I wanted to start this thread because I am having trouble, (and I assume other noobs are as well), understanding what's on my SD Card and how to navigate through it.
I've attached what I see when I open my device and check the internal storage.
My main reasoning for trying to understand all that's on my SD Card is because it's important! And because I'm trying to figure out where all my apps are stored. I recently installed the venom custom ROM, and since then have lost the knowledge of where my .apk files are stored. That's really what I'm after trying to find those files. I've searched every folder but still no dice. I used Titanium Pro to backup all my files but there is nothing located in the Titanium folder.
Can anybody help me identify where my .apk files are located?
I also have a few .apk files I wish to install on my phone. From what I've gathered the way to do this is to add them to where the other .apk files are located and then Fix Permissions. If I cannot locate my .apk files is there another file path I could save it to?
Lastly I have these two files I have not recognized before, BUGSENSE and .profig
What are these files?
So if you're downloading the apks off a website they'll be in the downloads folder if you downloaded then through Google play..they won't be on your sd unless you manually backed up them up through titanium
a box of kittens said:
So if you're downloading the apks off a website they'll be in the downloads folder if you downloaded then through Google play..they won't be on your sd unless you manually backed up them up through titanium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right okay, so if I choose to back them up onto the SD card then my .apk file paths should appear? Because as you can see now I have no app folders on my phone (sd card) currently.
I've backed up my phone via titanium still nothing in there is an .apk file.
I'm also interested in keeping my phone clean of useless things (another reason for this thread).
As file explorer. Settings allow up to root allow root. Go up from sd card. System/data folder
Sent from my VENOMized HoxL
Boom. That's what I was searching for. Thanks.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app
dmcin23 said:
I've backed up my phone via titanium still nothing in there is an .apk file.
I'm also interested in keeping my phone clean of useless things (another reason for this thread).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you go to titanium backup location on sd card and open it you will find what you looking for. Its pretty easy to restore backup in titanium app itself.....also a true backup should be done in twrp recovery as it backs up everything (file partitions,kernel,radio,apps) it will save a copy (known as a nandriod backup) on your sd card that you can recover if your rom won't boot or you just need to restore .
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium
Make sure you enable writing to the root folder as well. System apps are in system/app.
Related
Need help with super manager, at one time there was a detailed instruction using super manager to remove apps from system and put them in a separate folder on your sd card. I have searched and no luck. Went to super managers website and no instructions on how to create the new folder on your sd card. thanks.
I don't use super manager, but you can create a new folder using the files app and then copy whatever folder you want to the folder you created. Long press the folder in super manager and that should give you a bunch of options
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA Premium App
the article had using super manager to remove bloat and then creating another folder on the sd card so if you needed to put it back into the system you could just cut and paste back.
Create a folder in your SD card for these .apk backups. Example: I have a folder in my SD card called "Backups".
What you do now is go to /system/app. You should see all your .apk files there. For anything you want to remove, just check it off and delete it. If you want to back it up, copy it and paste it to your backup folder. When you want that app again, just copy and paste it back into /system/app. Reboot if necessary.
Be sure that you have root function enabled. You do that by hitting Menu > Setup > Enable ROOT function. Obviously, this whole process (except for creating a folder in your SD card) requires root.
Also, going into /system should ask you if you want to go into R/W mode (read/write mode). You need to enable that if you want to delete anything. If it doesn't ask you, you can always hit Menu > Switch System R/W. That should do the trick.
If you actually read through my long post, then here's another solution. Use Titanium Backup and select your apps to backup, remove, and/or restore.
if you flashed a rom with cwm, then your apks are backed up anyway. this backup is in the form to the zip file. open it up, go to system/app and all of it will be there. i usually experiment with adding and removing things and when i find out what works, i make sure the changes are reflected in the zip file. this way, when i flash the rom, everything i did is already there. i do this with tweaks, apps, cwm, etc.
i always encounter problems when i backup things with tb, so if you also experience problems, cwm is an easy alternative, as well as bkoons method above. just wanted to point out you can edit the rom before you even flash it.
Thanks jager555, that worked and when I went back to super manager the new file I created for bloat appeared.
my dear friends, I started the removal process with the system apks just to remove some internal memory and install my favourite apks, live kingsoftoffice, instead of quickoffice. everything went fine, apks disappeared from the phone and from ./system/app... BUT the internal memory hasn't in any way been affected... WHY?
Their recently was a thread here asking if their is a way to import your apps from one rom to another. And I just thought of this lil idea. If you copy the apps folder in your data folder and save it to your SD card and flash a whole new rom and replace your apps folder with the one you saved on SD. Will this work? Has anyone tried this? Idk just curious. maybe this method is the hard way of doing what titanium back up does lol your thoughts?
gman87 said:
Their recently was a thread here asking if their is a way to import your apps from one rom to another. And I just thought of this lil idea. If you copy the apps folder in your data folder and save it to your SD card and flash a whole new rom and replace your apps folder with the one you saved on SD. Will this work? Has anyone tried this? Idk just curious. maybe this method is the hard way of doing what titanium back up does lol your thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This will work for most apps. A few apps require installation but most will work this way. For ones that don't work just delete the apk file and install it properly.
Titanium backup
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
Since i'm still on stock and I was supposed to place the rar file on the root, not the extracted files.. How do I remove all the extracted files??? backing up from my restore wont work because I did the backup after I placed all the files on. DOH!
rybednarski said:
Since i'm still on stock and I was supposed to place the rar file on the root, not the extracted files.. How do I remove all the extracted files??? backing up from my restore wont work because I did the backup after I placed all the files on. DOH!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With root explorer app of your choice. Or Odin back to stock.
in the CM10 rar is has 2 folders: system and meta-inf
When i copied it to the phone the system folder merged with system folder on my phone, along with all the other deeper folders.
So so i have to go through an manually select ALL the files that merged and arent supposed to be there since im still running my stock rom.
That's essentially my question.
Think you need to Odin stock firmware .tar image to format and restore system partition unless those folders are still intact and show as system/system and system/meta which is possible. They need to run the binary to split the files inside the folders. You only copied the folders to the root. Should not have split them up. I could be wrong. Not sure how you copied them to system root. Should have went to SD root. Can't access system root from PC via USB. Would have to put there with file explorer.
Download the original zip, explore all its contents and remove each one individually.
annoyingduck said:
Download the original zip, explore all its contents and remove each one individually.
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Click to collapse
They should just be sitting on the sd card. There are no original system, meta ect folders on sd card to merge with. Has me confused. Can't access system root from PC without using ADB. Also if on SD root would not affect anything and would not be in backup. Just delete the main folders that were extracted from the zip from the SD card.
Agreed
i have no sd card. I installed abd then moved then extracted zip to the root of my internal memory. ATM i have installed CM10 and have no issues except for a huge chunk of my memory is gone.. if i delete the system folder from the root is it going to mess up a bunch of other things??
rybednarski said:
i have no sd card. I installed abd then moved then extracted zip to the root of my internal memory. ATM i have installed CM10 and have no issues except for a huge chunk of my memory is gone.. if i delete the system folder from the root is it going to mess up a bunch of other things??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As long as it is on internal memory (SD) and not in the system partition should be no problem. If you mounted system in adb it is on or in the partition and not sure what to do except odin to reformat the partition. Some AOSP roms report the memory available wrong.
But he should have no issue finding it regardless of aosp storage issues. Op has no external, so he's either mnt/sdcard, internal, or usb storage. Emmc is out of play. Files should be clear as day. If you can put them on your root, you can take them off.
Agree with prdog, just Odin back if your unsure. But completely fixable.....
If I were you I'd give it more of a try without Odin just for the educational value.
OK, so I'm using wiped in quotes because according to my available free space, it appears my data is still there somewhere. It's just that it's really not and I don't understand why (or where it may be hiding). I've done this many times and never had this problem, so I don't think I did anything wrong, but here are the steps I took: I made a TWRP backup. I wiped my cache, then my Dalvik cache, and then did a factory reset. I installed the new AOKP ROM (aokp_d2vzw_jb-mr1_build-3), installed Gapps, and installed the flashable zip for Titanium Backup. I then booted into Android with no problem, went through the setup process, and rebooted into TWRP. At that point, I was going to install the flashable update.zip I created from Titanium Backup, but I couldn't find it or any of my normal files or folders. I booted back into Android and checked again with a file explorer and sure enough – it's only showing the basic folders you start with and none of my content is there. Like I said, it appears my data is still there somewhere according to my available free space, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere. When I was in TWRP, I hit the button to restore and it showed me my two Nandroid backups, so I feel like the files have to be hiding somewhere.
I'm not really sure what caused it, but I know the files were still there after the wiping and the factory reset, or else I wouldn't have had the zip files to then flash. Therefore, I feel like it had to be during the AOKP or the Gapps install where my sdcard got erased (I forgot to mention my Titanium Backup somehow never got installed). Oh, and just to be clear, I'm talking about the internal (emulated) sdcard, so I can't simply pull it out and put it in my PC to search the contents.
Does anyone have any idea how this happened or where my files are? I'm tempted to do a restore to see if get everything back so I can then make more backups and store them somewhere else.
On your internal SD, do you have a /0 folder? methinks all your stuff's in there....
It's an artifact of flashing 4.2.1 and it's "multiple user accounts" feature
letinsh said:
On your internal SD, do you have a /0 folder? methinks all your stuff's in there....
It's an artifact of flashing 4.2.1 and it's "multiple user accounts" feature
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I don't have a /0 folder on my sdcard. I did find a /0 folder somewhere in my root, but it only mirrored what's currently on the sdcard.
I found it! It's not on my card, but in the root, under data/media. There is a /0 folder in there as well and it links to the sdcard folder. To be safe, I'm going to first copy everything to my real external sdcard before trying to put it back.
/data/media is the real path for your internal sd card. All the other paths (/mnt/sdcard0, /sdcard, /storage/sdcard0, etc) are just pointers that look at the /data/media location. If you were looking in any of those other locations, the 0 folder should have been seen...
Either way, I'm glad you found your data!
letinsh said:
/data/media is the real path for your internal sd card. All the other paths (/mnt/sdcard0, /sdcard, /storage/sdcard0, etc) are just pointers that look at the /data/media location. If you were looking in any of those other locations, the 0 folder should have been seen...
Either way, I'm glad you found your data!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that makes sense, but I assure you it isn't showing. The only thing that's showing is the contents of the /0 folder which is inside the data/media folder.
In other words, it appears the system created a /0 folder in my internal sdcard and decided that new folder would now be my internal sdcard. So if I'm trying to browse the internal sdcard, I have no way of going up a level and getting to my old content; the system considers that part of the root. Luckily, I can use FX File Explorer to get in there and access the files.
JerseyMike4 said:
Well, that makes sense, but I assure you it isn't showing. The only thing that's showing is the contents of the /0 folder which is inside the data/media folder.
In other words, it appears the system created a /0 folder in my internal sdcard and decided that new folder would now be my internal sdcard. So if I'm trying to browse the internal sdcard, I have no way of going up a level and getting to my old content; the system considers that part of the root. Luckily, I can use FX File Explorer to get in there and access the files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's like that because of Android profiles you can create now on 4.2, so basically I'd you were to make another profile it'd be /1 and so on.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda app-developers app
GoonAssJuan said:
It's like that because of Android profiles you can create now on 4.2, so basically I'd you were to make another profile it'd be /1 and so on.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That makes sense. But it would have been nice if the system "moved" my data automatically when I upgraded.
Hello,
I have installed aWallet password manager in my mobile phone, then I have moved the awallet app to a microSD
If I bring out the microSD from the mobile phone and the program is not available, but when I put in the microSD in the mobile phone the aWallet is available.
The problem is my mobile phone has been stolen.
I have got the microSD but I tried to put in other device and start the aWallet app, but I can't find the app.
I was searching at /android/data directory and any other directories, and I can't find the app directory.
Could you tell me where can I find the aWallet directory. I have a lot of passwords in there and I didn't made any backup file yet.
The problem is I thought that with the microSD I don't have problems to use the aWallet app in others devices. Why I can't?
Could you help me please?
I'm in big troubles.
Thank you.
Regards.
You do not have a backup in the cloud?
Top always back up everything ...
Backup
MIKEMON said:
You do not have a backup in the cloud?
Top always back up everything ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No I haven't already made a backup file. :crying:
I usually make backups of everything.
But I belleived that with the app installed in the sdcard I could use it later at any device installing awallet again or using the sdcard in other device.
I have found finally the file in the sdcard.
I have got the .android_secure/org.awallet.free-1.asec file.
I know that all that I need is in this file, even I haven't made a backup.
If I make a backup the file is saved in /Android/data/org.awallet.free/files/data.crypt and I can restore from it.
But the backup is saved in the device, not in the sdcard.
But the file from where the app is working is in .android_secure/org.awallet.free-1.asec in the sdcard because I had moved to the sdcard.
I know because I have installed the new version in another sdcard and the app is working.
I have removed the app from it, and the app is removed from this path, and you can't see the icon.
Later if I copy again the org.awallet.free-1.asec file to the correct path the icon is showed and the app is working again.
I have tried to change the files. But the icon is not showed and the app is not working .
The file I'm trying to restore is an old version.
Is this the reason?
How can I start this org.awallet.free-1.asec file correctly?.
I known the password, and I have got the app file.
I only need to start the app again, and I should be authenticated correctly.
Thank you.
Regards.