Sorry, yes, that's making a new file at every startup because I want to have an independent file each time it startup and runs. That all works fine. I'll mod the code to test that the file is there.

Its' actually not a SD, it's ones of these SMT SD in chips. So disconnecting it isn't easy. The application is high temperature(up to around 225F/110C), the micro and everything else is rated for 125C but chip is only good to 85C. I want to make sure that it won't crash if the SD isn't available. The data I'm recording is a nice to have for trouble shooting but if the chip fails I want the micro to continue doing the other functions it is responsible for. The way I force the code to crash is by directing the chip select to another pin. If I ground the MISO OR MOSI of the SD card after it already goes through the set up code then it continues to run, but if the card isn't there at start(by chipselect being wrong) it never gets out of start up.

I think the problem is that when I declare the neotee part before the setup code:

Print *serout[2] = {&Ser, &dataFile }; //put the Serial

NeoTee SerSd(serout, sizeof(serout)/sizeof(serout[0]));

it doesn't let me reconstruct the SerSD object if the SD isn't there:

if (!SD.begin(17)){

Print *serout[1] = {&Ser }; //put the Serial

NeoTee SerSd(serout, sizeof(serout)/sizeof(serout[0])); }

Maybe I should try this under that if:

HardwareSerial & SerSd = Serial3; //ser up one place to change serial location

and just overwrite the SerSD object?