Navigation » Navigator V memory card trouble

I have a BMW navigator V. I figured I'd see if there were any updates available before riding season. Yes, there are. Gramin express wanted to be updated. OK, fine, done. Express says there are updates available that require more memory than the stock navigator V has. Please install a 4 to 64 gig micro SD memory card and continue. I did that. I installed a SanDisk 64 gig card in the slot in the battery compartment of the GPS. For some reason, the card is not being seen. Anyone else run into this and what did you do to correct it? I took the card out and formatted it, although that didn't seam to be it. Any ideas?

The card was new. I was able to put the card in without ever unplugging the battery. That may have been my mistake. I remember having my computer lock up one day where it would do nothing. A friend of mine told me to remove the battery for a minute and in reinstall it. I figured the GPS may be doing the same thing. I unplugged the battery for a minute and plugged it back in. That seems to be what it needed. Why? Who knows. Maybe this will save another forum user some aggravation.

I don’t think the Navigator has a format command. So, get a computer with a card reader and plug it in. Windows will offer a format option, and that SHOULD get it working. Just because it’s formatted at the factory doesn’t mean it will play nice with the device with which it is used.

I’ve had cards formatted by a device be readable in Windows but format in Windows with the same format type and the device won’t read it. It’s a tricky thing how they tend to work.

Likewise, with the Navigator VI, you supposedly can edit playlists with a text editor, but NEVER has this worked. Doing so renders the file unreadable by the GPS. So, I end up creating and editing playlists on the device.

Zitat von Davidnapo im Beitrag #3

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The card was new. I was able to put the card in without ever unplugging the battery. That may have been my mistake. I remember having my computer lock up one day where it would do nothing. A friend of mine told me to remove the battery for a minute and in reinstall it. I figured the GPS may be doing the same thing. I unplugged the battery for a minute and plugged it back in. That seems to be what it needed. Why? Who knows. Maybe this will save another forum user some aggravation.

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I suppose the overflow goes onto the card. The only way I could find that out would be to pull the card out, pop it in the adapter, plug it into my computer and see. It was reading as empty before I installed it. Any time I plug the GPS into my computer I get one of two messages. I either get, "there are not updates for your device" or "there are updates for your device". This time I got the error saying everything wouldn't fit, install a 4 to 64 Gig memory card or choose an area. It seems like you need to unplug the battery for a full reset of the GPS and when it comes back up it sees the memory card. Then it takes an hour and a half to load the updated maps.

Zitat von Davidnapo im Beitrag #6

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I suppose the overflow goes onto the card. The only way I could find that out would be to pull the card out, pop it in the adapter, plug it into my computer and see. .

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Do you mean you can see internal and external on the nav while plugged into Garmin Express or just by viewing the nav as though it were a USB drive? I'll have to look next time I have it off the bike and plugged in. I haven't found a screen on the nav that shows it.

I think it’s the same on XP and newer, but Windows should see it as an external drive. I know Windows 7 and 10 see the GPS as an item with accessible memory (like an iPhone) and any inserted card is seen as a sub drive of the GPS.

It may take a couple of minutes for the OS to recognize the GPS, though.

Zitat von zer0netgain im Beitrag #9

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I think it’s the same on XP and newer, but Windows should see it as an external drive. .

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Zitat von Davidnapo im Beitrag #8

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I'll have to look next time I have it off the bike and plugged in. I haven't found a screen on the nav that shows it.

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I pulled the GPS off the bike and plugged it into my computer. If I look at the storage on the GPS it says 337MB free of 7.03 GB. The SD memory card is a 64GB, V10 memory card. I have double checked that it is properly installed. For some reason the GPS isn't seeing the extra memory. I've tried tried formatting the card and reinstalling it but it still doesn't see the extra memory. Anyone have any ideas? I've searched YouTube but don't see anything that looks relevant. The Garmin website isn't very helpful either. Apparently when I unplugged the battery I was mistaken thinking that helped.

Email Garmin. They are quite good at responding. Might take 48 hours but they will reply.

Chris

After doing some digging on the Garmin site it appears that cards larger than 32GB can be a formatting problem and they are not recommended. I'm going to go buy a new, smaller card next time I'm out and see if that works. The instructions saying to use a card up to 64GB on Garmin Express might be misleading. Since not quite 8GB has been good enough for quite a long time I would think just buying an additional 8GB would do it. If anyone has added an SD memory card, and you wouldn't mind, please tell me what size you used successfully.