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Internal storage


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I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy J3 which has 16GB of internal storage and I’ve used 15.49 of it. All my photos now go to the SD card and then backed up to Google Photos. However, every time I get a WhatsApp message the attached photos, film clip, etc is saved into the internal storage so it fills up quite quickly and I keep get warning messages the storage is low.  Any suggestions of how I can solve this problem? Thanks.

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8 replies

Mohammed H
iD Mobile Employee
  • iD Mobile Employee
  • 7962 replies
  • June 23, 2021

Hello @Paulr ,

When you view the breakdown of your internal storage, how much of what is stored on the internal storage? 

You can move apps over in some cases to your internal storage to free up space too.

If you go to Settings on your device, then find the Memory and storage option you may be able to change the default option to SD card instead of internal memory.

 

Mohammed


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  • 11 replies
  • June 23, 2021

The biggest seems to be Whatsapp images (468) and Whatsapp videos (63) + DCIM Screenshots (186).  As regards my SD card i’ve used 2.21GB of 30GB so that’s fine. Any ideas?


Mohsin
iD Mobile Employee
  • iD Mobile Employee
  • 2173 replies
  • June 23, 2021

Hi @Paulr 

Did you manage to try moving the Whatsapp images and videos to the SD card? You can create a new folder in your gallery, when doing this you select the SD card and move all the images and videos to there. Let us know how you get on.

-Mohsin


WelshPaul
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  • 3090 replies
  • June 23, 2021

Unfortunately it’s a hardware limitation of the phone and the only work around is to delete or move existing files to the SD card. If you move WhatsApp files to the SD card then WhatsApp will not be able to access/read them. 😔

 

Normally I would suggest that you install WhatsApp on the SD Card. It would then use the SD card to store images, video and audio files. However, WhatsApp don’t allow installation on an SD card.

 

https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/download-and-installation/moving-whatsapp-to-an-sd-card/?lang=en

It's not possible to move WhatsApp to a memory card (SD card) at this time. We're working on improving our application size and memory utilization. In the meantime, if you need to free up space for WhatsApp, we recommend moving other applications and media files to your SD card.


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  • 11 replies
  • June 24, 2021

Thanks for the info.

I’ve had another look at the ‘Storage Analysis’ page and it show I’ve used 95% of 16.00gb of Internal Storage.

Images  155MB

Videos   412MB

Installation files 0MB

Audio 3.94MB

Docs 233KB

Other 14.72GB

 

Can anyone advise me what the ‘Other ‘ might be as I’ve had a look and can’t seem to locate it and assume it’s not pre-installed files? I’m beginning to think that the Whatsapp files/ images aren’t the culprits. Thanks again for any assistance and advice you can give me.


WelshPaul
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  • June 24, 2021

System files, app files etc. Shouldn't be using that much though. Have a read of this:

https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/galaxy-s10-series/internal-memory-full-quot-other-quot-category/td-p/1884065


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  • 11 replies
  • June 24, 2021

Thanks. I’ve looked at the links and they’re quite interesting. I’ve gone through all the Apps and cleared cache which has brought it down to 90% used 14.53 of 16.00 and shows Other as now 13.98 ( reduced from 14.72). Not sure if this is enough to make a difference but still keen to get these numbers down.


Mohsin
iD Mobile Employee
  • iD Mobile Employee
  • 2173 replies
  • June 24, 2021

Hi @Paulr 

The only other option we would advise is to delete any data that you no longer need or to move existing files (images, videos etc) to the SD card which will free up storage in the internal memory.

-Mohsin