I did a search and couldn't find the exact info i was looking for. I possibly didn't put in the right search terms...
Anyways, with App2SD I noticed how it creates the hidden androidsecure folder to store the app data. Now my question is:
When flashing to different Froyo roms and having to do full wipes, when I boot up first time and it pulls all my apps from the market as it syncs, does it put those apps back to that SD card? And if not, when I move them back to the SD card, does it overwrite that apps existing information or does it add a 2nd data storage file? I just want to know if when I'm doing full wipes if I should delete the app data off my SD card before it boots up a first time.
Thanks.
Related
Hi everyone,
I just updated my Aria to FR007 and really want to have a 'brand new' phone look + feel.
I would like to delete ALL unnecessary files in the SD card & phone memory cos at the moment, I feel like something is not amiss.
I only have 574mb left out of the stock 2gb SD card. And my internal phone storage have only 132mb available space left.
I would like to save only my nandroid backup in the SDcard and nothing else. So deleting all other datas like saved apps, games, contacts, images, music and others are fine.
Please advice what procedure I need to follow as I am not familiar with what files are safe to delete. Is it safe to just do this:
Settings > SD & Phone Storage >Factory Data Reset ?
Thank you for your advice!
I would like to know this as well because out of a 8GB SD card (7.59GB) i only have 549MB remaining and i only have 1 nandroid back up and 3 GB of music on the phone.
That's a loaded question dependant upon what apps are installed. Many apps create folders and populate the sd card in some form.
Best I can tell you, mount the storage and copy the sd content to your computer. Erase the sdcard content and see what happens after reboot. Should only potentially bother 3rd party apps.
Sent from my Liberty using XDA App
Thanks for the advice BelacNongaw.
I thought about that too but I was thinking maybe there are some system files or essential files that MUST be in the SD card. And also, wouldn't deleting everything in the SD card also delete my nandroid backup? And Clockwork? <-They do reside in the SD card, yes?
Let me reiterate please: I want a 'brand new' phone while keeping only my last nandroid backup Will a factory reset do?
Thanks again everyone!
I had the same problem and the only thing I noticed was nandroid backups take a lot of space and also apps that have been deleted keep their folders in the sd card
Sent from my HTC Liberty using XDA App
Okay this is what I did:
1. Back up my SDcard to the computer (plug it in, mount as disk drive, copy all contents to a folder on the desktop).
2. Restart the Aria in Recovery mode (Vol. down while Power up)
3. Go to Recovery > Partitions > Format SD Card
Now I have 1.84gb of SD storage with these folders (viewed in Astro):
1. .footprints / thumbnails / voices
2. LOST.DIR
3. tmp / .astro / astro
Haven't tested everything yet but eBuddy and Market are doing well, downloading and app installation are running fine too.
Now I'm quite concerned about the following:
1. Does this mean that I do not have clockwork anymore? Because there was a 'clockworkmod' folder in the SDcard before I formatted it.
2. Am I screwed?
Thank you for any suggestions/advice. I hope this thread can offer some helpful tips to those who need it in the future.
You are fine. The clockworkmod folder is where rom manager downloads and your nandroid backups are stored. You can just copy it back or rom manager will generate it again next time you nandroid backup.
Sent from my Liberty using XDA App
Thanks for reminding me BelacNongaw.
I just made a nandroid backup of my bare minimum Aria, and it automaticall created a clockworkmod folder in the SDcard with the md5 file.
Anyways, it's great to have all these space now
Great post guys I was wondering this myself. I recently rooted my inspire 4g to factory restore but all 3rd party apps are still on the sd card and i have no intention of re-installing any of them so i am looking for a safe way to delete unnessesary folders without deleting the vital ones, ill give your suggestions a try.
Technically you can safely delete everything that's on the sd card. Android will automatically create whatever folders it needs. Of course you'll lose any data saved to the sd, but you wont mess up your phone at all.
Sent from my cm7 Aria.
i have a g2 but i have the same thoughts i want the space back from sd card not worried about loosing any thing just dont want to mess the phone up
Don't worry. SD card is totally an external of the phone. Delete everything, it doesn't matter. And backup your needed files to any place you like. You can move them back to your reformatted SD card whenever you like.
Hi all,
maybe a very simple question here, but when I move files to SD (using Elelinux/Cyanogen, android 2.3.4), in which folder do they end up, with which file extension? When I had to flash a new ROM, sometimes I had to do a full wipe including factory reset, so all apps vanished from the phone, but did they still persist on SD? and if yes, in which folder, and do I need to delete these files?
I've searched my SD-card, found different folders with app-like names and different extensions, but I don't know which is the correct one.
(example: moved Facebook app to SD to save internal memory space, flashed new ROM -> factory reset, installed FB app again, it says I can copy it to SD again, but is there still a piece of the previous FB app on the SD?)
thanks for your help!
EDIT: did some searching and some say it might me the ".android_secure" folder. Is it safe to just delete everything in this folder? because it's taking up some space...
That's correct, the applications end up in .android_secure. If you do a full wipe (factory reset) it is safe to remove it, since those apps needs to be restored before they can be used anyway.
Br,
Henrik
I was trying to root my HTC One V and i unlocked the bootlocker,however that resulted in factory reset of my phone.Whenever i installed an app on my phone i always moved it to sd card via settings-->apps.I assumed that once my phone restarts after factory reset it will read the apps in the sd card but it is not so.The phone does read songs,pictures and contacts stored on my sd card and the sd card does have the folder of each app but how do i install it from the sd card?
one eplerger
The stock android move-app-to-sd does not move all app data to the sd card and some data is left on the device on purpose.
I might be wrong (since I never researched this) but I think you cannot restore those apps.
Fabur87 said:
The stock android move-app-to-sd does not move all app data to the sd card and some data is left on the device on purpose.
I might be wrong (since I never researched this) but I think you cannot restore those apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay
But is it possible that if i install the same app again,it reads the application settings from the sd card?Like if i download and install a game,is it possible for the game to read my score from it's folder in the sd card?
If the app is storing this kind of information (settings etc.) on the sd-card as a separate file then I would say that it is very likely that it will be able to read that data.
But not all apps store that kind of information on the sd-card (security reasons etc.).
I am not sure what happens to the parts of the app itself that are still on the sd-card though (I am talking about the app itself). I guess that the app will not care about those if it is stored in the internal storage. Moving the app to the sd card will probably overwrite the data on the sd-card. If the app stores the settings etc. in one of its own files then it might be overwritten as well.
You might want to make a backup of those files, even if you can't use the information in the end. But if they are gone they are gone.
Some really crazy idea would be to download the app, move it to the sd-card and then overwrite the files on the sd with the ones from the backup.
If android has no verification or security methods for this and there was no update to the app there might be a small change that this will work.
But I guess that the chances to get all your settings and user data back are still very slim as those are possibly not stored there.
But if you have the backup and some xda user swings by with a good idea (or more knowledge that me) you can still try that.
Hello, xda
I have a problem with the new ROM I have installed. I had CM 10 Android 4.1 until I saw what paranoid android 3.1.5 can do like resizing applications, and I wanted to install it. So i did, but there seems to be a problem: the applications that I moved to SD card are not showing in the app drawer. Weren't those applications supposed to remain on the sd card after I have restored to factory settings, wiped cache and dalvik cache and installed the new ROM? The weird thing is that they don't appear in sdcard1/data/app neither. I want to see where the applications that i moved to sd card are located....
There would be a second problem though, the battery drains faster...Is there an application to track the battery usage just to make a comparision with the CM 10.1 ?
Thank you
Hello mlegs,
what tool /app did you use to move your apps to the SD card?
I would assume that your apps should still be there on your SD card, as "apk" files on the file system.
But I suppose that they do not look like "installed" apps on your new ROM, so I would not be surprised if they do not show in the app drawer. In other words, I think that your freshly installed ROM does not "know" those apps.
Did you already search through your SD card with a file manager?
Best regards,
Sirrahzeph
Sirrahzeph said:
Hello mlegs,
what tool /app did you use to move your apps to the SD card?
I would assume that your apps should still be there on your SD card, as "apk" files on the file system.
But I suppose that they do not look like "installed" apps on your new ROM, so I would not be surprised if they do not show in the app drawer. In other words, I think that your freshly installed ROM does not "know" those apps.
Did you already search through your SD card with a file manager?
Best regards,
Sirrahzeph
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I used the tool from settings-apps... and selected "move to sd card" one by one
I searched the folder where he usually installs the apps, but there were only the ones that I installed with the new rom.. the ones installed in the old rom (which I moved to sd card before factory reset)weren't there.... Could it be that he removed the apps after I selected wipe data/factory settings ? I saw writing something regarding the sd card data in that process...
The old rom was CM 10 with android 4.1, the new rom is ParanodAndroid 3.1.5 with android 4.2
If have a backup of the old rom, restore only data partition. You can have those apps back.
I think when you reset to factory settings all the applications are getting uninstalled & all userdata wil be cleared.
Hi all,
I recently did a full nandroid backup on my i9100 onto the external SD card, then took SD card and put into another i9100 and attempted a restore on that device using the nandroid backup from the other.
When I put the SD card back into the first phone, a bunch of apps are greyed out and can't be launched. They appear in the app manager (in settings) and on the launcher shortcuts screen, but there are no icons at all in the launcher apps grid (where all the apps are listed). When attempting to move them back onto the internal storage, the message is that they 'don't exist' .
Looking in the 'android_secure' folder in the SD card (with the card in a card reader on the PC) I found it to be empty, and its empty in the root explorer in android.
When I did the nandroid recovery on the second phone I also did a 'wipe data', 'wipe cache', and 'wipe dalvik cache' on the device during the install. I assumed this resulted in deleting the apps which were stored on the SD card as well, so I ran a data recovery on the 'android_secure' folder and found a bunch of deleted '.asec' files., (though no apks). Putting one of these asec files for one of the lost apps back into the -androi_secure' folder didnt result in the app data being recognised on the device though.
So now Im stuck looking for a way to get these apps back (on the first phone I mean) and am hoping someone could suggest what I could try next. Would the wipe of the second phone whilst it had the sd card in it have also wiped out the apps on the sd card? Are these .asec files what got wiped?
LiteROm Custom based on Jelly Bean
64Gb SD Card
Rooted i9100
Thanks for any suggestions.
califauna said:
Hi all,
I recently did a full nandroid backup on my i9100 onto the external SD card, then took SD card and put into another i9100 and attempted a restore on that device using the nandroid backup from the other.
When I put the SD card back into the first phone, a bunch of apps are greyed out and can't be launched. They appear in the app manager (in settings) and on the launcher shortcuts screen, but there are no icons at all in the launcher apps grid (where all the apps are listed). When attempting to move them back onto the internal storage, the message is that they 'don't exist' .
Looking in the 'android_secure' folder in the SD card (with the card in a card reader on the PC) I found it to be empty, and its empty in the root explorer in android.
When I did the nandroid recovery on the second phone I also did a 'wipe data', 'wipe cache', and 'wipe dalvik cache' on the device during the install. I assumed this resulted in deleting the apps which were stored on the SD card as well, so I ran a data recovery on the 'android_secure' folder and found a bunch of deleted '.asec' files., (though no apks). Putting one of these asec files for one of the lost apps back into the -androi_secure' folder didnt result in the app data being recognised on the device though.
So now Im stuck looking for a way to get these apps back (on the first phone I mean) and am hoping someone could suggest what I could try next. Would the wipe of the second phone whilst it had the sd card in it have also wiped out the apps on the sd card? Are these .asec files what got wiped?
LiteROm Custom based on Jelly Bean
64Gb SD Card
Rooted i9100
Thanks for any suggestions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Install titanium backup pro, and check if the apps are frozen. If they are, then defrost them and then you can use them. But, since you did a data-wipe before the backup, your data can not be recovered. You can also try this app, which can recover some data partially - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.defianttech.diskdigger&hl=en
Regards.
warrior1208 said:
Install titanium backup pro, and check if the apps are frozen. If they are, then defrost them and then you can use them. But, since you did a data-wipe before the backup, your data can not be recovered. You can also try this app, which can recover some data partially - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.defianttech.diskdigger&hl=en
Regards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The apps aren't frozen - I have checked this and the apps are listed as grey icons that 'dont exist' according to the application manager.
I have done a data recovery using R-stuio already, and as I mention, .asec files were found for each of the missing apps (right there in the 'android_secure' folder on the SD card). Are these files useful, or do I need to recover another type of file?
.