Moved apps to SD card, did master reset, where did my apps go?

brndn · February 13th, 2012, 08:28 AM

As the title says, I moved all my apps to my SD card by using my phone. I backed up all of my pictures and everything, and then did a factory reset on my phone. I plugged in my SD card expecting to see all of my apps that I had moved to my SD card (about 15 of them) and I can't find them anywhere. Anybody have any ideas? Of course, I can download all of my apps again, but some were paid apps, some from the Amazon Appstore. I have searched everything that I can think of, and haven't found any sort of answer. My phone is not rooted either.

Unforgiven · February 13th, 2012, 08:35 AM

A factory reset will wipe them out. You will have download them again. Don't worry about the paid apps (whether in the Market or Amazon) as these are tied to your account, not your phone. You will not have to pay for them again.

brndn · February 13th, 2012, 08:45 AM

But when I did my factory reset, I moved them to the SD card, reset the phone without the card in it, and then put the card back. I did this same thing to my wife's Droid X and it retained all of her apps, they loaded as soon as I put the SD card in the phone and started it up.

Unforgiven · February 13th, 2012, 08:52 AM

When you move an app to the SD card, only a portion (usually a large portion) is moved. You may still have leftover pieces of the apps on the sd card (data, cache, etc) but the app will need to be reinstalled and this data and cache will be overwritten if you again move the apps to sd.

Some apps like Amazon App Store or Facebook will look just the same as they did before once you sign in. Other apps like Angry Birds you will have to start all over again.

You mentioned that you are not rooted. If you were, you could use an app like Titanium Backup that would back up the apps and data for restore after a wipe.