Where Did My Storage Space Go?

[Jason Dunn]

I've had my Qtek 8500 (HTC Str Trk) for a while now, and I really enjoy it as a phone: light, thin, reasonably fast performance, and highly useful to me as a Bluetooth EDGE modem. There's one thing that I really dislike about it though: the fact that there's only 16.94 MB of storage memory available. I've installed everything possible to my Sandisk 1 GB microSD card, yet at this moment I only have 694 KB worth of storage left. I have a feeling that part of the problem is the database size of my PIM data: I have ActiveSync set to pull the past three months of appointments, and sync all email in my Inbox regardless of age or size. [goes and re-configures ActiveSync to pull down less data] Ok, that obviously wasn't the root of the problem: I only have 824 KB storage memory free.

Before I go and do a hard reset and re-build this thing, does anyone know of a good way to find out where storage space is being taken up? Something like Where Is My RAM (http://mypaq.net/mobilesoft/wimr/), only for the Smartphone. It's pretty ridiculous that Microsoft gives us no tools for memory management. Oh, wait, memory management...[goes and checks IE Mobile cache]...well would you look at that, 2.93 MB of storage RAM being taken up by IE temp files. Why on earth can't we put a limit on that via a program interface? I now have 4.26 MB free and my phone is able to function properly again. It really shouldn't be this hard. :?

[apeguero]

Hey Jason,

I try to do same thing as you do and install everything into my mini-SD card. You could probably use Resco Explorer to look at the properties of each directory in your storage space. This should give you a better clue of what directory is using up the space. I'd also clean up old emails and empty out the Deleted folder of your email and messages. Also, you may want to check where your camera is storing the pictures that you may be snapping up.

Funny thing about that PIM file is that I have disabled my former PPC6700 a few times in the past when I had first gotten it by deleting that file. Big mistake by me since I had to do a hard reset in order to get the phone to work again. Funny thing is that it happened to me while on a plane en route to my vacation. I ended up in a foreign country without any contact info or any customized functionality of the phone since I had to do a hard-reset :oops:

What is that PIM file for? I now have a Cingular 2125 and still see it there, growing by the day...

[Jason Dunn]

The PIM file is probably just what you think it is...for all your PIM data (calendar, contacts, email, tasks), so deleting it is definitely not a good idea. 8O

[dkeppler]

One way to save memory is to move the IE cache files and Email Attachments to the Storage Card. Do a search in google and there are plenty of explanations of how to do this. Its just a couple of registry entrys, but I cant remember off the top of my head.

David

[Jason Dunn]

One way to save memory is to move the IE cache files and Email Attachments to the Storage Card.

Yeah, I'm aware of that option, but I've never tried it for fear of causing instability in the phone. Have you tried it? Any glitches to be aware of?

[apeguero]

I've done it before but the response time slows down quite a bit. Since I am not having memory problems at the moment I just leave the IE cache on main memory. I used to do this a couple of years ago though when these machines used to come with 32mb of memory (16mb/16mb). Boy those days used to s*ck!

[Foxbat121]

There was a MS Blog about registry keys to limit IE cache size. Device maker like HTC suppose to set this key to a proper size for the specific device. But in reality, all WM devices left it at its default size which will eat away almost all of your available storage space in no time.

[Jason Dunn]

Device maker like HTC suppose to set this key to a proper size for the specific device. But in reality, all WM devices left it at its default size which will eat away almost all of your available storage space in no time.

Yup. I've had this conversation with Microsoft people many times. What's amazing is that THEY are surprised when we say that HTC doesn't set the IE cache size and leave it at the default setting, which is something like 16 MB. It's simply ridiculous that MICROSOFT doesn't make the default size something reasonable by, oh, DEFAULT. :?

[dkeppler]

One way to save memory is to move the IE cache files and Email Attachments to the Storage Card.

Yeah, I'm aware of that option, but I've never tried it for fear of causing instability in the phone. Have you tried it? Any glitches to be aware of?

Tried it this week and have noticed no problems at all, seems faster actually.

Two other things I am trying this week are, DontForget, a little freeware utility that nags you about missed calls and SMS's, and the desk cradle from Expansys, which is really great.
Have you found a audio adaptor yet?

[Mike Temporale]

One way to save memory is to move the IE cache files and Email Attachments to the Storage Card.

Yeah, I'm aware of that option, but I've never tried it for fear of causing instability in the phone. Have you tried it? Any glitches to be aware of?

I've been running like that since I got my phone back from i-mate repair. No problems, and no slow downs that I can tell.

[Mike Temporale]

There was a MS Blog about registry keys to limit IE cache size.

Yeah, we've posted about that and the hack that allows you to change the value. Too bad the hack doesn't stick. It seems to reset itself after a short time. :(

[encece]

When I had the QTEK, I had the same problem. I move IE Temp files to the storage card. Moved email attachements there as well...

...I also installed Oxios CloseApps and run it whenever I think of it. Cleans out all of the crap being left behind. I assigned a shortcut so it was easy to do as well.

Alot of maintenance to do something you'd thing was automatic...but alas is not.

[Jerry Raia]

I've always had my IE cache and email attachments on the storage card. The instability issues were supposed to occur if one moved the entire inbox to the storage card. Supposedly the storage card could become corrupt.

[Rocco Augusto]

i just cleared the IE cache on my phone, it was 9.6 MB! Guess i haven't cleaned it in a while ;)

[John Cody]

My friend has a WM5 smartphone (I-mate), and he had a problem of very low free main memory, but he hardly had any apps installed. So, I took at look.

What I found as the cause was that there were like 1MB+ worth of what appeared to be orphand email message files - a few hundred different files in I believe possibly two different directories within the main memory.

I don't remember the directory names, and I don't have a WM5 smartphone to help jog my memory - sorry.

What I did to fix it was to move all the email messages in the desktop outlook app to a folder that was not accessible by activesync. Then I "synced" the smartphone so there was no emails in the "Outlook" account or any other custom POP/IMAP account in the phone. Then I searched every directory and sub-directory and deleted all the email message files I could find in the phone. Then, I moved the emails back to outlooks inbox on the desktop, then synced with the smartphone again.

The result: about 1.5MB more free space in the smartphone :)

My guess of why this happens is that I often see activesync say after docking that I have some huge number (like "877") of emails that need to be syned, even though there are only 45 emails in my inbox. And then I need to do a sync to get it back to 0, or just undock and redock and sometimes it then display the correct count. So, maybe when you do a sync while this phantom count occurs, it somehow creates real file placemarks in the phone for the phantom emails. But, this just a guess.

[keni]

We at Conchango use the Vodafone v1240 and we too have had many an issue with users running low on memory.

So I built this little CAB file to install for each phone...

CAB (http://blogs.conchango.com/kenibarwick/archive/2006/05/22/3969.aspx)

This will fix your issues...

K

[dahruj]

We at Conchango use the Vodafone v1240 and we too have had many an issue with users running low on memory.

So I built this little CAB file to install for each phone...

CAB (http://blogs.conchango.com/kenibarwick/archive/2006/05/22/3969.aspx)

This will fix your issues...

K

I tried to use it in my imate smart-flip, but got a messa ge that the installation was unsuccessful because I don't have permission to do that!

[keni]

I tried to use it in my imate smart-flip, but got a messa ge that the installation was unsuccessful because I don't have permission to do that!

Yup, that's no doub't due to the phone being locked for 3'rd party developers...

This is a big deal for me! I hate it that you need to pay $$$ just to do things like this...

Have been able to install the PHM Registry Editor?

[onlydarksets]

My wife's 2125 had this problem, to the point where a message would pop up every few minutes alerting to low RAM. Turns out she accidentally hit the voice note button and recorded a 7MB note. I deleted that and everything went back to normal.