio, and Apps, with summaries of individual usage. Araesmojo (talk) 21:09, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

You can copy anything on your phone to your PC. Fastest way is USB. Do a Web search for "android usb backup" for guides. You can also use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, but that's a bit more fiddly and slower. The unfortunate truth is 16 GB is just not much storage these days, which is why you're running low. Windows 10 on PC actually requires a minimum of 32 GB for standard editions! My Galaxy Note 9 has 512 GB on-device. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 21:17, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

With modern phones USB is not necessarily faster than Wi-Fi, especially if we're talking about USB to computer, even more so if using MTP or PTP and small files. (Not sure about ADB.) Anecdotally my Huawei P30 is quite slow over USB+MTP to a Windows computer especially with a lot of small files, small being relative here, I'm referring to copy 10k JPEGs several MB in size. I've never benchmarked USB+USB3 memory stick to simple Wi-Fi+SMB of MiX or Total Commander but both are a lot faster than USB+MTP. Nil Einne (talk) 03:25, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

It's something on the PC end. USB 3.1 tops out at a higher speed than even Wi-Fi 6. The first thing to check would be that it is actually making a SuperSpeed connection and not reverting to USB 2, which could be caused by a few things. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 06:29, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Advantages of USB over Wi-Fi: security, simpler configuration, can charge device while transferring, direct filesystem-wide control, no Wi-Fi devices or router necessary. (Some desktops don't have it!)

Advantages of Wi-Fi over USB: not tethered down to one place, no ports necessary.

Pick your choice. Properly configured, either one should be pretty speedy. Elizium23 (talk) 07:44, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Direct filesystem control? Do you mean when you set up debugging and ADB? If so that isn't exactly simple setup. Note as I said below, mass storage is long dead for most phones and MTP is very far from direct filesystem-wide control. Nil Einne (talk) 11:37, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

The theoretical speed of the connection is irrelevant if the device isn't designed to take advantage of it. This is especially the case for phone connections between computers which tend to use protocols not well designed for high speed transfers since the days of simply presenting themselves as mass storage devices is long gone for most phones. And not all phones, even phones with USB C even support superspeed e.g. OnePlus 6T doesn't [1] [2], probably the Motorola G8 [3], probably the Xiaomi Mi 10T [4]. For my phone, I'm fairly sure MTP is one of the causes, as I said it's better with a USB-C USB3/Superspeed memory stick, although I've never investigated a great deal. I doubt it has much to do with my phone or my PC (including Windows 10), MTP just isn't well suited for high speed transfers especially with smallish files. (Transfering 1-2 GB video files tends to be a bit better.) See e.g. [5] [6]. ADB or possibly whatever Huawei uses for their app (it may simply be ADB) is probably better but I never investigated. The simple fact is, the USB connection tends to receive far less attention on phones than Wi-Fi does, so in the modern arena you should not assume USB is faster. (This especially applies to whatever could be done tospeed up MTP.) It does have the advantage you don't have to worry about interference or the theoretically possibility of someone monitoring the transfer despite having not compromised the phone or PC and the other benefits that come from a wired connection, but speed isn't necessarily one of them. To give a related example, I wouldn't assume that connecting 2 computers (laptops or desktops) over USB 3.2 would be faster than GbE, no matter that all of the options are technically capable of being faster. It may be, but I wouldn't assume it's always the case. To be clear I mean the maximum speed e.g. memory to memory transfer rather than limited by a slow hard disk. (Thunderbold however, I would assume is faster.) Note however, in most cases I'd still recommend GbE over Wi-Fi even though Wi-Fi can theoretically be faster. Nil Einne (talk) 11:37, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Right, for USB 3 both devices need to support it, as well as the cable. One thing that can confuse people is that USB C is not equivalent to USB 3. USB C is just a new, universal connector intended to replace all the varied USB connector types. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 17:15, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Dangerously Low on Storage : Android

I was getting a notification when I woke up my Samsung Android that I was dangerously low on storage, and that this might affect the functioning of some apps. In fact, what it was affecting was that I couldn't receive new email from the Outlook server (so that the warning was correct, it was having a bad effect). I diddled around and uninstalled a few apps that I have not been using and deleted a few large downloaded PDFs, and now it is synching my email correctly. But I am not entirely sure what sort of storage I needed to free up, or how to free up storage in general if this happens again. First, does storage refer to the approximately 15 GB of non-volatile content, as contrasted with approximately 2GB of volatile content that is called memory? Second, is there a feature to view and free up storage other than by diddling and finding things to get rid of? Maybe this is a stupid question, so that maybe stupid answers can't hurt, because they will be just things to try that don't work. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:23, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

It refers to the 15GB of flash memory storage. It's the rough equivalent of HDD storage on a computer. There should be a breakdown of what apps use how much in Settings. 95.168.121.89 (talk) 18:57, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

My Huawei (ssh, don't tell Trump) has an extra card in it, but most apps will only save to the system card. Result, I'm constantly running out of memory, yet have 90% of the second card free. It might be worth checking to see if something similar is happening. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 19:03, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah good idea to purchase a micro SD card (if you don't already have one) and move PDFs, pictures, apps which allow it, etc. to the card. Be aware that like all flash storage (including internal phone storage) cards can and do fail catastrophically (in that data is completely unrecoverable). Backup your data every now and then. 95.168.121.89 (talk) 19:10, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Some Android devices no longer support moving apps to the sdcard. It is a security issue and a performance issue. If you have plenty of data, lots of photos and videos and music, by all means use an sdcard. Mine is chronically underutilized. Elizium23 (talk) 22:45, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, I use Storage Analyzer and Disk Usage app to search and destroy unused files. There are also cleaning apps you can use, such as the companion to my Avast! Antivirus. When last I checked (Lollipop) Android storage was segmented; you have a section where the apps live and you have a section where the data lives. If you delete apps then you can make space for more apps, but you have to delete data to make space for more data.

Regarding your bugged Outlook client: try "Force Stop" and "Clear Data" which might remove all your local mail copies (you use IMAP right?) and then you can probably have a successful download again. Elizium23 (talk) 22:44, 13 October 2020 (UTC)