Lollipop: Hidden folder - Galaxy Tab S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Since the update, I seems to have lost my hidden folders on my SD card, the one on the device seems to be intact. As this happen to anybody else?

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[Q] Is it the SD card at fault?

hi all,
thought i would ask here as my questions in the rom specific forum are getting swamped by every asking for the dev to install specific programmes or people asking wht OJ death is..
im just trying to narrow down if my SD card is faulty, the rom is causing the issues or i have or am doing things wrong.
on random occasions i have lost apps, photos and other info from my SD card.
the first time it happed i did a nandriod backup prior to a rom update.
right after the nandriod back up my phone booted up and every photo i had taken in the last 2 days were gone.
thankfully using Recuva data recovery program in windoiws i was able to find and restore the photos.
i then updated my rom the Open desire rom, the one that enabled the OTA menu system. as far as i know there were no other things changed in the initial update.
after rebooting all my sd card data was wiped.
BUT.... some of the apps on the sd card were still there and some were gone, as well as apps on the phone, some were gone some was not.
chuxsta said:
on random occasions i have lost apps, photos and other info from my SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're not alone... I too have a similar issue, with an un-branded, un-rooted Desire. The first think I noticed was a duplicate "Backgrounds" folder appearing in the 3D Gallery - which in itself is odd, because the standard Gallery app only shows it once.
Weirdly in one version of the folder I have a few less images than the other, but they're otherwise all duplicates and can only be found in one visible "Backgrounds" directory on my SD card. It's not just the Gallery app aither - some others (like Wall Switch) also see two "Backgrounds" folders.
Then I noticed a number of images had mysteriously disappeared from another folder - in both Gallery apps. The only app that's crashed is Wall Switch - which is probably related, as it's looking for images in that "Backgrounds" folder. It works fine most of the time though.
If any images have gone missing, I should be able to get them back as I recently upgraded to a 32GB card and copied all my files across before doing so. However, I'm more concerned that there's a problem with the new card. (Which, for the record, was not a cheap one from eBay.)
As such, I'll be spending some time this weekend testing the new card to see if I can identify any issues... but I too have a couple of questions in that regard:
i) Is there any benefit in formatting the card in the phone before use? (It came pre-formatted so I first checked it for errors in Windows first, then just started using it.) I realise before Froyo the phone could not format such big cards, but I think that may have been resolved now.
ii) What's the best way to verify the integrity of the card? (e.g. Will error checking via Windows - XP in my case - suffice?)
EDIT: I took the card out and copied the files (minus my MP3 library) back to the 4GB card that came with the phone. When I ran with this card the duplicate directory disappeared. CHKDSK found no problems on the 32GB card, but I reformatted it in the phone anyway and then copied everything back to it and all is now fine. I'm assuming the phone did a "Quick Format" rather than a full one, as it only took a few seconds. I'm not too worried about the missing image files as these may have been inadvertently deleted anyway. Fingers crossed the problem is behind me now, but I'll keep an eye on it.
I am having similar issues, it's almost like the SD card is not fully loaded, and tried to load but can't. Things are missing, and then they are there. I am using a new 16GB over the original 8GB.
I am rooted though, am I able to do a format of the SD card?
Also when I choose to make it work as disc drive, nothing happens, does not show up on system.
bmancell said:
I am having similar issues, it's almost like the SD card is not fully loaded, and tried to load but can't. Things are missing, and then they are there. I am using a new 16GB over the original 8GB.
I am rooted though, am I able to do a format of the SD card?
Also when I choose to make it work as disc drive, nothing happens, does not show up on system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i had the same issue when i first rooted my phone i was able to put the card in an old HTC and it showed up as a drive in USB mode and i was able to run a file recovery tool to extract the data
then re format and copy the data back to it..
but the current issue is just random and strange...
stuff just seems to disapear as far as the phone is concerned ...
as i have already mentioned i had stuff vanish after running nandroid back up..
So for me it seems it happens shortly after bootup. Yes I give it enough time.
But once I open the all programs area, I see it load all of the icons. Maybe some issue with it not loading untill I open that area up.
Also, most of issues seems to be coming from the App Organizer Application, it's updated often so hopefully my issues will go away.
*As I play around with things it seems almost all my issues are related to the program. Even the issue with it not showing up on my computer when connected through USB. It does show up, just takes awhile, and once it does my Apps Organizer icons flash. So related.
try this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=18971539
some cases seems related

Apps on SD disappeared???

Hi everyone,
In panic mode right now...
I downloaded an app that helps you find all your apps that can be moved to the sd card. So it found 150 or so. After an hour of manually moving each one, I had over 400mb of free internal space and only like 40 apps left on the main phone storage. Awesome... but then this morning I noticed that things were running real slow... so I rebooted my phone. When it came back up I noticed some of my home screen shortcuts had become generic android icons. I went to my launcher & lots of apps were missing. I have a LOT of apps so I can't quite confirm yet whether its all the apps I moved to sd but it seems that way.
When I go to the market I see apps that I had yesterday as not installed. I have astro but I'm not quite sure what folder to look in to see if the apps are all still there, just not being seen by the android system maybe?
I've been driving all morning so I haven't gotten to research this much yet. Just rebooted a couple times hoping to fix it but no luck yet.
Any help is majorly appreciated. As soon as I'm at a computer ill be working on this all day. Freakin disaster!
Dave
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App
update to my question
so now that i'm in to work i can mess with this... quick update...
when i go to manage applications and go to "on SD card" i get a big list of apps that have the names like "cn.miren.browser" instead of Miren Browser and "com.alphonso.pulse" instead of Pulse which is kinda normal except usually they then refresh with the regular name and the size listed underneath. well it's been sitting here for 5 minutes now and hasn't change and it still says "Computing..." under each one and instead of the normal icons, its sort of a grayed out generic Android icon with an SD in the bottom right corner of the icon.
so clearly it still knows that these apps are there. it just maybe can't access them? i dont know. could it be the sd card? this is the original 8gb sd card that came with the g2...
any thoughts?
???
so i found out that the sd card had some errors in the file system. so i let windows fix the errors. no help (although my phone boots WAAAAAYYYYYY faster now).
so then i found that i have an extra 8gb microsd laying around (which also happened to be a better, class 6 one too). so i cleared it off and copied over alllll the files to it. booted up. STILL NO GO.
anyone have any ideas here? i'm really running out of ideas here.
when i boot, everything runs great, but all my apps that are installed to sd are gone. also it never says "preparing sd card" in the status bar when booting. then if i go to manage applications it never finishes "computing" the size of apps. if i go to "on sd" it shows all my apps, but says computing, and i can't access them, uninstall them, move them, etc. i'm totally out of ideas here and i really don't want to have to do a system restore.
anyone?
think im having the same problem . has ur market gone too?
fix?
ok so i ended up getting mine fixed using these steps that someone from a company that makes an apps2sd app sent me... the only difference i had to do was since my phone also wouldn't recognize my pc, i had to pop the sd card into my pc directly to delete the .android_secure folder... i don't want to mess up your phone or anything so make sure to read around a bit more before trying this, but this is what worked for me. after i started adding all my apps back one by one i've been fine ever since.:
"I guess the problem is ".android_secure" is not recognized by Android.
Would you try the following steps (I am not sure if it works)?
1. mount phone with PC
2. backup all files under .android_secure
3. delete .android_secure directory
4. unmount
5. try to move an app (any app) to SD card (it forces Android to
create .android_secure on SD)
6. mount phone with PC
7. restore all backuped .android_secure/* files to .android_secure
8. unmount => check if it recognized the apps that you moved to the SD card"

Why are so many apps storing their data on /extSD/ without my permission?

I did a fresh install of 47A stock yesterday. I wiped everything, I wiped my entire internal storage and I deleted everything Android related from my 64GB MicroSD card. The only thing left on the card was a single folder for file storage, a TWRP backup, and a Titanium Backup folder.
Well, as soon as I booted into the ROM for the first time and started installing files, a folder called /Android/ immediately appeared on my 64GB card. It's got two folders /data/ and /media/ in it. Inside the /data/ folder are folders for almost every app I have installed since installing this ROM. Inside those folders are various other folders, depending on the app. Most of them are named 'files' or 'cache' or 'media' or generic stuff like that.
So does anyone know why this would happen and how I can prevent it? I didn't do anything to make this happen, this isn't something I set up. It just happens as soon as I install these apps, on a brand new clean install. (Worth mentioning, this clean install isn't the first time it's happened. This is just the first time I'm actually looking into it or trying to fix it.)
One of the strange things is, most of these folders don't have anything in them. Picking one at random, /extSD/Android/data/au.com.shiftyjelly.pocketcasts/files has nothing in it. I found one or two of these bottom level folders that have files in them. /extSD/Android/data/.com.google.android.music/files has a 36 byte file in it called "_playmusicid" for example. But the vast majority of the bottom level folders are just empty.
I've attached a screenshot showing what this /extSD/Android/data/ folder looks like. Seriously puzzled here.
Actually it seems like /.com.google.android.music/files/ might be the only file with any actual data in it...

Lost Vacation Photos While Moving to SD!

We were on our first vacation with our 2 year old and I took a day's worth of photos and at least an hour or two or video. I didn't realize the HTC camera app was saving to the internal SD and I hit my limit. I thought it was as clear as using Root Explorer to move the entire DCIM folder from the "storage" folder to the "sdcard" folder under the funny looking numbered folder that eventually points to the SD. In the process, it asked if I wanted to replace the target DCIM folder, and I thought sure, why not?
Now, my internal storage is barren and my SD card does not show the images I attempted to move... I'm in shock and sadness and currently trying to run FonePaw on the internal storage to see if It can recover anything. So far, it's found only the stuff I deleted months ago. There is the possibility while manipulating folders that I overwrote SD to internal somehow but I'm not sure how that might have happened.
I'm reluctant to install anything such as DiskDigger or Undelete Recover to the phone as that might overwrite more of what I'm trying to recover. Does anyone have any idea what I could have done and how I might get out of this mess? *sigh* MANY many thanks in advance to anyone that might be able to help out. I'm in such a state of sadness at the moment *double sigh*

That was strange...

I connected my phone to Windows 10 laptop and copied over a folder I download from torrent to the laptop and then I was going through the folders I had in my storage and saw that there was one named 'sdcard'. I opened it and saw there was 'UC Browser' related folder (I think it was UC Downloads but don't remember it correctly but sure there was UC in the name). I deleted that folder happily thinking I cleared some useless folder and then I ejected my phone and opened gallery and all photos were grayed. No thumbnails. I restarted my device and BOOM.... ALL MY FILES WERE DELETED. there were only Android and Whatsapp (but no media was present) folders and storage was empty. But all my installed apps are there and they work like normal except the games which had files in SD card (like asphalt xtreme, Angry Birds 2)
Soory for this long boring story but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE somebody tell how did that happen.
What actually happened?
Were was the fault?
Anyone else faced this issue ever?
Ashish.akc said:
I connected my phone to Windows 10 laptop and copied over a folder I download from torrent to the laptop and then I was going through the folders I had in my storage and saw that there was one named 'sdcard'. I opened it and saw there was 'UC Browser' related folder (I think it was UC Downloads but don't remember it correctly but sure there was UC in the name). I deleted that folder happily thinking I cleared some useless folder and then I ejected my phone and opened gallery and all photos were grayed. No thumbnails. I restarted my device and BOOM.... ALL MY FILES WERE DELETED. there were only Android and Whatsapp (but no media was present) folders and storage was empty. But all my installed apps are there and they work like normal except the games which had files in SD card (like asphalt xtreme, Angry Birds 2)
Soory for this long boring story but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE somebody tell how did that happen.
What actually happened?
Were was the fault?
Anyone else faced this issue ever?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is your phone one plus 3. it doesn't have SD card slot
hem.acharya said:
is your phone one plus 3. it doesn't have SD card slot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I know that but it is oneplus 3. I told that there was a folder named 'sdcard' inside the internal storage
hem.acharya said:
is your phone one plus 3. it doesn't have SD card slot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ashish.akc said:
Yeah I know that but it is oneplus 3. I told that there was a folder named 'sdcard' inside the internal storage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes and no.
Yes ---> when you boot to TWRP and go to "Install", you will be in a folder named "sdcard". It is the folder where you can transfer files into it from the computer (vise versa), install ROMs, etc.
No ---> OnePlus 3 doesn't have an SD card slot.
Let me know if you need more information.
Also, I've posted a guide to solve a lot of issues with the latest Nougat release. Check it out: https://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-3/how-to/guide-flashing-oos-v4-0-1-custom-rom-t3537757
If you connect laptop to 1+3 in TWRP, sdcard it's youre internal memory.
If you connect laptop to 1+3 in system, internal memory it's where you got youre media, documents, etc. Youre sdcard it's from the rom.
Recently, i was on a rom and i have a 0 directory. And in it was my pictures, music, movies. They are moved inside of 0.
That happend to, on my HTC One m8, when Android 6 was new, about a year ago.
Ashish.akc said:
I connected my phone to Windows 10 laptop and copied over a folder I download from torrent to the laptop and then I was going through the folders I had in my storage and saw that there was one named 'sdcard'. I opened it and saw there was 'UC Browser' related folder (I think it was UC Downloads but don't remember it correctly but sure there was UC in the name). I deleted that folder happily thinking I cleared some useless folder and then I ejected my phone and opened gallery and all photos were grayed. No thumbnails. I restarted my device and BOOM.... ALL MY FILES WERE DELETED. there were only Android and Whatsapp (but no media was present) folders and storage was empty. But all my installed apps are there and they work like normal except the games which had files in SD card (like asphalt xtreme, Angry Birds 2)
Soory for this long boring story but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE somebody tell how did that happen.
What actually happened?
Were was the fault?
Anyone else faced this issue ever?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think to have understood the issue: you've deleted the entire Internal Storage (aka /sdcard or /storage/emulated/0).
There is no other reason.
Luckily, both system and installed apps are stored with their own configurations in /data partition, that's different from the Internal Storage.
To recover files, you can at first try with Android software: GT Recovery.
Otherwise, you've to look for commercial PC programs:
http://alternativeto.net/software/jihosoft-android-phone-recovery
dbabaev21 said:
Yes and no.
Yes ---> when you boot to TWRP and go to "Install", you will be in a folder named "sdcard". It is the folder where you can transfer files into it from the computer (vise versa), install ROMs, etc.
No ---> OnePlus 3 doesn't have an SD card slot.
Let me know if you need more information.
Also, I've posted a guide to solve a lot of issues with the latest Nougat release. Check it out: https://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-3/how-to/guide-flashing-oos-v4-0-1-custom-rom-t3537757
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
null0seven said:
If you connect laptop to 1+3 in TWRP, sdcard it's youre internal memory.
If you connect laptop to 1+3 in system, internal memory it's where you got youre media, documents, etc. Youre sdcard it's from the rom.
Recently, i was on a rom and i have a 0 directory. And in it was my pictures, music, movies. They are moved inside of 0.
That happend to, on my HTC One m8, when Android 6 was new, about a year ago.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Simone98RC said:
I think to have understood the issue: you've deleted the entire Internal Storage (aka /sdcard or /storage/emulated/0).
There is no other reason.
Luckily, both system and installed apps are stored with their own configurations in /data partition, that's different from the Internal Storage.
To recover files, you can at first try with Android software: GT Recovery.
Otherwise, you've to look for commercial PC programs:
http://alternativeto.net/software/jihosoft-android-phone-recovery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never installed twrp. I have been running it all stock all the time and always used the default file manager.
And let me get more detailed about the folder I deleted: the folder named 'sdcard' was located in root directory that is in the same directory as there are other folders like Android, DCIM, Downloads, Pictures and others. It appeared like any other folder.
I had taken a full backup of the internal storage in last week of November and saw that there was no folder named 'sdcard' there.
Ashish.akc said:
I never installed twrp. I have been running it all stock all the time and always used the default file manager.
And let me get more detailed about the folder I deleted: the folder named 'sdcard' was located in root directory that is in the same directory as there are other folders like Android, DCIM, Downloads, Pictures and others. It appeared like any other folder.
I had taken a full backup of the internal storage in last week of November and saw that there was no folder named 'sdcard' there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I find it much strange (like the name of your thread ).
/sdcard should be seen as a folder only when you are browsing device with root permissions (and in rare contexts).
Because via PC or non-root File Manager, that folder is shown as Internal Storage, so can't be deleted.
Folders like Android, DCIM etc. are subdirectories of /sdcard, so you erased that too.
Regarding TWRP recovery: it backups only /data partition, because of more convenience.
Internal Storage shouldn't be erased after factory reset or firmware changing, then it maybe very big.
Personally I'm in disagree, because user should be free of doing "uncomfortable" choice.

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