Galaxy S2 – Clearing Logs on an Unrooted Phone

I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 using an unrooted stock ROM. Lately, I couldn’t update any of my apps, or install new ones as every time I tried it would complain about Insufficient storage available. This was weird, as according to my phone the apps took less than 600MB and still I barely 200MB of free space in my device memory.

SysDump
SysDump

The culprit turns out to be accumulation of various crash-dumps and logs. Apparently in a rooted phone you can delete everything in /data/log, but on an unrooted phone, that folder will appear empty. Luckily there is another way to clear the logs which doesn’t require root access, but it’s kind of hidden: You need to dial *#9900# which will open the SysDump utility. Here you can select Delete dumpstate/logcat which will free up the internal storage from all those logs.

52 thoughts on “Galaxy S2 – Clearing Logs on an Unrooted Phone”

  1. Dude, THANK YOU! I just recovered about 600mb of space on my phone.. running out of space was driving me mad! this solution took all of 2 seconds.. and BAM fixed.

    Thanks!

  3. Blessed you! I’ve came across your page after uninstalling almost all apps from my SGS2 and still having the infamous “Insufficient storage available”. I’ve been very close at choosing to “hard reset” the phone. But you solved all my problems! Or at least mitigated the issue 😉

    Thank you, from the bottom of my heart!

  4. Maaaan thanks! this issue was pissing me off for few months and this totally helped!

  5. Dear Sir,

    Thank you very much. I recovered almost 1.5 GB and now my phone is very good. Tried on Galaxy S2.

  6. Hey,

    My phone is also a unrooted stock ROM. In side the Log folder i have heaps of files and i can delete them. would anything happen if i do delete it? all up its about 4.5 GB

  7. Thank you SO very much!!! I’ve been searching everywhere for a solution for this issue. Works like a charm!

  9. I have done this.. da da daaa….
    Awesome.. 1.4 GB cleaned…
    But after doing this, everytime I try charging the phone a “Battery Disconnected” message keeps popping up… I can’t charge my battery, and battery sign keeps blinking..
    Any body can help, would be highly appreciated.

  11. Dude,

    Thsi is not working.. 4 months back I tried this and cleared. but now again when i try its saing as “connection problem or Invalid MMI Code”. Do u have any other work around for unrooted phone.

  12. You brilliant bastard you! Thanks a ton, previously I always returned to factory settings which was a huge chore.

  13. You need to use stock dialer for this to work.
    Any other installed app which you are using for dialer want work.

  14. Thank you for this helpful tool.

    any idea how i can do the same on an unrooted sony xperia z running android 4.3?

  15. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! The last time I had to do a factory reset to get rid of the bloat and that was such a pain.

    You saved me a lot of time!!!

  16. Pingback: No space left on system partition AGAIN - Android Forums

  17. Dude, thanks a lot ! Blessed you ! problem fixed in 2 seconds when I was searching for a solution for 6 months ! THANK YOU !

  21. One final, last-ditch Google before a factory reset led me to this page! After a painful week of slowly removing app after app, I have gone down from 150+ apps to 30 on my phone and yet still seen free space decline from 200MB to under 70MB. I deleted/moved all photos, podcasts, music. I went into My Files and deleted tons of old directories, all to no avail. Moved every possible app to a 32GB SD card, which was still 90% free! I was almost back to having a Plain Old Telephone (the horror!). Thank you for posting this, so one moment of Google-fu brought me back from the brink of complete reset. And evil stares to those who do not roll/compress and trim their log files!!!

  23. Any idea why this would not be working for me? I select Delete Dumpstate/ logcat and am prompted with ‘Delete Dump ?’ to which I hit ok and…nothing. 210mb of free space before and 210mb after. I hardly have any apps, and still have 9gb of free space on my USB storage. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

  26. OH MY GOD!!! After months of uninstalling apps, even those that i need, finally !!

    Thanks man !

  27. I have the same issue as Jack above. I have dialed the *#9900# and selected dumpstate /logcat and clicked Ok do verify that I wanted to dump the file. And nothingseemed to happen. I restarted my S2 and not a thing changed. Have I not done it correctly?

  28. been having the same problem too.
    but when i tried dialling the code it says, connection problem or invalid mmi code.
    what should i do? thanks in advance

  30. Hey bro i don’t think this will work for my Micromax canvas magnus A117.
    I am kinda stuck in hell due to this problem from more than 5 months now.
    Can’t install any app and it feels like having a landline just to call. Please help me to clear dumpstate in my phone. Will owe you a lot

  31. Hi – same problem……*#9900# makes no difference……did anyone else find an alternate answer. Should we see anything after confirming the delete?

  33. Hi thank you I have been using this for a while now.
    And I was wondering if any of the other actions of the SysDump utility can be of a used to solve other problems or benefit the user in any way?

    Thank you for any contribution in advance.

  34. This Code ‘*#9900#’ doesn’t work on HTC ONE SV. Can someone please help advise if there’s a workable alternative? Thanks in advance.

  35. Pingback: Fix Memory Dump Galaxy S2 Errors - Windows XP, Vista & Windows 7, 8

  37. I installed a 32gb sd card to solve this problem and then discovered the above procedure. It does work exactly as described. However, I can no longer move apps to the sd card which was my original intention because that function is no longer hilited in application manager; except for the few apps I may already have moved there. I am quite sure I had that option before performing that function.
    So why is the menu accessed by *#9900# not widely known and can any other of those options restore my ability to move apps to my new sd card. Also, did that “secret” function negate my need to even install an sd9 card?
    Any feedback would be very welcomed.

  38. This worked like a treat however now have a ZTET83 Android version 4.1.2 T83_T02 that is storage space running low. can you help?

  39. You know how much money you saved me? About 80 pounds/$100. I was this close to buying a new phone, but I thought, let’s see what the internet’s come up with. Multiply this by the amount of happy folks who left their comments…
    This.
    Thanks, man, this is how you get good karma online!

  41. Thank you very much! from 70%+ RAM utilization.. now down to 32%+.. This did solve the problem..

    However, I thought clearing RAM should speed up my S2, but it didn’t. I did a hard reset after the clean up also, but no visible improvement. Is there any other utility that can boost the speed of the phone?

  42. I know that this code *#9900# does work only for Samsung devices ,so now does anybody have any idea how to find the solution of this problem for sony devices .I’m having Sony Xperia C and I’m not able to find a proper solution to this problem yet. Please help !!!!.

  44. Pingback: Are those log files in /storage/sdcard0/log necessary? | XL-UAT

  45. I note suggestion to use stock dialer, what is stock dialer? I tried the #9900# but it wouldn’t work due to connection error as per reply for Surya June 23, 2014 at 21:42

  47. LG G3 Lollipop same problem – cant access the menu. Doesn’t accept the code – anyone got any ideas?

  48. Duuuuuuuuuudedddddddddddeeeeeeeeee…this helped me clear space on my phone. God bless you bro and keep clearing the bad log files of your life mate. cheers

  49. 1 GB cleared, thank you SO SO very much!! Been struggling with this issue for so long. THANK YOU

  50. Wow it cleard half a gig but still have sdcard/log/logcat_cp_boot_radio_201611080609_30.log folder and dont know wats making these cats.

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