What is the purpose of the Android/data folder on my phone?

[Ilya_K]

Hi Dropbox team,

• Could you let me know what is the purpose of this folder?
• What can you tell me about the file stored there? How did it get there in your opinion?
• Could a dropbox user know about the existence of this file?

"...\Documents\samsung\Kies\Backup\GT-I9100_20130621045009\Video\Android\data\com.dropbox.android\files\scratch\upload\video.mov"

Could you reply in layman terms please?

I really appreciate your help.

Regards

Ilya

[Daphne]

Hey there @Ilya_K, I hope you're having a good day so far!

It looks like this is an application data folder, that just contains some of the data for the Dropbox app on your device.

Did you possibly recently upload a video file to your account through the mobile app?

Let me know - thanks!

[Ilya_K]

I'm not sure.

How did that file got there?

What is the purpose of this application data folder?

Thanks

[Jay]

Hi @Ilya_K, this could be a temporary movie file in the cache folder when it was uploading to Dropbox, as it's in a scratch (i.e. temporary) folder.

Additionally, the file path implies this is a backup of data on your phone by the Samsung Kies app. Most likely it did that backup during the upload.

Hope this helps!

[Ilya_K]

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@Jay 

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Thank you Jay,

one more question. Obvious question, but I need to have it answered by an expert dropboxer.

1. What's more likely in your opinion?

• this file was copied to this location by the user
• this file was copied to this location by the dropbox automatically before it got transferred using Kies software without user's knowledge.

[Jay]

The file location seems a little too specific to be copied by a user, so I believe it was copied there by Dropbox, perhaps as an offline file or cached file when it was played. Kies then backed up that file as well, depending on that app's settings.

Hope this helps to clarify matters!