Apps breaking when changing external sd?

[WokStation]

Hi,
Today I un-mounted my external SD card, inserted the one from my camera, copied the files, unmounted that and reinserted the original card. I then noticed a bunch of apps were broken. Clicking the shortcut gave me an "app not installed" message, and looking in the app list showed similarly-named apps starting with pl. The effected apps were all ones that the tablet had decided to install on the "internal usb".

Now I know that on phones, removing or unmounting an SD card will break any apps installed on it, but no apps were (or can be) installed on this SD card.

Any ideas? 16gb model, ICS, not rooted. It's getting irritating having to move apps the tablet decided to put on "internal USB" back onto internal storage.

 

[leeshor]

Welcome to the forum

Did you attempt to use any apps that might have been intended (even indirectly) to save or move apps the the SD card?

 

[WokStation]

Definitely not. Installs straight from Play, haven't even used the inbuilt thingymajig to transfer between the internal storage and the "internal usb" (until now, of course, to transfer it all to internal storage as a workaround) Both have plenty of room, and I have an 8gb card in the external slot. And it's that external one I changed (following proper mount/unmount procedure), yet it's what was on the "internal USB" that got messed around.

 

[J515OP]

Sometimes the labeling of the drives can be confusing. The "external" memory you unmounted may have actually been the internal memory that is labeled that way so apps can use it (because developers have set them up to look for sd card for example). I am not sure of Son'y's specific labeling but it could be something like sdcard and sdcard/external to distinguish between the two where only one of those is actually the external SD card. Have you tried remounting all the drives?

 

[WokStation]

It's definitely not that.
The Sony Tablet S has the internal drive partitioned into "internal storage" and "USB storage", and calls the external slot "SD card". You cannot transfer apps to the SD card, only between "internal storage" (IS) and "USB storage" (US). You cannot mount (or unmount) IS or US, only the SD card.
Basically, unmounting the SD card, using another to transfer images to US, unmounting that and replacing the original SD card has for some reason broken the apps residing on the US, but left the ones one the IS alone. In the apps settings screen, on the US, are a bunch of files prefixed with pl. that are obviouisly those apps. Telling it to transfer those to the IS makes it tell me the app doesn't exist, but it will let me uninstall it. No shortcut exists for them in the apps panel, and clicking the original shortcut on my homescreen tells me the app is not installed.