60csx MicroSD problems

[+Whittling Fisher]

I am having problems with my Garmin 60csx and a sandisk 512 MB microSD card. I had City Nav 7 maps loaded on the card (about 400MB) and it was working perfectly for about 2 weeks. Yesterday I shut the unit off for an hour while on a trip and turned it back on and all the maps were gone. I took the card out a few times and put it back in and every time it would not show the maps. I also checked under the menu on the map page and all it showed that the basemap was the only thing the unit was using. I put in the old card (64 MB) that came with the unit and the maps on it showed up fine.

 

I am just wondering if anyone has had their microSD cards go bad or erase the data while in the GPS unit. It seems odd that it would just stop working all of a sudden. Thanks for any suggestions or help.

[8mmag]

I am having problems with my Garmin 60csx and a sandisk 512 MB microSD card. I had City Nav 7 maps loaded on the card (about 400MB) and it was working perfectly for about 2 weeks. Yesterday I shut the unit off for an hour while on a trip and turned it back on and all the maps were gone. I took the card out a few times and put it back in and every time it would not show the maps. I also checked under the menu on the map page and all it showed that the basemap was the only thing the unit was using. I put in the old card (64 MB) that came with the unit and the maps on it showed up fine.

 

I am just wondering if anyone has had their microSD cards go bad or erase the data while in the GPS unit. It seems odd that it would just stop working all of a sudden. Thanks for any suggestions or help.

 

Try putting it in a card reader and see if they're there. Or...put the unit in USB mass storage mode and try to read it that way. You may want to reformat it and try again before sending it back to Sandisk.

 

And it is the plain microSD card right, not the Ultra II or whatever? The Ultra's have been known to toast themselves in Garmin GPSr's.

[Castanea]

Do you think you deleted them accidently during a transfer?

[+Whittling Fisher]

Thanks for the suggestions. I just tried looking at the card through the USB mass storage mode and it says that the disk is not formatted. After I click to format it, the computer says it can't. I also tried to add a new map to it using mapsource and it says there isn't a disc in the GPS.

 

It is a "normal" 512 TransFlash card.

 

Also, I am sure I didn't delete the files during a transfer because the files were there when I turned the GPS off while driving down the road and then they were gone when I turned it back on.

 

I guess that the card just got "fried" and I will have to see if Sandisk will replace it. Thanks again for the help on checking the card.

[speedy FFW]

Don't give up on it yet. Do you have an external Card Reader?

 

It seems that occasionally when transferring maps directly to the GPS it corrupts the card and requires a low level format.

 

When I had similar problems with my 1 GB card, I used the external reader/writer and performed a low level format with the tool from the following link:

HDD Low Level Format Tool

Besides hard disks, it does a low level format on flash disks. After I used the tool I was able to format the MicroSD card with the regular format. Since then I only transferred maps through an external card reader and had no more problems.

[+dumketu]

I am having problems with my Garmin 60csx and a sandisk 512 MB microSD card. I had City Nav 7 maps loaded on the card (about 400MB) and it was working perfectly for about 2 weeks. Yesterday I shut the unit off for an hour while on a trip and turned it back on and all the maps were gone. I took the card out a few times and put it back in and every time it would not show the maps. I also checked under the menu on the map page and all it showed that the basemap was the only thing the unit was using. I put in the old card (64 MB) that came with the unit and the maps on it showed up fine.

 

I am just wondering if anyone has had their microSD cards go bad or erase the data while in the GPS unit. It seems odd that it would just stop working all of a sudden. Thanks for any suggestions or help.

 

I actually had a similar problem happen a few days ago. While out geocaching I realized that the GPS no longer had the maps on my cf card. We went about the hike and some time later the maps re-appeared. The GPS also did not record the tracks to the CF card while the maps were unavaliable. I am assuming that the CF card got loose somehow and so far the problem has not re-appeared. You might check to see that the CF card is making contact with the GPS properly.

Edited September 5, 2006 by dumketu

[+Whittling Fisher]

Don't give up on it yet. Do you have an external Card Reader?

 

It seems that occasionally when transferring maps directly to the GPS it corrupts the card and requires a low level format.

 

When I had similar problems with my 1 GB card, I used the external reader/writer and performed a low level format with the tool from the following link:

HDD Low Level Format Tool

Besides hard disks, it does a low level format on flash disks. After I used the tool I was able to format the MicroSD card with the regular format. Since then I only transferred maps through an external card reader and had no more problems.

 

Thanks for giving me the link. This worked great and fixed the card to where the computer could read it again. I just loaded maps using a card reader and the GPS was able to read it just fine. I guess it must have got corrupted when I loaded the maps using the GPS. Hopefully this won't happen again while on a trip away from my computer. Thanks again for all the help. For anyone else having this same problem, this was a simple and easy fix using the low level format software above.

 

Now I can find my way around again