Question 1

Why are Mini-series cards so prone to errors?

Accepted Answer

Three reasons. The Mini's microSD slot is tiny and the springs lose tension faster than Mavic-grade slots. The drone's thermal envelope is small — at 4K/100 H.265 in warm weather it routinely thermal-throttles. And many pilots use V30 cards because they're cheap, but the Mini 4 Pro's peak write demand is closer to V60. Result: card errors mid-record. The good news — the data on the card is almost always intact, only the filesystem index breaks.

Question 2

Does the Mini's vertical shooting mode (Mini 3 Pro) affect recovery?

Accepted Answer

No. Vertical shooting is just the gimbal rotated 90° — the .MP4 container and H.265 stream are identical to horizontal. AerialRestore handles vertical clips identically and the rotation metadata is preserved.

Question 3

Can I recover from a Mini that crashed and is missing parts?

Accepted Answer

If the card is intact, yes — the camera body doesn't need to work. Pull the microSD from the wreckage, plug it into your computer, and scan with AerialRestore. We've recovered footage from cards pulled out of crashes that totaled the airframe.

Question 4

What's the right microSD card for the Mini 4 Pro?

Accepted Answer

V60 minimum, V90 ideal. We recommend Sandisk Extreme Pro 128 GB V60 or Lexar Professional 1066x V60. Avoid V30 'standard' cards at 4K/100 — they will throw errors. Card brand also matters: stick with Sandisk, Lexar, Samsung, or Angelbird. Avoid no-name cards.

Question 5

Do you handle DJI's encrypted card option?

Accepted Answer

If you set a card password in DJI Fly, you'll need that password for recovery — we recover the encrypted file structure but cannot break DJI's encryption. If you didn't set a password, the card is plaintext and recovers normally.

Question 6

Will the recovered file still have the GPS metadata?

Accepted Answer

Yes. DJI embeds GPS, altitude, and heading into the .MP4 as private atom metadata. We preserve those atoms so the recovered clip still shows your flight path in DJI Fly playback.

DJI Mini Footage Recovery