[android] Undeleteable .thumbnails Index

[CAM]

I have a problem that's causing me severe grief on my phone. It's running out of space and I've deleted the contents of my gallery, but the space isn't being freed up. It's being caused by a subfolder in the DCIM folder called .thumbnails which contains an index file that is over 2GB in size. When I delete the file via the file browser in Storage Settings, the space appears to remain reserved and the file comes back a few hours later at 2GB again! It even does this if I try and delete the entire DCIM folder. Any idea how I get rid of this?

 

It's /DCIM/.thumbnails/.thumbdata4 and lots of numbers

Edited September 12, 2018 by CAM

[Arreks]

Are you rooted?

 

If it's coming back every time, as soon as it's been deleted try creating a blank file with the same filename and potentially editing perms on it so it can't be modified

[CAM]

The problem is the space isn't even being freed up when it is deleted. The phone still says I have only a few MB left when I delete the file which is over 2GB in size.

[Arreks]

Well that's weird. Never seen that before personally, but I just read this which may explain it:

 

I've never tried that, but a raw idea: the reason behind that most likely is the "FUSE" system used here. Assuming we're talking about /sdcard: that's just a "symbolic link" pointing to a different place. Maybe you can change file permissions at the "real location". Note that can be multiple "hops", the symbolic link pointing to another symbolic link. On my device, /sdcard points to /storage/self/primary which then points to /mnt/user/0/primary which points to /storage/emulated/0. The latter then is the "real location".

 

Maybe see if there's a true location for the file then delete at that location and make a read-only file or directory in it's place there instead if that's the case? if not then no idea.. probably a limitation of the system image.

[Arthur]

the file comes back a few hours later at 2GB again! It even does this if I try and delete the entire DCIM folder.

Have you tried force stopping the gallery app so that it isn't running and then deleting the thumbnail file(s)?

 

Failing that, what happens if you delete the thumbnail(s) and then use a different gallery app like Simple Gallery, Camera Roll or Piktures?

[lewisVeryPC]

is it a synchronised folder? If it is being backed up when you delete it locally then it may be restoring it, I've had this with Dropbox and Google photos.

 

It may also be being sent to a "recycle bin" (Samsungs have one annoyingly) so you could try delete then empty bin.

[CAM]

I took the nuclear option and reset the phone to get rid of it. An annoyance though.