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[Q] Apps on SDcard go missing? usually??

Is anyone running into a problem with apps that have been moved to sdcard just disappearing? Most of the time I see little green droid icons all over my launcher (ADW), and lots of missing apps in the app drawer. I can reboot several times and eventually all show up.
I'm running ee4_debloated-v421 / 0730_charge_voodoo kernel / sdcard_patch. Am on my second handset (first one had a clicky button go dead). The earlier handset occasionally did the same thing.
I presume the sdcard is the culprit, as it is the common element. But I have popped it out, run fdisk and defrag all with no errors.
Any theories??

I had this happen when I first got my charge. How I fixed it was I took the SDCard out of my phone and put it into my flash media reader, and then did a full format using HP's Format tool with default device settings. It took a long time to do the full format, but after doing so, I didn't have any more issues with apps disappearing that were installed to the SDCard.

Full format, huh... (gulp) well it's certainly worth a try! I'll report back.
Thanks,
Larry

ljcorsa said:
Full format, huh... (gulp) well it's certainly worth a try! I'll report back.
Thanks,
Larry
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know when the phone first came out, there were several users with SDCard problems. I'm not sure how others fixed them, but a full format and a half hour or so fixed mine

Well, I'm disappointed to report that the problem did not disappear :-( Could it be the contents? I copied *everything* from the card before full formatting with the HP tool (which tooks hours as you said), then copied it all back. Same result... if I reboot enough times it will come up with all apps showing.
I've ordered a Class 10 card. Plan to use the HP tool on it straight away. What else would you recommend? Maybe move all the apps back to the phone? Would you start from a fresh load of the ROM?
Many thanks,
Larry

ljcorsa said:
Well, I'm disappointed to report that the problem did not disappear :-( Could it be the contents? I copied *everything* from the card before full formatting with the HP tool (which tooks hours as you said), then copied it all back. Same result... if I reboot enough times it will come up with all apps showing.
I've ordered a Class 10 card. Plan to use the HP tool on it straight away. What else would you recommend? Maybe move all the apps back to the phone? Would you start from a fresh load of the ROM?
Many thanks,
Larry
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know that DroidXcon over in the Android Central forums advises NOT to move apps over to the SDcard because of problems like you have experienced...the higher (class) speed card may help. I've noticed that on my stock class 2 card when I view a subdirectory that contains large wallpaper files using QuickPic or Gallery, the thumbnails will often "time out" and not display towards the end of the list unless I refresh the listing several times. I would assume it is for the same reason that recording video to the class 2 card will time out after a few minutes.
Good luck with the Class 10 card...keep us posted!!!

Well, the Class 10 arrived in time to try again, so formatted with HP Utility and copied all the saved files over. Same behavior.
If it's the sheer quantity of apps on the SD card and there is a timeout involved, that might explain it! Reformatting the card would effectively defrag it which would speed it up, perhaps explaining imnuts' observation. And if reading in all those apps at startup is not I/O bound but maybe CPU bound, that would explain my experience.
I'm going to try moving apps back to the phone just to see.

Wow, this is persistent. Moved all the apps from SD back to phone using TiB, which seemed to hang sometimes. Tried different access methods with no clear winner. Anyway, after a reboot, the situation was unchanged. Unreal.
So I am starting from scratch with a freshly-formatted Class10 card, a full data/cache wipe, and a new ROM: GummyChargedFE1.9.1. Haven't had a problem yet, but haven't restored anything to SD either. Proceeding cautiously.

Ok, I'm converted. GummyChargedFE1.9.1 solved this problem. Everything seems to run better. Added the V6 SuperCharger thing which tweaks minfree levels and much more, and the combination runs extremely well.
Biggest problem for me is that I'm satisfied... spent the last two years trying to get my "original" Droid to run well, then got the Charge, started over. What do I do for an encore?

Fast Boot option may be the culprit
In case anyone is following this old thread ...
I did not need to install a new ROM
CUT TO THE SOLUTION BELOW -- SEARCH FOR ////
Some (not all) of my apps moved to SD (all by Titanium Backup Pro) have begun to disappear and (sometimes) reappear without warning after I began to add and delete large Virtual Machines created in QEMU from my 16GB SanDisc class 10 microSD card on my HTC Droid Incredible running rooted stock Verizon Android Froyo 2.2.3. I know this thread is far from my phone's "home base", but from what I can tell this problem with disappearing apps located on an sdcard is NOT determined by hardware or even Android version.
I also happen to use LauncherPro by Federico Carnales instead of the built-in HTC Sense launcher. I noted elsewhere on XDA that a user had suggested that because at least some (maybe all) launchers start before the SD Card that this may be a problem, especially if changes are made to the sdcard that the launcher did not perform, or was not active during their performance by other apps such as Titanium Backup. That fits my situation, because I unmounted the SD, physically removed it to a PC, and added/deleted large VM files to save (lots) of time. No problems of this sort before I did this, so there must be some connection.
I noted that other users have tried reformatting SD, substituting different brands of SD, using newer/older SD etc. None of these reliably helped. So I skipped these options.
//// The (simple!) solution I tried that SEEMS to work (only time will tell!) is buried in the main Android Settings (accessed from the Menu button while in Home screen). Under "Applications" there is a setting "Fast Boot" that I checked long ago and forgot about (it seemed like a good thing to do at the time). The text warns "Turn off to use some Market apps" (that shows the age of my 2-yr old used phone and Android OS -- ohmygosh!-- because it refers to Market rather than Google Play Store!) Anyway, I unchecked the option and rebooted the phone.
Yes, it took a bit longer to boot (maybe a whole minute!), but after waiting about another minute ALL my home screen apps had normal icons and loaded properly. Titanium Backup Pro batch scenarios confirmed there were no apps in a forced uninstalled state (i.e. I had not done the deed, the system somehow had done it or at least rendered the apps "invisible" to Titanium, which decided they needed reinstallation).
The only odd behaviour was that auto brightness was turned off after I unchecked Fast Boot and rebooted. Going into Android Settings > Display and rechecking "auto brightness" took care of that. No other oddities or strange behaviours thus far (but it has only been about an hour).
I will report back here on this thread only (Samsung Fascinate > Fascinate Q&A > What just happend? apps on sdcard) if anything else requires reporting. Silence implies success!
link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1873670
(I am copying this post to other relevant threads, but will not post anything further elsewhere -- only there. This is a bit arbitrary (although this thread appears to be the most recent active one on this topic), but I hope this approach pleases the XDA sysops/admins) :angel:

[Q] High cpu usage after installing/uninstalling apps

Hello people
After installing or uninstalling any application, either from market or from an .apk, I get high cpu usage ranging anywhere from 10 seconds up to a minute. Especially after updating multiple apps from market for example, I usually let it settle a couple of minutes before I go ahead and use it.
Phone either becomes sluggish or just plain unresponsive until cpu drops down to normal. As you can see on my signature I've underclocked and undervolted, however that's not the point. Even with cpu set at 1.56ghz with no undervolt, the issue remains, although in much less severity.
At first I believed it was my SD card, as android tries to push the app to sd, with my old 32gb class 4 card I thought it was normal. However it also happens on my new sandisk sdxc 64gb (class 6).
What could the problem be? Any way I can troubleshoot this issue (if it is, in fact, an issue and not just Android moving things around)?

[Q] Phone lag almost unusable due to IOWAIT

I have an older phone (HTC Desire Z / Vision) which is still usable, but it has been extremely slow lately. When I say slow, I mean that applications take 10-30 seconds to open and I often get "application is not responding, force close / wait" windows pop up. I thought it was slow CPU speed, but after running top I find that the problem is spending too much time in IOWAIT status. CPU is overclocked to 1.5 GHz, I am running Cyanogen 7 (newer won't run on this hardware). I ran some benchmarks and got these numbers for disk access speed:
Internal storage write: 3.18 Mbytes/sec
Internal storage read: 15.5 Mbytes/sec
External storage write: 2.69 Mbytes/sec
External storage read: 16.7 Mbytes/sec
Is this especially slow? Is it causing the problem? If not, then what else could be causing the problem, and how could I fix it?

gromky said:
I have an older phone (HTC Desire Z / Vision) which is still usable, but it has been extremely slow lately. When I say slow, I mean that applications take 10-30 seconds to open and I often get "application is not responding, force close / wait" windows pop up. I thought it was slow CPU speed, but after running top I find that the problem is spending too much time in IOWAIT status. CPU is overclocked to 1.5 GHz, I am running Cyanogen 7 (newer won't run on this hardware). I ran some benchmarks and got these numbers for disk access speed:
Internal storage write: 3.18 Mbytes/sec
Internal storage read: 15.5 Mbytes/sec
External storage write: 2.69 Mbytes/sec
External storage read: 16.7 Mbytes/sec
Is this especially slow? Is it causing the problem? If not, then what else could be causing the problem, and how could I fix it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably might need to just do a factory reset to get rid of all the clutter on the device. Also it maybe because the phone is running out of available ram. Also since you're running a custom rom and most likely a custom kernel try this http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2416441 and yes it is meant for pretty much every phone.

obscuresword said:
Probably might need to just do a factory reset to get rid of all the clutter on the device. Also it maybe because the phone is running out of available ram. Also since you're running a custom rom and most likely a custom kernel try this http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2416441 and yes it is meant for pretty much every phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The phone isn't running out of available RAM, Android's memory management does a good job of keeping RAM clear for use by programs. At any rate, a reboot clears all RAM but doesn't fix the slowness issue. It's that the CPU is spending far too much time in IOWAIT state, which means waiting for disk access.

gromky said:
The phone isn't running out of available RAM, Android's memory management does a good job of keeping RAM clear for use by programs. At any rate, a reboot clears all RAM but doesn't fix the slowness issue. It's that the CPU is spending far too much time in IOWAIT state, which means waiting for disk access.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my opinion Android does a pretty horrible job at memory management. Also I said factory reset and not a reboot. Factory reset usually fixes 90% of the problems that may occur in android.

gromky said:
I have an older phone (HTC Desire Z / Vision) which is still usable, but it has been extremely slow lately. When I say slow, I mean that applications take 10-30 seconds to open and I often get "application is not responding, force close / wait" windows pop up. I thought it was slow CPU speed, but after running top I find that the problem is spending too much time in IOWAIT status. CPU is overclocked to 1.5 GHz, I am running Cyanogen 7 (newer won't run on this hardware). I ran some benchmarks and got these numbers for disk access speed:
Internal storage write: 3.18 Mbytes/sec
Internal storage read: 15.5 Mbytes/sec
External storage write: 2.69 Mbytes/sec
External storage read: 16.7 Mbytes/sec
Is this especially slow? Is it causing the problem? If not, then what else could be causing the problem, and how could I fix it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use Seeder
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1987032

prantoroy said:
Use Seeder
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1987032
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Amazing! I don't know what that did, but my phone now loads Google Maps in less than 5 seconds! It used to be 30 at least and always get the Wait/Force Close window! Good job, Bangladesh!

gromky said:
Amazing! I don't know what that did, but my phone now loads Google Maps in less than 5 seconds! It used to be 30 at least and always get the Wait/Force Close window! Good job, Bangladesh!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank You For Your Appreciation.
:good:

Well, it appears I spoke too soon. Seeder helped my phone run well for about two hours. After that, it went right back to being slow again. Very disappointing, I thought I had this solved.
What else can I do? Other than a hard reset, which frankly I doubt will fix this problem.

If I did a hard reset, would it fix the lag problem? What are my other options?

Glitches in MP3 Playback

Hardware: Verizon HTC One M8, Gunmetal Gray, with a Sandisk Ultra 64GB microSDHC card (Class 10)
Modifications: Rooted, S-OFFed, TWRP 2.7.0.2 and ViperOne(M8) installed @ version 1.3.1, Firmware, Radios and hboot updated from Santod's uploads. Installed Viper4Android FX v2.3.3.0, using "High" quality driver. I've modified the EQ curve a bit, but made no other changes to effects. It's only enabled for headphones.
Problem: Occasional glitches when listening to MP3s via Google Music (and only experienced when using headphones so far). I'm not playing from the cloud; the MP3s are stored on the microSDHC card. Seems to occur every 20 minutes or so, within the first 10-30 seconds of the start of an MP3. It's not at the same point each time, and I can't repeat it on demand or I would assume it's a bad copy of the file. The glitch is a very brief but very noticeable gap/hesitation in the file that's playing, like it's rebuffering or something. It only lasts a tenth of a second or so, but that's plenty long enough to be noticed.
I'm tending to think it's a problem with Viper4Android; next step is to uninstall it and see if things improve. Not sure what I'm going to do for EQ without it, though.
If anyone has thoughts to share, they'll be appreciated.

I've been experiencing the same thing. I've tried several different audio players but there's little difference; there are skips in tracks played off external storage. I'm on stock rom, with faux kernel. I experienced this with a completely stock device. My gut feeling is that the issue lies in the sd card, I have been trying different i/o schedulers and read ahead cache values. Some combinations have helped slightly but not enough to eradicate the issue, it could even just be coincidental.
I'm going to go ahead and say it has nothing to do with the rom, and it shouldn't be a cpu issue like I've seen on other devices since the glitch occurs regardless if the phone is awake or not.

Same here, playing off the sd card it will skip
Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk

broprah said:
I've been experiencing the same thing. I've tried several different audio players but there's little difference; there are skips in tracks played off external storage. I'm on stock rom, with faux kernel. I experienced this with a completely stock device. My gut feeling is that the issue lies in the sd card, I have been trying different i/o schedulers and read ahead cache values. Some combinations have helped slightly but not enough to eradicate the issue, it could even just be coincidental.
I'm going to go ahead and say it has nothing to do with the rom, and it shouldn't be a cpu issue like I've seen on other devices since the glitch occurs regardless if the phone is awake or not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
krazie1 said:
Same here, playing off the sd card it will skip
Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, so I'm not alone. I'm surprised I didn't find more hits on this issue when I searched; perhaps my google-fu is weak.
I couldn't imagine it being hardware related; this thing is orders of magnitude more powerful than any of my old MP3 players. I guess I'll live on the bleeding edge with ROMs and new kernels to see if it clears up. Thanks for your feedback!

Happens on my stock rooted/s-off using Poweramp

I'm pretty sure it has to do with the CPU being used too much. I was messing around with different clock speeds and trying to see how low I could take it and still be usable, and the lower I got, the more and more glitches came up.
Also, it is not just for mp3's. I get the glitches on spotify too, so I'm assuming it has to do with the overall audio output process, not just the reading of music files.

jshap70 said:
I'm pretty sure it has to do with the CPU being used too much. I was messing around with different clock speeds and trying to see how low I could take it and still be usable, and the lower I got, the more and more glitches came up.
Also, it is not just for mp3's. I get the glitches on spotify too, so I'm assuming it has to do with the overall audio output process, not just the reading of music files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm inclined to say it is not a cpu issue, as I haven't encountered any problems using music stored on the internal memory.

I've been giving this issue some thought, and did a little research (probably not enough to talk authoritatively, though ). I've come up with the following observations:
This issue appears to have surfaced with Kit Kat.
Wiith Kit Kat, Google made some significant changes to the handling of external/removable SD-cards; no more direct write access to them from applications.
A lot of media player applications were "broken" by KitKat and needed to be redesigned to support the new restrictions.
The standard protocol for moving files to the removable SD-card is now MTP.
Which raises the following questions, at least for me:
Does this mean that MTP is the protocol for accessing MP3/media files from player apps, and therefore there's now an arbitrator/server in between the filesystem and media players?
Now that direct write access to SD-cards has been restored via an edit to /system/etc/permissions/platform.xml, is there a chance that an older MP3 player may have better luck playing MP3 files, given that it would probably use direct filesystem access vs. going through MTP (if in fact MTP is used for "new" applications)?

So it's not just me? It doesn't happen as often for me after the ota
Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk

Dodge DeBoulet said:
I've been giving this issue some thought, and did a little research (probably not enough to talk authoritatively, though ). I've come up with the following observations:
This issue appears to have surfaced with Kit Kat.
Wiith Kit Kat, Google made some significant changes to the handling of external/removable SD-cards; no more direct write access to them from applications.
A lot of media player applications were "broken" by KitKat and needed to be redesigned to support the new restrictions.
The standard protocol for moving files to the removable SD-card is now MTP.
Which raises the following questions, at least for me:
Does this mean that MTP is the protocol for accessing MP3/media files from player apps, and therefore there's now an arbitrator/server in between the filesystem and media players?
Now that direct write access to SD-cards has been restored via an edit to /system/etc/permissions/platform.xml, is there a chance that an older MP3 player may have better luck playing MP3 files, given that it would probably use direct filesystem access vs. going through MTP (if in fact MTP is used for "new" applications)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're doing god's work, man. It would certainly make sense if mtp was the reason behind all of this, as mtp is generally broken and incapable of parallel tasks. Perhaps, then, there is some kind of operation that the OS is performing at fairly regular intervals that disrupt what should otherwise be a simple read. Media scanning? Entropy generation? I'm not really sure, but clearly there is something silly going on in the I/O. Maybe a programmer like @SSukk could shed light on this

I think part of the problem is the amount of storage on the larger cards, and/or the fact that they're just not fast enough . My 64g card is a ultra and has problems. I bought one of the faster extreme pros and have never had any problems even when fully loaded. It's only 16g though. When the larger cards get faster speeds well see this disappear entirely.
Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk

csstamatin said:
I think part of the problem is the amount of storage on the larger cards, and/or the fact that they're just not fast enough . My 64g card is a ultra and has problems. I bought one of the faster extreme pros and have never had any problems even when fully loaded. It's only 16g though. When the larger cards get faster speeds well see this disappear entirely.
Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A microSDHC card doesn't have to be very fast to keep up with the demands of playing MP3s. MP3 players were using much slower flash memory 10+ years ago without glitches or skipping.

broprah said:
You're doing god's work, man. It would certainly make sense if mtp was the reason behind all of this, as mtp is generally broken and incapable of parallel tasks. Perhaps, then, there is some kind of operation that the OS is performing at fairly regular intervals that disrupt what should otherwise be a simple read. Media scanning? Entropy generation? I'm not really sure, but clearly there is something silly going on in the I/O. Maybe a programmer like @SSukk could shed light on this
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you're onto something. I'd love to get some input from someone who understands the nuts and bolts of media playback in Android.

I have Google Music playing from the cloud on occasion, but most of my playlists are cached to SD. I don't use anything to modify output other than leaving BoomSound on, and I've not run into this glitch with headphones or Bluetooth,

Bump!! Wanna see more answers to this question! Haven't put MP3s on my phone yet but already installed a 64 GB card for the intentions on doing so!

Had mine in airplane mode for a while this morning as I was traveling to NYC. If anything, the glitches seemed to occur more often. I don't think they were predictable enough to say with authority that airplane mode was related, though.

Just curious, how are everyone's cards formatted? My 64gb is fat32, apparently. I suspect this to be a problem, even though it wasn't on other devices. However, I'd like to see if we all have that in common before I reformat and have transfer 60 gigs of music back over...

broprah said:
Just curious, how are everyone's cards formatted? My 64gb is fat32, apparently. I suspect this to be a problem, even though it wasn't on other devices. However, I'd like to see if we all have that in common before I reformat and have transfer 60 gigs of music back over...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't format mine after installing it, and I'll bet it came formatted as ExFat. I'll see if I can find a way to verify and report back.

Dodge DeBoulet said:
I didn't format mine after installing it, and I'll bet it came formatted as ExFat. I'll see if I can find a way to verify and report back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used this to figure out how I was formatted: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sylkat.AParted

Mine's definitely ExFAT.
On a related note . . .
I was sitting in the Stage Door Diner at 33rd and 8th Ave this evening (no, that doesn't really have anything to do with this issue, but it injects a little bit of local color into the story . . . I live in Maine, but I love NYC ), browsing XDA on my M8 while stuffing my face. For no apparent reason that I could see, a toast popped up with "Preparing SD Card." Now, I wasn't doing anything specific that would be accessing the SD card; as I said, I was just doing a bit of web browsing. But I thought that toast normally displayed only when the phone was booted and/or plugged into a computer via USB (and nowadays, with MTP being the default transfer mechanism to the SD card, it normally isn't seen then). But it looks like some process was doing something that caused the SD card to be "prepared," whatever that means, and since my music is on it, I'm suspecting it might have an effect on playback if it occurs when listening to MP3s.
Has anyone else noticed this symptom during normal usage?

What have I done wrong - extrem performance slowdown

Hi guys, I have a situation with my moto g, I have the 8gb version since one week, I've installed a 128gb sdcard on the phone formated as internal storage... During a few days I've no problem with performance at all.... Then yesterday I decided to encrypt my phone and today I loaded 60gb an data, music, photos and videos.
Since then my phone is struggling from time to time to do simple tasks like opening an app or dragging the status bar down... Is nothing like that happens always or with the same apps.... Is random, sometimes I just wanna to unlock the phone and it takes like minutes for the keyboard to come up.
Anyone with an idea of what this might be? Was it the encryption? Should I give the phone time to index all the data?
I know it's not a problem from the SD card, because it's the fastest sandisk that I could get.

Since you asked in the form of a question, I will give you the best answer I can based on your specific questions...
This is probably a multitude of issues... first, setting up your SD card as internal storage will typically show down performance, although sometimes not noticably. Second, you encrypted internal storage (your SD card) this slows down your system as well. Third, you loaded 60GB of data, music, photos, and videos, which will take a VERY long time to index and put into the Storage and Media databases, and there databases also reside on the internal storage, which access to has been slowed down significantly due to being on an SD card and encrypted. These 3 things combined will likely give extremely poor performance, for a time at least.
My first question would be how long has it been since you loaded that 60GB of data? On an idle device it would take several hours (maybe days) to index it all and update the databases...

Thanks, I might have precipitated myself in thinking that something was wrong, yet today the phone locked it self a few times, one time the process system stopped responding... I will wait until tomorrow if the problem persists I will try deleting the biggest folder ( music 40gb) and if I see some improvement I will add the music in steps.

I'm pretty sure it was the encryption. My phone, with a similar setup (1GB/8GB phone, 64GB SD as internal storage, reasonable amount of media) also showed a gigantic speed loss when I foolishly enabled encryption. I tried to work with it for some days until it became clear the situation wouldn't get any better. After a factory reset, formatting the SD again as internal and copying the media again, the phone feels even faster than it was out of the box.

I've also my phone encrypted for quite a few months now (did this already on lollipop), with actually no real complaints. However since a few days I've noticed huge performance hits as well. I'm also considering a factory reset...

Thanks for all inputs , I have restored the phone without encryption and everything runs smoothly again.