I was recently looking for an MP3 player to use while at the gym, something that was lightweight but at the same time could at least store a few tracks. As i’m also into music production a lot of my mp3s are at 320kbps so the more space the better. The obvious option was the iPod Nano but this was limited on size. The other option was to get one of the Sandisk Sansa mp3 players. After reading through forums i decided to go with the Sansa Clip Plus as it was lightweight and expandable via the MicroSD slot. As far as i’m aware this mp3 player has been discontinued but i managed to pick a 4gb refurbished one up on amazon for £20. The original firmware limits you to a 32gb card maximum but if you flash it with Rockbox software you can put in larger memory cards. The largest i found that someone had got to work was 128gb so thought i would play it safe with one of these. I managed to grab one card for about £30 on amazon. The installation wasn’t completely easy and so decided to write a tutorial on how to Install Rockbox with 128gb MicroSDXC on Sansa Clip+ . Please be warey that everything you do is at your own risk and you should also do your own research before flashing firmware as there is a possibility you could brick your device. I advise you follow the Rockbox tutorial as this will be most up to date and also explains how to install manually but there was some additional gaps i have filled in below.
How To Install Rockbox with 128gb MicroSDXC on Sansa Clip+
- If your mp3 player is already pretty full then delete some files. This will cause issues down the line. I left about 60mb free for my install and everything installed correctly.
- Go to the Settings on your Sansa Clip+ and change the USB mode to MSC.
- We will be installing Rockbox using the automated process. Download the RockboxUtility and extract this and run the *.exe.
- Once the RockboxUtility is running i tried to press Autodetect device which crashed the software. Instead its easier to select your device from the list. Make sure you pick the correct device and make sure it is pointing at the correct drive letter. See below:
- Once you press OK you can set any other options but i went with the default. To understand what all these do it is probably best looking at Rockbox’s own website.
- Now choose which version you want to install but i went for the Stable version for the obvious reasons that it should be more stable and contain less bugs. When you are happy with all your choices press “Install”.
- Once the installation has completed you must safely eject the device. The device should then shut down.
- Once it has completely shut down, power on the device and Rockbox should start
- Now if you have a MicroSDXC card bigger than 32gb it will be formatted into exFAT by default and Rockbox will not pick this up. I put my sd card into a card reader then plugged it into windows. Unfortuantely Windows 10 does not give you the option to format the card into FAT32 which is needed for Rockbox. Instead we will need a third party app. There are many out there but i tried a few which did not work so i recommend guiformat. You need to click the image on the website to download the app.
- Once this has downloaded then run the exe. You then pick your drive and i left the other fields with their default values. See below image:
- Press start which should reformat the drive.
- Safely disconnect your sd card.
- Make sure your Sansa Clip+ is turned off then insert the MicroSDXC card.
- At this point i plugged it into the PC and added music to the SD card that appeared under my computer.
- If you now power on your device and go to Files you should see “<microSD1>” as an option at the top which should contain everything from your card.
If i have missed any steps then please comment below and i will update this article. As noted earlier please read around the topic in case i have missed any steps as i am not liable if you brick your device.
