Sending Maps To Microsd Card In A Card Reader

[+Thrak]

I've seen several posts saying you can significantly speed up the process of sending maps to your microSD card by sending it to a card reader instead of to the GPSr. I have a printer that reads various card formats and when I put the microSD card into it I see the card as a drive on my computer. So far so good. My question is how do I get MapSource to send the maps to the card reader? The only option I see is to send it to the unit - which is the GPSr.

[+hogrod]

I've seen several posts saying you can significantly speed up the process of sending maps to your microSD card by sending it to a card reader instead of to the GPSr. I have a printer that reads various card formats and when I put the microSD card into it I see the card as a drive on my computer. So far so good. My question is how do I get MapSource to send the maps to the card reader? The only option I see is to send it to the unit - which is the GPSr.

 

Make sure you have the latest version of mapsource. when you click transfer the drive letter should come up in the transfer box just like your gpsr normally does. see photo

 

 

I should also say I don't have a reader that can do micro SD cards. when I bought a new card it came with a adapter so you can use the small card in a regular SD slot. I have seen a 256mb micro SD with adapter for $25 at walmart. newegg is even cheaper at just over $40 for a 1gb.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16820171115

Edited July 8, 2006 by hogrod

[+Thrak]

Sigh.... I see my problem. When I use the card in the printer it shows as a network drive - since the printer is on my home network via ethernet. Apparently MapSource won't deal with a network drive. My computer sees it fine but MapSource simply refused to acknowledge its existence. The card reader for my camera card doesn't accept SD cards (yes, my 1GB SanDisk microSD card came with the adapter - and it only cost me $4.95 for the 1GB card and the adapter brand new from amazon.com!). I guess I'll look into getting a separate card reader that MapSource can find. Bummer since the computer sees it fine on the network.

 

Thanks for the screenshot. That let me know that it really does work as easily as I thought it should and let me discover where my error lay.

[+YuccaPatrol]

Considering how infrequently you are likely to load maps with a 1GB card, I can't imagine spending more money to speed up a very occasional process.

 

Once you have maps loaded, waypoints and routes load and download almost instantly.

[cwichura]

Plus, even with a card reader, you still have the index generation step that seems to take nearly as long as it does to actually copy the file to the card directly through the GPSr's USB connection. It would have been nice if Garmin had given these units real USB2 support for a higher transfer speed, though.

[+Thrak]

Yeah, I guess you are both right. It does take forever for mapsource to build the file. Then it takes a very long time to send it over the slow usb connection. I recently imaged a bunch of computers via an external usb hard drive. The usb 1.1 computers took 45 minutes for the data transfer. The usb 2.0 computers took 5 minutes for the same transfer.

 

I wanted another card reader for my camera as well so I wouldn't have to move the reader from my wife's computer to mine. Unfortunately, very few card readers will work with both the SD card and the SM (SmartMedia) card that my camera uses. The SM card isn't widely supported it seems. Maybe I'll still get a new multi-format reader. Maybe not. I have already test loaded Alaska, Canada, and 2/3 of the rest of the US (midwest to the Pacific coast) into the card and it isn't full. I just didn't want it to take nearly as long to deal with if I experimented more with other maps. It was REALLY slow to load those maps and I don't have much patience with slow computer stuff. Unless you have an old and obsolete computer (which I definitely do not have) here is NO VALID REASON for this type of thing to be slow.

[+Florg]

Why don't you map the network drive so it appears as a local drive on your computer? Mapsource should be able to see it then.

[+Hynr]

If drive mapping fails, why not plug the printer directly into the computer; install the drivers, and look for the drives... surely the card reader will then show up as local drives.

[Suscrofa]

You have to realize that the GPS CPU is not a gigahertz CPU and may be the real bottelneck, not the USB interface.

[+hogrod]

You have to realize that the GPS CPU is not a gigahertz CPU and may be the real bottelneck, not the USB interface.

 

No actually I think the explorist 400,500,600,XL and the 60/76csx all use USB 1.1 ports.(not the faster usb 2.0) It's freaking amazing how fast the maps transfer if you take out the card and put it in a reader. Granted you may not do this very frequently but wouldn't you rather spend that time outdoors using your GPSr?

[Suscrofa]

You have to realize that the GPS CPU is not a gigahertz CPU and may be the real bottelneck, not the USB interface.

 

No actually I think the explorist 400,500,600,XL and the 60/76csx all use USB 1.1 ports.(not the faster usb 2.0) It's freaking amazing how fast the maps transfer if you take out the card and put it in a reader. Granted you may not do this very frequently but wouldn't you rather spend that time outdoors using your GPSr?

 

USB 1.1 speed is up to 12Mb/s, that is about 20 minutes to transfer one gigabyte and it takes in reality close to one hour with the GPS. So the GPS CPU speed seems to be the bottleneck.

[+IV_Warrior]

Just a thought here, does Mapsource give you an option to save the built map to your computer hard-drive? Then you could just use Windows Explorer or whatever to copy it from the computer hard drive over the the memory card in your printer.