Wtf filesystem does android use underneath everything? Deleting a 4GB file causes my phone to basically stall and become unusable for a few minutes. Which shouldn't happen from just unlinking a file. Deleting a file in most filesystems is an incredibly cheap operation.
@SpaceLifeForm the 4g file is on the phones internal memory
Wow. What model?
@SpaceLifeForm fairphone 3
Did you root it?
DId you ever add microSD card?
hXXps://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/10489306843409-Install-a-Micro-SD-Card
@SpaceLifeForm root it. No. Add micro SD, yes but as a separate storage device. So not one contiguous file system
Smart move not to marry.
The problem may be that if you are putting it on the internal 64GB flash, which is using ext4, it may be mounted to do secure delete.
So, when you delete the 4GB file, it may be writing 4GB of zeros over the allocated blocks of that file.
I do not have a PinePhone, but this is my guess based upon reading.
The best way to find out is to root it.
Is there some reason you do not want to use the removable microSD card to store such a large file?
@SpaceLifeForm yes. The app that created the file won't put it anywhere else...
I would not use that app then.
You are going to wear out the flash if you keep writing to it.
The flash may already be dying.
What is the app? What is it's function? Can you not find a replacement that will behave better?
@quixoticgeek
Just checked my OG Droid, it is using yaffs2 for internal flash (/system /data /cache etc)
Supposedly it is all ext4 now.
hXXps://yaffs.net/
I have some bizzaro old android somewhere that uses a modified fat, but it is garbage, because it does not support symlinks.
As to your 4GB file on external storage (some type of sdcard), it probably is formatted FAT32 which apparently is slow to delete on flash.