microSD card no longer recognized

General
1

I had my Tracker Mini in USB mode pugged into my Mac and I transferred some files. When it was done I ejected the disk but got a spinning wheel cursor for like 5 minutes so I force quit Finder and then force shut down the computer. I unplugged the Mini and exited USB mode and it seemed fine, but then acted glitchy. I hit Play on a song to start it and Play again to stop but the screen froze and the music it didn’t stop. A few seconds later the screen unfroze and the music stopped. I shut down the Mini and saw the normal shutdown progress bar. I went to turn it on again but it didn’t turn on. I popped out the microSD card and put it in a reader so I could back it up but my Mac doesn’t recognize it. It’s not that the drive appears corrupted or unreadable - the drive just doesn’t show up at all. Disk Utility doesn’t see anything connected. I found some reddit threads recommending various disk recovery programs but I don’t know how to use them if my computer doesn’t even recognize that there’s a disk present.

Thankfully I back up the card every week or two, but there are a few things I did since the last backup that I’d be bummed to lose. Does anyone have advice on how to troubleshoot this before I get quotes from a professional data recovery service?

2

I unfortunately don’t have any golden advice at this point. But it’s a sobering reminder to:

  • Do backups every day if you’re working on something you don’t want to lose (I just backed up the project I’m currently working on).
  • And to follow the on-screen instructions in USB Storage Mode very carefully, to reduce the risk of corruptions.

Good luck with the recovery!

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3

Can someone tell me what the Mini does if you turn it on without the microSD card inserted? Does it turn on and give a message about the card being missing or does it not turn on. Mine doesn’t turn on and I’m worried I have a bigger problem than just the card.

4

It should display insert sd card.
Have you tried out another sd card? If you have any spare left, format it to fat32 mbr (up to 32gb is fat32 anyway) and report back

5

In a rush last night I ordered whatever said it would be delivered the next day and got the 64gb version of this Amazon.com: SanDisk 64GB Extreme microSDXC UHS-I Memory Card with Adapter - Up to 170MB/s, C10, U3, V30, 4K, 5K, A2, Micro SD Card - SDSQXAH-064G-GN6MA : Electronics

What should I format this as?

6

Format it to fat32 with this tool @Sandroid mentioned it here:

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7

Just to rule out the less serious problems: Has your Mini maybe run out of battery? Did you try turning it on while powering it via USB?

8

Thanks all for the advice. Right after the card failure, the unit wouldn’t turn on and wouldn’t give the “insert SD card” message, which is why I was worried. But I tried again the next day and it turned on, so now I believe in miracles. I formatted a new card, transferred my last backup, and it seems like I’m back in business. I’m debating paying for data recovery or taking it as a challenge to recreate a song I lost - might be fun!

3 Likes
9

Happy to hear you’re back in business.

Trying to recreate something can be an interesting task. I did it once on the mini, when I forgot to save something I was working on before loading another project :person_facepalming: