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Storage blackhole bug and issues

Futaura
Community Member

It appears Chromecast with Google TV has several bugs regarding lost, overuse and/or misreporting of storage...

I've been using my Chromecast with Google TV for almost 11 months now, and after a few months of having to clear caches and remove apps in order to perform updates, I decided to investigate more closely as I do not have many apps installed and the storage should have been nowhere near full.

First of all, the figures given in the Storage settings do usually not add up. There's 4.4Gb in total "available" (3.9Gb in reality, as I think 0.5Gb is reserved, as common with most Android devices). But there are multiple anomalies:

  1.  Adding up "Apps", "Cached", "Misc" and "Available" (all others are 0), gives me 3.5Gb currently - where did the other 0.9Gb go?
  2. Looking at individual apps storage, the listed total often does not match the figures listed on the right hand side. For example, with caches cleared, "Google TV" app is showing 60.88Mb under the app name, but in the right hand panel, 73.85Mb internal storage used and 29.75Mb data. Whereas the "Google" app shows 104Mb under the name and 104Mb internal storage used and 11.44Mb data.
  3. If you manually add up all the app's storage used figures, these come nowhere near the total given on the storage page.

As I was having trouble freeing up storage, I decided to delete all my 11 user apps to see which apps were causing a problem. The storage usage shown went from 3.9Gb to 3.1Gb. What was using the 3.1Gb??? Next, I deleted all updates to the 9 Google system apps - this obviously triggered setup to be run again. After it completed, I then deleted all the apps it chose to install - 2.5Gb used. Then I updated the 9 Google system apps - 2.8Gb used. What was using the missing 2.5Gb storage?

Clearly the used storage was not being given back, so I resorted to a factory reset to wipe everything. 1.1Gb used after it had done. Deleted unwanted apps and installed the same 11 apps as before and updated the 9 Google system apps - 1.5Gb used. So, that left me with I have 2.4Gb free to use, with the exact same apps installed and logged in! This is how it should have been above.

A few days later, and storage is already disappearing again. Now showing 1.9Gb used and 1.6Gb available, after clearing caches. After a restart, this changed to 1.8Gb used and 1.7Gb available. I've not installed any new apps and have only used Netflix, Prime Video and Chromecast (built-in) during this time period. Where is the storage disappearing to???

I can't seem to find any apps that show the real storage used. Most folders in the Android folder are hidden from file manager apps.

1 Recommended Answer

GothamNY
Bronze
Bronze

Hey @Futaura I don't have an answer for you on any of this and I doubt anyone else will either, but have you factored in that once you launch CCwGTV that home screen you're looking at is populated almost instantly with tons of information? Granted, depending on who you are some is useful, and some is not so useful, but it's there nonetheless. If it wasn't stored, we'd probably be waiting for it to pull from the source each time.

Let's now switch to our "Live" tab and our program guide if we subscribe to YTTV, which I do. The myriad of channels that exist are loaded and stored, this information is updated dynamically, how often I couldn't tell ya, but it changes and probably frequently, nothing worse than have a program schedule that's a week old and will take maybe 30 minutes to update when we want to see what's on, that takes storage. Finally, the "For You" tab is more than likely filled with info from a linked Google Account and other services that you may subscribe to: Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ to name just a few. Those can be toggled on and off in settings. And then there's information that's pulled from your Play Store account, purchases, watchlist, movies in your library, the cover art, descriptions, etc. And then there's the engine that powers your voice module and Google Assistant which is probably some separate hunk of code sitting around waiting for the push of a button to render search results. I can't even imagine the DVR function and amount of buffering going on for recording things simultaneously on different channels sitting there waiting for me when I go to my "Library" tab and all the images and options are there in a list with all my recorded shows. Or the ability to scrub/pause live TV while watching -- that too is stored somewhere too.

These are just some of the places that come to mind that may account for "missing" storage and it's not just applications one has installed -- there's probably a bunch of caches that we don't see or have access to just to handle the activities that go on undetected but are needed to deliver the "experience."

Hope this helps.

View Recommended Answer in original post

6 REPLIES 6

GothamNY
Bronze
Bronze

Hey @Futaura I don't have an answer for you on any of this and I doubt anyone else will either, but have you factored in that once you launch CCwGTV that home screen you're looking at is populated almost instantly with tons of information? Granted, depending on who you are some is useful, and some is not so useful, but it's there nonetheless. If it wasn't stored, we'd probably be waiting for it to pull from the source each time.

Let's now switch to our "Live" tab and our program guide if we subscribe to YTTV, which I do. The myriad of channels that exist are loaded and stored, this information is updated dynamically, how often I couldn't tell ya, but it changes and probably frequently, nothing worse than have a program schedule that's a week old and will take maybe 30 minutes to update when we want to see what's on, that takes storage. Finally, the "For You" tab is more than likely filled with info from a linked Google Account and other services that you may subscribe to: Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ to name just a few. Those can be toggled on and off in settings. And then there's information that's pulled from your Play Store account, purchases, watchlist, movies in your library, the cover art, descriptions, etc. And then there's the engine that powers your voice module and Google Assistant which is probably some separate hunk of code sitting around waiting for the push of a button to render search results. I can't even imagine the DVR function and amount of buffering going on for recording things simultaneously on different channels sitting there waiting for me when I go to my "Library" tab and all the images and options are there in a list with all my recorded shows. Or the ability to scrub/pause live TV while watching -- that too is stored somewhere too.

These are just some of the places that come to mind that may account for "missing" storage and it's not just applications one has installed -- there's probably a bunch of caches that we don't see or have access to just to handle the activities that go on undetected but are needed to deliver the "experience."

Hope this helps.

Futaura
Community Member

Sure, but I'm assuming the data for the CCwGTV launcher is accounted for in the cache and/or data storage for the "Google TV" system app, which is the launcher. These values do increase if you browse the launcher a lot and the cache can be cleared. Equally, the storage values for the "Google TV" app make even less sense now than it did a few days ago:

IMG_20211118_123645085.jpg

Any cached data used "should" be shown under "Clear data" and/or "Clear cache". 

I should add that I'm in the UK and we have no "Live" tab unfortunately and not enough TV streaming apps to fill even half of the storage from a factory reset, but that's another story! 

The main point I'm trying to get across is that after some months of usage, the storage becomes full even with only a handful of small apps installed. Worse still, there is no apparent way to recover this storage other than a factory reset, which is not an acceptable solution. Even if you delete all the apps, uninstall all the updates from system apps, clear all the caches and data where possible, the storage space is not freed up. This eventually makes CCwGTV unusable as you end up having to delete apps until there are none left installed and there is no space left on the device to reinstall any apps!

Does your device work? As you may have guessed, the CCwGTV doesn't come with a bottomless pit of storage, it probably swaps and allocates storage dynamically or pulls from the cloud as needed. Much like a phone, we have to decide which apps we need based on the storage capability of the device; after the system uses what it needs, we get what's left.

There is no bug, there are probably hidden files and resources used and calculations we can't see. Google doesn't share that info with users, this is a user-to-user forum. From what I gather your device works as intended and as mentioned in my first post, no one here can speak with authority or help you figure out the calculations used, memory swaps or flushes of memory by the CCwGTV. Whatever or wherever it is, it's not available to us to use, clear, manipulate or flush.

Futaura
Community Member

So, it is normal to only have 0.8Gb available to install apps, when otherwise the CCwGTV is empty? Sounds like a bug to me, not necessarily in Google supplied apps, but perhaps Netflix and/or Prime Video. If it is the Android system that is eating the storage, it needs to flush it when it detects that storage is running low. The CCwGTV has 8Gb storage and at least 3.9Gb of that is supposed to be available for use by apps.

No, it wasn't working correctly because updates kept failing, so I had to keep clearing caches at first before each update. Soon, that wasn't enough and I had to keep deleting apps instead. At that rate, eventually I would have had no space left and no apps installed. I know others with the same issue, one who has only 4 small apps installed.

Jeran
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey there,

Did you have any more questions or need any additional help? If not, I'll go ahead and lock up this thread in 24 hours.

Just checking up,
Jeran
 

Jeran
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey there!

We haven't heard back from Open, and it's been a few days, so I'm locking the thread. As always, feel free to make a new thread if you have any more questions or concerns.

Thank you for your help, GothamNY!

Best regards,
Jeran