Hidden Memory?

[theWolfTamer]

Just got my first tablet--a M906G from geeks.com. The specs list:

Black color at front and white on back
Google Android OS 4.0 pre-installed
9-inch TFT capacitive touch panel
800 x 480 resolution
Allwinner A13, Cortex A8 1.0 GHz processor
512 MB RAM
4 GB internal flash memory
microSD/microSDHC expansion card slot (supports up to 32 GB)
Integrated IEEE 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN
Built-in speaker and microphone
Built-in front-facing 0.3 MP camera
G-sensor function provides orientation sensing
Built-in rechargeable lithium battery

Problem is I don't see the 4gb flash memory.


Am I looking in the right place? I like the tablet but oviously am not pleased with getting less than what I paid for. Is not there.

Thanks.

 

[leeshor]

I'm not certain I see a problem. The "total space" figure will be far less than the actual size of the internal SSD. There is reserved space for the operating system that isn't included. I have a 32GB tablet that displays 27.67 GB total space and that's a correct figure.

 

[J515OP]

Hi WolfTamer, congrats on your new tablet. Unfortunately the amount of memory listed is not the memory that is free for the user but the total memory that the device has (this is the common way to list the storage size). Of the available storage the system typically uses about 3-4GB. So you need to subtract that from whatever the advertised storage is in order to get the user available storage. For example a tablet with 8GB has about 4GB empty for you to use and a 16GB tablet has about 12GB for the users files. It is actually slightly more complicated than that based on how the manufacturer decides to partition the system space but it is a good rule of thumb.

In your case it looks like you have two available storage areas on the device. The first one is the system storage and it looks like it is 504MB. You will not be able to access this storage. Certain apps will only install here and apps will use this area for their data.

The second one is 2.07GB which it looks like is available to you. Certain apps may install here but primarily this is where you can store music, movies and other files you save to your device.

The good news is that you have an SD card slot which you should be able to use for anything else you want to store on your tablet. In addition to the SD card slot you can look into cloud storage such as dropbox and Google drive which will allow you to store and access files in the cloud saving internal storage space.

JP

Edit: Shoot beat to the punch by leeshor thanks to my long winded typing

 

[leeshor]

No problem JP, you provided a better explanation anyway. It was worth the typing.

 

[theWolfTamer]

Thanks for the explanations. I suspected it might have something to do with that but I wasn't sure. I have a sdhc card already in there and try to move as much as I can to it. I guess I need to figure out rooting next.

 

[leeshor]

Thanks for the explanations. I suspected it might have something to do with that but I wasn't sure. I have a sdhc card already in there and try to move as much as I can to it. I guess I need to figure out rooting next.

Just a heads-up that you may not want to consider rooting unless you have a good reason and a good plan. Problems after rooting are rampant.

 

[theWolfTamer]

I won't. I haven't rooted my phone and it's chock full of bloat ware that I don't even use and would like to get remove. The only reason I'd do it is if I'm in the same situation with the tablet. I'm still researching rooting the phone and I've had it for two years now.

 

[theWolfTamer]

The internal memory is called sdcard. The external is extsd. When I move to sd it moves to the internal. is there a way to move to the external card? I mean things like pictures, music, etc.

 

[driftinganomaly]

I have a Coby mid8042 and my external sdcard naturally mounts to /mnt/extsd. Look for the /mnt/ directory and see what directories are in it.

 

[theWolfTamer]

that's what I meant. only dcim and lost.dir were on there. guess I need to watch were stuff is going. I would like it if the apps could be on extsd.

 

[driftinganomaly]

I recently learned a command that might help. In a terminal emulator, use the command "busybox df -h". That will list the sd cards and system partition et cetera with information on size, how much is used, and how much is available. It also lists its location.

Hopefully this helps.

 

[Juxxize]

The internal memory is called sdcard. The external is extsd. When I move to sd it moves to the internal. is there a way to move to the external card? I mean things like pictures, music, etc.

I use ES file explorer file manager to move my files to the extsd memory , select the file you want to move for example a video and more it to the extsd.