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I realized the SD-card I used initially is too small and I want to move to a bigger one. I store most Apps and Data on the SD card.

I just made a copy of all files on the old card to the new one (using a PC).

When I boot up the phone again it recognizes the new card but all the apps stored on the old card are unavailable.

What is the recommended procedure to move to a different SD-card?

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You can either move your data to your phones internal storage and then move it back on the new SD card or re-download the data. Moving data deftly from one card to another unfortunately won't work.

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You'll have to move your apps to your phone first, power off the phone, put in new SD card, move apps on the new SD card. If your phone's storage isn't large enough, you'll have to do it in a couple of retries.

I've tried copying everything in one go, also by dd-ing the original SD card to hard disk, and then dd it back to the larger SD card, thus making a bit-by-bit copy, but even that did not work.

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  • I wish I had read this before attempting it. Pulled my hairs out with this, especially with the abysmal speeds at which [most] SD cards operate. dd should be your best bet, right? 1 to 1 clone, right? it looks like they went out of their way to make this impossible. – brett Jun 12 at 20:16
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The recommended procedure is to move all your apps from the old microSD Card to internal storage till it's full using Storage Sense then shut down the phone, put in the new card, and move all the apps back over to that new card with Storage Sense. Notice how this doesn't leave you with a backup copy of the apps and their data on the old card for the case your phone is stolen or the microSD card fails (they do). You keep doing this procedure of swapping cards and moving apps to internal storage until all the apps are on the new card.

Photos, maps, music, etc. can be successfully moved/backedup to a hard drive and onto the new microSD card using file manager software (FreeFileSync, TeraCopy, Windows file manager) on microSD inserted into a laptop or tablet.

I tried alternate methods and haven't had any success yet moving the apps and data forks. Using my Windows 8.1 laptop, XCOPY with full switches, FreeFileCopy or Teracopy would not get all the data. There is a hidden 5GB of data even though folder access is set to show all hidden and system files. Somehow WindowsPhoneOS is squirreling away hidden data on exFAT partition that Windows 8.1 laptop can not see nor can any of the file level mirroring software I own.

Trying a partition copy software like EASEUS or Minitool might work but you'll need two MicroSD card ports or open partition space on a regular drive and do it in two steps, one from MicroSD-harddrive then harddrive->MicroSD. I'll try this and edit my answer if it works.

The user that tried with "Speed Commander 16pro" might have succeeded because their Micro SD card was formatted with a file system other than exFAT to begin with. If the starting file system is FAT32 then regular file copy software might be able to get all the hidden application files. I d/led SpeedCommander and will edit my answer indicating if I was able to replicate the other user's results.

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    This may be the closest thing to a full answer... the only way to halfway get sd apps to work was to copy to old car. EVEN THEN they show up in the app picker, yet running any app from card, fails :( There should be a big warning to NEVER move all files from off your original card!!! – NoBugs Oct 16 '16 at 4:03
  • The alternate method described here is what I tried. While I did manage making backups of the SD cards, I couldn't get the apps to recover. Even uninstalling the app on the new card, it could not reinstall. – Ryan Beesley Apr 22 '18 at 2:55
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I had same problem, I used copy and transfer software (in my case "Speed Commander 16pro")and itenter image description here solved problem.

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    It might be useful to expand your answer to include details of the steps you take with the tool to solve the problem at hand. – Rowland Shaw♦ Jun 30 '16 at 21:11
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I moved everything I could see to a map on my laptop, including one hidden file. The card is then seen as empty, but if you type win in the search box, you'll suddenly get a whole new view of stored info. This I copied as well and I deleted a huge wintemp file that is under AFBCC817 etc. ; local, temp. I then copied everything to a bigger SD-card and it worked fine.

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Another possibility to explore, in the likely case that you have a lot of stuff on your SD card because you don't have space in internal storage, is to do a backup of the phone, switch SD cards and then restore.

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  • Backing up sd, copying to new sd card, doesn't work, as you would think it would, and would work on just about any Android :( – NoBugs Oct 16 '16 at 3:23
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A bit-by-bit clone should work, there are plenty of free apps that do that. A bit-by-bit will make an identical copy of the contents in the old sd card. The system will be able to read it then.

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    Each SD card has a VendorID, ProductID and possibly a unique InstanceID in the hardware independent of the storage area. I can image the WP OS stores these IDs to identify the card. – Peter Hahndorf Dec 27 '14 at 20:48
  • @PeterHahndorf I do not think they rely on VendorID or ProductID, as you can buy the same type and clone to them. Regarding the SD ID Number, AFAIK you can change that.. so a bit-by-bit cloning should work, I will do a test soon and post the results. – Nean Der Thal Dec 27 '14 at 21:00
  • @HeidelBerGensis and how did it go? – SOReader Jan 14 '16 at 22:48
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    @SOReader I dd'ed contents of my card and wp10 ignored WPSystem :( – yuyoyuppe Apr 30 '16 at 10:02
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It seems that a restore is the easiest thing to do. I tried the copy, but that sure is not working. I could not find a way to restore other than to reset to factory settings, and all apps are restored, however you lose your authentications.

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