The Secret of the Blackberry Memory Bloat

For a few weeks my memory had been steadily disappearing, and no amount of battery pulls and program un-installing would recover the lost sectors. The answer came when I attempted to do a backup; it kept getting stuck at 'RMS Database' and I had to do a battery pull each time to get it to function. I scoured a number of forums to see what the cause could be and finally was led to one which described how to locate the size of your RMS Database (options-status-bbmenu-database sizes). I was shocked when I found mine had ballooned to about 15MB- ideally it shouldn't be more than 200KB or so!

Getting rid of the RMS database is easy but there are a few things you should do first:

1. Make sure you have the registration code for all your third party apps. Some of them will lose that data.

2. Write down all your bbm contacts' pins

3. You'll need your computer to do this.



Hook your Blackberry up to your PC and open the Desktop Software. Click on Backups, then advanced. The look for RMS database- highlight it and click 'clear'. Done!

Now you'll have to open each app to see if it has de-registered itself (BerryWeather, BeejiveIM, and Viigo did on mine) and rekey your reg codes. In my case, I couldn't bbm anyone so I ended up unistalling bbm and reinstalling it from the desktop. However, you might try just uninstalling a contact and then re-adding them to see if that fixes it first.

In mobile devices, they're all kinds of hidden nooks and crannies that can bloat your memory. You just have to know where to look.


UPDATE 8/25/09:

I've been getting a lot of messages about this article, so let me clarify a few things:

1. The photo shows the RMS database after I cleared it out. I didn't take a screenshot of it when it was 15MB (unfortunately).

2. The other databases can also get bloated, so be sure to check them too.

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