[jbag1489]

Since upgrading to os2 all of my files - music, video,downloads, etc... - are duplicated in the "misc" folder...

This is making my playbook have much less effective space. Anyone else have this problem or know how to fix?

[princo]

I am having the same issue. it looks like the files are connected somehow when you delete something from the misc files they delete the same file from the other folders as well.

[jbag1489]

that's whats been happening with me also

[F2]

I am not sure but it may be a "ghosting" or type of shortcut so that Android apps have access. Hopefully, tons of videos, etc are not really being duplicated.

[jbag1489]

I hope not. Maybe apps are taking more space than I'm realizing.

[ordigas]

I am not sure but it may be a "ghosting" or type of shortcut so that Android apps have access. Hopefully, tons of videos, etc are not really being duplicated.

My guess is that this is the case. I also noticed the "duplicates" but my free space before and after installing 2.0 remained the same.

[princo]

unfortunately they taking twice the space. when I select all folder it say I have 6.76 used, when Unselect only the MISC folder it says I have 3.38 used?? any thoughts

[shaf77]

I have the same issue as well...

[F2]

We need an Android Expert to tell us what is happening.

But if I look at OPTIONS (gear), About/Hardware, I see that I have free storage of about 26.5GB. That is approximately correct as I have placed just a bit more files/media on the 64 as I had on the 32. So more than half the space is available. If the 24 or so gigabytes were REALLY duplicated, I would have almost no space left/available. I believe it is just a mirroring of the files for the Android side of things. But I could be wrong.

[omniusovermind]

I'm seeing the same thing, and I believe it to be shortcuts or images a swell because I haven't seen the space taken being doubled.

[varunsain]

I am not sure but it may be a "ghosting" or type of shortcut so that Android apps have access. Hopefully, tons of videos, etc are not really being duplicated.

Do not install [ANY] Android App

[kjic13]

Plugged my PB into my PC, went to Z:\ and searched for *.mp3. Deleted everything in the \androids\music folder and cleared up an extra 1.6GB of space on my PB. Apparently they weren't shortcuts on my system.

EDIT:

Hah!!! I deleted all those files in that folder and they also disappeared out of Z:\Playbook\music too. I guess they were just duplicates. Now... to load up 1.6GB of music again. FML

[zorecati]

Do not install [ANY] Android App

Please stop spewing misinformation. As I said before, there are plenty of android apps in app world that don't work either. The few I have side loaded have worked as good or better than the ones in app world.

[F2]

Plugged my PB into my PC, went to Z:\ and searched for *.mp3. Deleted everything in the \androids\music folder and cleared up an extra 1.6GB of space on my PB. Apparently they weren't shortcuts on my system.

EDIT:

Hah!!! I deleted all those files in that folder and they also disappeared out of Z:\Playbook\music too. I guess they were just duplicates. Now... to load up 1.6GB of music again. FML

I think someone mentioned that above. But more proof that they are NOT duplicates but mirrors, ghosts, shortcuts, phantoms, whatever, they are NOT TAKING UP ANY REAL space although the shortcuts might take some miniscule space in some OS-in-the-sky kind of way.

[zorecati]

Are we sure those weren't just links? I just did a fresh wipe and update and just fired up wireless file sharing and copied a file to downloads and it also showed up in android\downloads. I'm thinking they may just be links.

[varunsain]

Are we sure those weren't just links? I just did a fresh wipe and update and just fired up wireless file sharing and copied a file to downloads and it also showed up in android\downloads. I'm thinking they may just be links.

do the math.. the big misc folder u see.. thats android inside

[princo]

I have a ticket open with Blackberry right now and they are working the issue. All that I can say is when I did my factory reset through desktop manager I uploaded a picture and again it was in the misc folder, when I view the size of my pictures folder and the misc folder they are exactly the same if they were a link of a gost files then it would have a smaller files size than the original.

[varunsain]

I have a ticket open with Blackberry right now and they are working the issue. All that I can say is when I did my factory reset through desktop manager I uploaded a picture and again it was in the misc folder, when I view the size of my pictures folder and the misc folder they are exactly the same if they were a link of a gost files then it would have a smaller files size than the original.

its not an issue with the misc folder.. its the android folder within in.. i have other folders as well in the misc folder adn they dont seem to mess roun..

[suzieque]

I noticed the duplicate issue today too.

[zorecati]

its not an issue with the misc folder.. its the android folder within in.. i have other folders as well in the misc folder adn they dont seem to mess roun..

Clearly you either aren't good at math or unable to comprehend what others have stated so follow me on this. I have 12g free on my pb according to about/hardware. I copy 400 megs to my downloads folder. According to hardware, i have 11.6g free. I checked misc/android/downloads and the file showed up there as well. Well if we do the math, if it really took up twice the space, I'd only have 11.2gig free right? Right.

Secondly, if you were to copy files to the misc/android/downloads folder, they would also show up in the root downloads folder.

[zorecati]

I noticed the duplicate issue today too.

It's not an issue and it's by design. They are just symbolic links. I did my testing with a freshly wiped, no other apps installed, pb.

[taylortbb]

The second copies do not take additional space. I am 100% certain of this.

If you connect in with SSH and developer mode you'll discover they're what's called a symbolic link, which is kind of like a shortcut in Windows (but not really). It's a Unix thing that anyone from the Windows world probably isn't familiar with.

When you ask your computer to find the size of your shared folder it calculates that size by adding up the size of every file inside it. It doesn't know the files are linked so it counts them twice. If you want to see how this can work take a freshly wiped PlayBook with no apps and load up the shared folders till they're completely full. This will result in about 12GB of media on a 16GB PlayBook. If you then check how big your shared folder is on your computer you'll see it say 24GB (12GB x 2). If the files actually took up double space this would be impossible, obviously a 16GB PlayBook can't hold 24GB of media.

A second way to confirm this. Check how much free space you have, now copy 1GB of media to your PB. Your computer will report the PlayBook has an extra 2GB in the shared folder, but if you check how much free space you have (on the PB) it will report only 1GB was used.

Symbolic links do this when file managers don't account for them, and any Windows or Mac file manager won't (they're a Unix/Linux thing). I've seen drives report they're 225% full because of this, when really they're only 75% full (same content linked 3 times).

[zorecati]

The second copies do not take additional space. I am 100% certain of this.

If you connect in with SSH and developer mode you'll discover they're what's called a symbolic link, which is kind of like a shortcut in Windows (but not really). It's a Unix thing that anyone from the Windows world probably isn't familiar with.

When you ask your computer to find the size of your shared folder it calculates that size by adding up the size of every file inside it. It doesn't know the files are linked so it counts them twice. If you want to see how this can work take a freshly wiped PlayBook with no apps and load up the shared folders till they're completely full. This will result in about 12GB of media on a 16GB PlayBook. If you then check how big your shared folder is on your computer you'll see it say 24GB (12GB x 2). If the files actually took up double space this would be impossible, obviously a 16GB PlayBook can't hold 24GB of media.

A second way to confirm this. Check how much free space you have, now copy 1GB of media to your PB. Your computer will report the PlayBook has an extra 2GB in the shared folder, but if you check how much free space you have (on the PB) it will report only 1GB was used.

Symbolic links do this when file managers don't account for them, and any Windows or Mac file manager won't (they're a Unix/Linux thing). I've seen drives report they're 225% full because of this, when really they're only 75% full (same content linked 3 times).

What he said ^^

[SifJar]

The second copies do not take additional space. I am 100% certain of this.

If you connect in with SSH and developer mode you'll discover they're what's called a symbolic link, which is kind of like a shortcut in Windows (but not really). It's a Unix thing that anyone from the Windows world probably isn't familiar with.

When you ask your computer to find the size of your shared folder it calculates that size by adding up the size of every file inside it. It doesn't know the files are linked so it counts them twice. If you want to see how this can work take a freshly wiped PlayBook with no apps and load up the shared folders till they're completely full. This will result in about 12GB of media on a 16GB PlayBook. If you then check how big your shared folder is on your computer you'll see it say 24GB (12GB x 2). If the files actually took up double space this would be impossible, obviously a 16GB PlayBook can't hold 24GB of media.

A second way to confirm this. Check how much free space you have, now copy 1GB of media to your PB. Your computer will report the PlayBook has an extra 2GB in the shared folder, but if you check how much free space you have (on the PB) it will report only 1GB was used.

Symbolic links do this when file managers don't account for them, and any Windows or Mac file manager won't (they're a Unix/Linux thing). I've seen drives report they're 225% full because of this, when really they're only 75% full (same content linked 3 times).

While I don't doubt what you're saying, you can use symlinks on Windows I use them personally to sync some folders to dropbox from other locations on my computer.

I also just decided to test your theory about Windows not accounting for symlinks - it does. I just symlinked my video folder (over 20GB worth) to another location on my hard drive. The used space on my hard drive reported in Windows explorer did not change at all. EDIT: That's on Windows 7 BTW.

Seeing as the "about device" thing seems to report the correct value as well, I am wondering where people are seeing the wrong value? In Windows? Maybe it can't deal with symlinks it didn't create itself?

[Chaddface]

I have no idea what Taylor just said but I can say a 2gb download from the video store took up exactly 2gb of space on the PB. That's all that matters to most of use.