Apps "disappearing" from SD card, but different ones every time I reboot - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi,
I have a stock LG LM-X410ASR (Xpressions Plus) that came with Android 8.1.0 installed. I installed a 32 GB SD card and installed a bunch of apps. On this phone, if you go to Settings/General/Apps & notifications/App info, you can tap on an app tap on "Storage," and then "Change" storage from internal to SD, if the app allows it. I did this for every app that would allow it, except for some that run better from internal storage, or whose widgets won't work right unless they remain on internal storage.
I've had this phone since the weekend after Thanksgiving, having bought it on sale at Wal-Mart. Since then, it's been performing well, until today.
I have Nova Launcher installed, as well.
I was updating apps in Google Play, and Castbox didn't want to cooperate, so I cleared Play Store cache and rebooted the phone. When I rebooted, I saw a lot of grayed-out shortcut icons on my home screens. DriveSync also had a failed sync. When I went to DriveSync, it wanted me to find the root of the SD card, again, so it could have permission to write to the SD card. When I tried to enable this access, I could see the SD card, but the hex name was not visible and DriveSync did not accept my selection.
Neither Astro File Manager nor the native file manager app would allow me to copy, move, delete, or create files on the SD card any longer.
I have rebooted the phone multiple times, and have been paring down my apps in preparation to do a factory reset, hoping this will solve my problems. Each time I've rebooted the phone, a different selection of apps was grayed out or missing.
At this point, I'm not sure whether I have an SD card problem or a hardware problem with the phone. I would like to find out so that I can replace the SD card or file a warranty claim with LG.
Would a factory reset followed by installation of apps that can be "changed" to SD storage, changing the storage location, and rebooting the phone be sufficient, or should I try this with a brand new SD card installed?
Thanks1

Related

[Q] Apps missing using apps2SD

Hi all
I have just installed CyanogenMod 7 on my HTC Desire.
I partitioned my 16GB Class 10 MicroSD card into a 14GB FAT32 partition and a 2GB ext3 partition. I installed DarkTremor's apps2sd scripts, and the apps2sd gui. I set it to save apps to the SD card, and to move the dalvik cache to the SD card.
Everything was working well: I was able to install apps, and they were going to the SD card (had they not, I would have hit the limit of the Desire's internal storage!). Rebooting didn't negatively affect anything - I rebooted several times and the apps were still there.
Then, when I opened the Theme Explorer, the phone just hung. It didn't respond to any input, from the touch screen to pressing or long pressing the power button. Eventually, in desperation, I took the battery out to do a hard reset.
When the phone booted back up, all the apps I had just installed were gone. Their icons remained on the homepage, but with the generic Android icon instead of their actual icon. They were missing from the ADWLauncher panel. The apps are still present in the list of apps, but are missing their icons and proper names. Instead they are displayed with a generic Android icon, and their "long-form" name, for example "com.amazon.kindle".
In addition to all the apps I had installed being missing, certain apps that came with CyanogenMod were also missing, such as: ROM Manager and the program that lists the apps with root permissions (I forget the name). Also, the Market application is missing. However, the calendar, messages, Google Talk, Theme Chooser, etc are all still present and working.
I tried rebooting the phone multiple times, as well as unmounting and remounting the SD card, with no improvement.
Using the terminal emulator, I can see that /sd-ext still has five directories: app, app-private, dalvik-cache, data, lost+found. However, all these directories, including the /sd-ext/app directory, are empty.
Running a2sd reinstall goes through the list of apps, but for each app that is missing, it says that it cannot find the .apk file for that app.
I suppose, then, that I have two questions:
1. Can I restore my apps somehow?
2. If not, and I have to reinstall, how can I prevent this from happening again?
(At the root of both of these is the question "why did this happen?" so if anyone knows that, that would be a great help too!)
Thank you all in advance - please let me know if there's any other information I can provide.
I have a similar problem with my Samsung Galaxy S2 on Sprint. I used Apps2SD by Sam Lu to move many of my apps over to my new 32 gig SD Card. After a bit I realized that I had moved many of the apps over that should have stayed on the main internal storage, mainly because of widgets. So I moved many of them back.
Shortly after doing that I was at a retreat with my phone on airplane mode to preserve battery life. I took some pictures and videos, read my Kindle app and Bible and then plugged it in to charge. The next day several of the pictures and videos I took showed up as a black icon and were not accessible. Then I noticed that all the apps that I had moved to the SD card were "greyed out" and even some of the apps that I had moved back to the internal storage. The phone then told me the SD card needed to be formatted.
Since then I have tried to use file recovery software to recover missing files on the SD card and it finds hundreds of photos and several videos, but nothing else. So the big question is, where are my apps? I hope you find a solution to your issue because it may be the same solution for my issue.
Sincerely,
Nathan

Apps in SD card not visible after factory reset of phone?

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.

[Q] Apps Moved to SD Disappear fix?

I have a weird and it seems like a common problem too, i have found some threads about it but either they are a little different from mine or they dont have a real solution for it.
So yesterday i decided to download a bunch of games, i never used enough applications to need to move them to my sd, but since i downloaded a lot of them some started to get installed to the sd and i manually moved some of them too to the sd card. But while i was still downloading more apps, some of them started to show the android icon, and when i tried to run them they crashed. The weird part is that it was just some of them.
After that i tried rebooting my phone hoping that would help the phone to reload and see the apps, but that just made it worst since those, and some others went totally missing from the drawer. Is not because the launcher loads before the sd card is read because i already checked that.
So i went to settings>applications and discovered that all those applications are listed there but listed with their other name (dont know how to call it, but is like "com.developer.app" ). All of the missing apps are like that and i cant run them.
- I have formatted the sd using gparted, same behavior
- I have formatted the sd and the internal (sd?) with the phone
- I have done a factory reset with no luck
- I have runned fsck in both internal and external sd's
- The files of the applications are in the .android_secure folder in the external sd card "app.asec"
- The sd card is working (files music, everything else is working)
- I dont know what else to do, I want to be able to use my sd card to install apps
Thanks for your help
Simple Answer
Just Install Nd Run The Apk First Nd Play now simply move To SD
It Will Work.
Same Problem In Galaxy Y .
SolveD
Press Thank If I Helped
I dont fully understand you, but i think you are telling me to install, then run the app and then move it to the sd card, i did that to almost all of them (i was trying the games ) but that didnt make any difference. Thank you anyway!
looks like it was a faulty micro sd card switched to another one and problem solved

Apps2sd "sd fix" messed up phone. Cant View files but can see under TWRP.

Edit -- Nvm. I just went in and did a factory reset. Pretty sad since I hadnt backed up in about 2 weeks. My loss. My stupiditiy. Learn form our mistakes.
After the factory reset, I can view my SD card again which is pretty nice, so not a total loss.
-------------------------
Alright. A little about my phone. Its a Galaxy s5 with an 8gb micro sd card. The phone is rooted.
Last night I installed Apps2sd. When I first opened the app it mentioned that my SD card was not setup and I would need to run some "sd fix". I accepted, the phone rebooted and then when it came back up, its as if my SD card was blank. Not only blank, but after connecting phone to the PC, both my phone and card show but are empty. The SD card displays as -1376256 bytes free of -1376256 bytes. The phone shows 127mb free of 128mb.
I also made the mistake of uninstalled apps2sd after my phone booted up and I noticed the issue. Wasnt very smart of me as I can not seem to install it or anything back. Most apps including google play just crash when trying to load. When vieiwng files under My Files, basically everything is empty. If I try using FX file manager then most things say I dont have access.
Now when I first turn on phone and I boot into safestrap TWRP, I can go through and view files and I See all my stuff on my SD card and phone. I can even copy files from my SD card and place them in other directories (tried to copy the apps2sd apk onto phone to reinstall) but just cant ever see any of it when the phone is booted.
Also under TWRP, If I go to backup or anything for example, It lists Micro SD as 2132mb and Internal Storage as 3436mb. So im guessing apps2sd created a partition of some sort?
What have I done? What did my stupid ass do and is there any way to fix it?
tl;dr: Installed apps2sd, clicked things I shouldnt click. Cant view any files on phone or when connected to USB but can see everything under TWRP.
Any and all help is greatly appreciated!!
skoad said:
Edit -- Nvm. I just went in and did a factory reset. Pretty sad since I hadnt backed up in about 2 weeks. My loss. My stupiditiy. Learn form our mistakes.
After the factory reset, I can view my SD card again which is pretty nice, so not a total loss.
-------------------------
Alright. A little about my phone. Its a Galaxy s5 with an 8gb micro sd card. The phone is rooted.
Last night I installed Apps2sd. When I first opened the app it mentioned that my SD card was not setup and I would need to run some "sd fix". I accepted, the phone rebooted and then when it came back up, its as if my SD card was blank. Not only blank, but after connecting phone to the PC, both my phone and card show but are empty. The SD card displays as -1376256 bytes free of -1376256 bytes. The phone shows 127mb free of 128mb.
I also made the mistake of uninstalled apps2sd after my phone booted up and I noticed the issue. Wasnt very smart of me as I can not seem to install it or anything back. Most apps including google play just crash when trying to load. When vieiwng files under My Files, basically everything is empty. If I try using FX file manager then most things say I dont have access.
Now when I first turn on phone and I boot into safestrap TWRP, I can go through and view files and I See all my stuff on my SD card and phone. I can even copy files from my SD card and place them in other directories (tried to copy the apps2sd apk onto phone to reinstall) but just cant ever see any of it when the phone is booted.
Also under TWRP, If I go to backup or anything for example, It lists Micro SD as 2132mb and Internal Storage as 3436mb. So im guessing apps2sd created a partition of some sort?
What have I done? What did my stupid ass do and is there any way to fix it?
tl;dr: Installed apps2sd, clicked things I shouldnt click. Cant view any files on phone or when connected to USB but can see everything under TWRP.
Any and all help is greatly appreciated!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
u should try finding from root/data/media

Can't save new files even though I have free space.

I own a Nokia 6, never rooted, 8.1.0 with the latest security patch installed (1 August 2018).
I have 32 GB internal shared storage and 64 GB microSD card installed. Be it a good or bad idea, I have formatted the card as internal storage, and migrated data to it using options available in Android settings, no third party shenanigans.
When I look at apps' details, those that have the option to choose storage signify that they are on sdcard.
Now, to the problem: I approached about half of used space on the sdcard, that's a bit over 32 GB, and I'm closing in on about half on the internal shared storage, that's about 13.4 GB used at the moment.
However, even though it would look like I have lots of unused space left, the phone started to act as if I don't have any. But... Not always. Let me elaborate.
I can't make a picture or record video, all I get is: "there was a problem with saving your photo or video."
I can't download files using a browser. It instantly fails.
I can't install apps from Google Play Store like "Google" and many others, however, I can install some other apps, seemingly at random (but if it fails, of keeps failing).
I can - because I just did - download security patches from settings/system updates....
From the above I speculate without any specific Android knowledge that:
- the internal shared storage isn't a single partition spanning the whole of built-in memory but rather is partitioned into multiple... Well, parts, therefore:
- there's probably a /system, /data and /user partition (forgive the layman guesswork on the names). There's probably also a /swap like in *nix? Then again, I guess not because that would probably slowly kill internal storage flash memory...
Anyway, from the above I gather that the simplistic reporting on how much internal storage I used doesn't let me know that I might have ran out of space on one of those discrete partitions.
That might explain why some apps I can install (they can be installed in external storage, so they do) and some I can't (they need to be on internal storage for whatever reason).
I have tried looking at the app info to maybe move apps to SD card but any and all I check either don't have the option or they already are on SD.
I tried deleting files and removing apps with various results:
- some files I just can't remove, even though they don't appear to be in use (still, maybe they have handles open, I don't know how to check for that apart of forcing suspected apps close)
- some apps (HERE Maps) left a considerable amount of junk in Android/data after themselves, and none of my file managers seem to be able to delete these files.
- some files and apps deleted just fine and the used space indicator did reflect that, however...
I still can't save a photo or video, or download a file, and apps still either install or not, just like before.
That got me thinking that there may be a problem with file/directory permissions for some bizarre reason.
I'm stumped. I'm on the go, visiting Milan tomorrow and I won't be able to take a single photo. Not that Nokia 6 has a great camera, but it's there and I can't use it when I need it.
Halp?
A little bump
So, am I truly sentenced to factory reset?
Hidden Android dialer codes don't work at all... I think I'm out of options here.
Update: So I did end up doing the factory reset. Afterward, my phone started to work fine, with the exception of the microSD card that always showed up in the notification area as needing of attention. I tried formatting it as portable, and it would supposedly work if you went by the final "success" message, but it wouldn't change anything, and it would still not show up in file manager. The notification about it needing to be set up would still be there, no matter how many times I tried.
So I took the card out and connected it to a PC - tried formatting it, deleting and recreating all partitions, wiping it out, all supposedly would work in partition managers, but after the things were all done, it wouldn't reflect on the actual card.
Seems like it was dying already.... Fortunately, I had a 32GB card to spare, got it into the phone. Worked on the first try.
So that's all folks, my 64GB microSD card died on me, and that's the reason of all the anguish above. Now you know.

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