Iconia One 7 Storage shrinking gradually but no software added, running out.

Question

Acer Iconia One 7 B1-7A0, Android 7.  Since I got this tablet my storage space keeps shrinking down - no idea why. I have had to delete apps to make a bit of room, however all those apps were installed months ago and at the time there was about 2GB+ space remaining.
Over time something has slowly used up about 1.2GB - 1.5GB of my storage but I can't find anything by searching through directories or using "cleanup" utilities.
I have a theoretical 16GB of internal memory, which seems to work out to about 9.5GB of actual free space I can use. I installed about 7GB of apps and stuff within the first year of having this tablet. All file storage (files, podcasts, photos, etc) are on an external 64GB SD card. There may be 100MB of files in the "onboard" storage at any time, usually downloads waiting to be moved to the SD card.

Is there something about the OS that uses more space over time?

Anyone else had/solved this problem?

billsey · Answer

It's not an Acer thing, it's an Android thing. Google has that locked down pretty tightly as part of their effort to make putting a virus on more difficult.

culturalproduct · Answer

So it appears, from some research, that the only way I can get file manager access to the storage where the problem is occurring, is by "rooting" my tablet. Otherwise I cannot get access to my entire device. I have to say Acer, this is just stupid, I've never met a computer that didn't allow the owner to become a "superuser" with all access, until now. Anyway, its not something I want to try without  backup device at hand.

billsey · Answer

I remember Googling the issue several years ago and found that is was the GPS that was clogging things up. At that time there was a procedure you could do to turn off the logging and remove the data, but I expect it's different now.

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