I have been struggling with getting my purple 4GB Clip Zip to load my audio files from my SanDisk 32GB micro SD card since getting the player over two weeks ago. I put about 29 GB of files on the card and the failure mode has been upon insertion of the card into the player, and then startup, the player starts a refresh cycle and a progress bar starts up on the screen. When the progress bar reach 30-35% complete the screen goes dark and the load of content from the card comes to an abrupt halt. I tried two different 32GB memory cards and got the same failures. I tried just loading a third or half of my library and it failed. I tried under 4GB of files on the card and it still failed when the progress bar reached about 40-45%. Once it fails, and it became totally predictable that it would, the only recourse at that point is to remove the card and do a hard reset of the player to get it to work again without the card inserted. The card became essentially worthless.
My files are a mixture of aac (m4a) and mp3. I loaded the card from a Mac from iTunes using drag and drop. After seeing on another forum post that aac files might be a problem I tried my own experiment. After making a complete backup, I converted all of the aac files to mp3 in iTunes and repeated the load procedure with the entire library again. This time all files were mp3 instead of a mix of aac (m4a) and mp3. I got a progress bar on startup of the player as before, but this time the load went to completion. It took about a 60 minutes to complete, but the GREAT NEWS is it did finish using all mp3 files. I found that my nice, long Kindle power cord fits the Clip Zip, so I plugged it in while this long load process was going on to keep the battery from getting run down.
I can only conclude that SanDisk’s claim of aac file support bears an explanation and an asterisk. I now have proof that aac files won’t load from the Micro SD card. My card is not the problem. The player is. I have to rate their support of aac files an EPIC FAIL with the current firmware (01.01.15). This issue should have been caught in testing. Shame on SanDisk and shame on their online support which tried to claim my card must be the problem. They have been a complete waste of my time.
Until they fix the aac file load issue with new firmware, you will have to use mp3 files with your card if you want the files to actually load and be playable. For now, SanDisk should put an asterisk by their claim of aac file support.