Apps on SD card disappear after reboot, how can I get them back?

[AC Question]

Apps on SD card disappear after reboot

Hi there,

I have a Motorola Moto G (gen 2) that I updated to Marshmallow couple days ago. Since the upgrade, I have had weird issues.

As the internal memory on the phone is useless, most of my apps are on SD card (32gb sandisk ultra speed, which is formated within the phone to use as internal storage). However, since the upgrade, every time I reboot my phone, the apps disappear. Shortcuts on the home screen are greyed out, and from the "main menu" everything has disappeared.

However I can still see the apps when I go to Settings>Apps or Settings>Storage>SD card. Only way to launch them is to re-install them again, which makes no sense to me

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Apps on SD card disappear after reboot

Welcome to Android Central! To clarify--you set up your SD card as adoptable storage (i.e., the phone incorporates it into its Internal Storage), correct? That means the phone doesn't distinguish between internal storage and external SD--the external SD is now considered part of internal storage.

Were the apps initially "Moved to SD" prior to making the SD card adoptable storage? If so, then that may explain why the apps disappeared. Making the card adoptable requires it to be wiped, then reformatted and encrypted to be considered part of internal storage. Any apps that had a portion moved to SD won't work, and therefore have to be uninstalled and reinstalled.

 

[Ca7cher]

Thanks for the reply.

As mentioned in the original message, the SD card was formatted to be internal storage. All the apps were installed after this was done.

Either way, I factory reset the whole phone and formatted the card again. Issue seems to be resolved by now and the phone works better alltogether.

 

[andyross63]

When you originally formatted the card as internal, did you immediately move the apps to it, or did you reboot the phone first? I've read you should do that after the format to help it finalize everything.

 

[B. Diddy]

What puzzles me is that after making the external microSD card into adoptable storage (and therefore incorporating it into the phone's overall internal storage), I would have thought that you no longer have the ability to "Move to SD," since the SD is no longer considered a separate entity. Unfortunately, I can't test this, because my Marshmallow devices don't have SD slots.

 

[Shane Gliser]

More info similar situation on my Moto X Pure 16GB:

Already on android 6. Adopted storage as internal. Encrypted the phone. Moved a lot of apps over. Upon reboot, it was randomly not finding apps. Not any one particular app. No pattern. Seriously, the card was a Samsung Evo 128GB Class 10 card with 80MB read and 20MB write. I have now installed a Samsung Pro Class 10 card with 90MB read and 80 write, reformatted the phone, adopted the new one, and I'm about to encrypt. If this doesn't solve the issue, I'll report back.

 

[Shane Gliser]

So... Using that new Samsung Pro card I referenced above. Fresh factory restore, adoption of new card, encrypt system. Download all the things. Run most of today and then rebooted. Three apps disappeared. Tried rebooting again thinking maybe it would find them again... nope. Another disappeared. Pretty irritating. Some of them were visible when I looked at storage menu. Once I had clicked on a missing or grayed-out app it would be accessible again. However, there were 2 that had disappeared completely. It's really a pain to keep downloading Kindle and Osmos.

 

[andyross63]

What is the maximum SD card size your Moto X is rated to handle? Going larger could cause unusual issues. For reference, the Moto G this forum is for is only rated for up to 32G.

 

[Norg]

So... Using that new Samsung Pro card I referenced above. Fresh factory restore, adoption of new card, encrypt system. Download all the things. Run most of today and then rebooted. Three apps disappeared. Tried rebooting again thinking maybe it would find them again... nope. Another disappeared. Pretty irritating. Some of them were visible when I looked at storage menu. Once I had clicked on a missing or grayed-out app it would be accessible again. However, there were 2 that had disappeared completely. It's really a pain to keep downloading Kindle and Osmos.

I'm having the exact same issue.... But I have concluded that only certain apps tend to uninstall: Word, Excel, Firefox, and a couple of others. As a workaround, I forced these apps over to the SD card via the Storage menu in Settings. And they no longer Uninstall following a reboot. Be reminded that this is when my SD is configured as extended memory only on OS 6.0 +.

 

[HfTFranz]

I'm having the exact same issue.... But I have concluded that only certain apps tend to uninstall: Word, Excel, Firefox, and a couple of others. As a workaround, I forced these apps over to the SD card via the Storage menu in Settings. And they no longer Uninstall following a reboot.

I also have the same issue. I was playing Ingress while listening to Spotify music when suddenly the game crashed. I kept pressing the app but it would just crash and not load at all. With this, I restarted the phone. Upon reboot, I lost like, idk, 10 apps? And not even all of those apps are on the SD Card (in the settings). I searched for my personal files and they're there. The files for the missing apps are also there (In Android>data), but I can't find them in my list of programs and when I click some of the leftover shortcuts, they won't open.

I'm on Android 6.0.1 using ASUS Zenfone Max and a SanDisk 16GB HC I sd card.

Is there any solution to this other than reformatting? There's really too many files and apps for me to consider and redownload.

 

[anon(632115)]

It's perfectly simple. Apps are not designed to be rum from SD card. You can always expect these problems

 

[Corinne Innes]

It's perfectly simple. Apps are not designed to be rum from SD card. You can always expect these problems

This shouldn't be an expected issue when the phones don't come with enough base storage space to support downloading multiple non-system related applications. Certain apps are allowed to run off SD cards but that function is rendered useless when the base device has a broken failsafe that deletes these apps upon reboot. This is a bug worth fixing not a user based error that you should be putting off as "works as intended".

*Seeing this issue with Marshmallow on Samsung Galaxy Amp 2.

 

[anon(632115)]

Running apps from sd card was removed by Google some time ago because of the lack of security with sd cards. It's not a bug, it is deliberate. Your phone gets stolen, would you rather think "my data is safe because my phone is password protected" or Oh hell, my data is on an sd card which can be read in any Pc?

 

[Norg]

Running apps from sd card was removed by Google some time ago because of the lack of security with sd cards. It's not a bug, it is deliberate. Your phone gets stolen, would you rather think "my data is safe because my phone is password protected" or Oh hell, my data is on an sd card which can be read in any Pc?

That's what I remember reading once a upon a time too, but didn't all that change with the arrival of Marshmallow which allows for 2 types of SD card formatting???

 

[anon(632115)]

Yes, some phones allow adoptive storage where the sd card is encrypted

 

[Norg]

This shouldn't be an expected issue when the phones don't come with enough base storage space to support downloading multiple non-system related applications. Certain apps are allowed to run off SD cards but that function is rendered useless when the base device has a broken failsafe that deletes these apps upon reboot. This is a bug worth fixing not a user based error that you should be putting off as "works as intended".

*Seeing this issue with Marshmallow on Samsung Galaxy Amp 2.

Following 1 stint with my SD card formatted as extended memory, i tend to agree that there's a bit of an issue going on here. Unfortunately it takes considerable time to set this all up and test, and i don't have any. I ended up simply formatting my SD card as external storage and use it for media files. Perhaps others who do this for a living or have more time can check this out further.

 

[Mark Boelte]

Marshmallow formats the SD card either as external storage (as has been done until now) OR as internal storage. Once formated as internal storage the SD card cannot be used in any other device. I tried this, and I could not read the files from the SD card on my PC after it was formatted as internal.

I am having the exact same issue. I have a Moto X Pure 16 gig phone with a Samsung Pro U1 128 gig SD card. Any apps installed onto the SD card (many that install there by DEFAULT by Marshmallow) will vanish after a reboot. The only theory of why this is happening I have heard is that the launcher is running faster than the SD card and launching before the apps can load (mount) from the SD card. This would indicate that the SD memory bus is not fast enough to mount the card for internal use despite what Marshmallow can do. This makes it a hardware issue, not a software issue. I would like to see Motorola techs test this on their own hardware, or see specs on the bus speeds for the SD card. It may well be that Marshmallow introduced this feature before the hardware was capable of executing it.

I specifically bought the 16 gig phone instead of the 32 because I took their word that I could add up to a 132 gig SD card that would act as internal memory. If that does not work, I cannot use this phone.

 

[Gaston Faigaffe]

Same issue for me on Moto G 2014 using Samsung Pro 90read/80write in Internal storage mode. more or less randomly, icons of apps stored on SD card disappear at reboot from launcher but not from the app list. Just reinstall the icon... till next time. I am so bored that I don't reinstall the icons anymore, I changed my way of using the phone.
We all use good SD cards, I don't consider hardware issue at all. For me it is a bad sequence in the starting of the services at boot time or a lack of proper synchronization. Launcher must no start before the SD card is mounted! That's it!
It seems to be an Android core bug, common to all brands. It deserves a patch but for (old) Moto G 2014, it is not sure that we may get anything higher than the current 6.0.

 

[brindis]

Same issue in Moto G 2nd gen. Everything went off, event pictures and videos. The phone says that it is using 4GB on the card but it shows nothing inside. Happened after Marshmallow, but not after every reboot - just this morning.
Need an Android fix FAST. I back up pictures regularly but not every minute, I have lost many, I need to recover them back.

 

[brindis]

Have you tried to contact Motorola? I went to their page, look for support but could not contact anybody. Didn't find a way to.