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WHat size MicroSD card to get?


MdKamper

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I have a Garmin 60CSx and it came with a 128mb MicroSD card ... I plan to add the street maps from Ibycus and perhaps the Garmin Topo maps ... I'd like to load them all (makes it easier traveling) instead of specific areas ... what size MicroSD card would be appropriate? For the cost I can get a 4gb for about $2.00 more than a 2gb so I figured thats the way to go, just looking for opinions for those that have already upgraded the micro card.

 

Thanks

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I have a Garmin 60CSx and it came with a 128mb MicroSD card ... I plan to add the street maps from Ibycus and perhaps the Garmin Topo maps ... I'd like to load them all (makes it easier traveling) instead of specific areas ... what size MicroSD card would be appropriate? For the cost I can get a 4gb for about $2.00 more than a 2gb so I figured thats the way to go, just looking for opinions for those that have already upgraded the micro card.

 

Thanks

 

2Gb Kingston micro SD w/ Sd adapter - $7.00 promo price with free shipping. Have bought from them twice and always received them in 3 days. shop.kingston.com

 

No matter what size memory card (2Gb or 4 Gb) you get you won't be able to load all of Gamin's Topo Maps to the memory card... there is a map tile limit of 2,025 maps that you can load to your GPS. If you do get the 4 Gb card the additional memory can be utilized for saving tracks in the field to the memory card and also by Custom POIs I believe. From my experience, the small amount of memory utilized by tracks saved in this manner and by Custom POIs is not worth any additional cost for the memory cards larger than 2 Gb unless you have some other device you are also using it in. A general rule of thumb is that approximately 10,000 custom POIs take up about 1 Mb.

 

edit: only the first 2 Gb are used for storing the maps to, if you go larger than a 2 Gb card.

Edited by eaparks
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I have a Garmin 60CSx and it came with a 128mb MicroSD card ... I plan to add the street maps from Ibycus and perhaps the Garmin Topo maps ... I'd like to load them all (makes it easier traveling) instead of specific areas ... what size MicroSD card would be appropriate? For the cost I can get a 4gb for about $2.00 more than a 2gb so I figured thats the way to go, just looking for opinions for those that have already upgraded the micro card.

 

Thanks

 

There is a limit (approx 2000) to the number of sections of maps that can be loaded to a card. The Garmin City Navigator maps are broken out mostly by states with a few exceptions such as Texas, Calf, etc., I have never counted the sections but my guess is there are maybe 75 at most. The Topo maps are broken down in to smaller sections, Colorado where I live for example has about 130 sections.

 

Basiclly what I driving at is that you will reach the limit of sections that can be loaded before you max out a 2gb card. For example I have the Navigator maps loaded on my card and the topo maps for about 14 states loaded and am at the limit of approx 2000 sections. My 2gb card has 1.75gb of maps on it which still leaves a lot of room for waypoints and poi's.

 

hlq

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what size MicroSD card would be appropriate? For the cost I can get a 4gb for about $2.00 more than a 2gb
I have a 4 GB microSDHC card in my 76CSx. There is a limit of about 2 GB and 2025 segments on the amount of maps you can load; but that is a unit firmware limitation that has nothing to do with the card. The remaining space on the card can be accessed through the unit's Mass Storage mode and can be used for track logs and/or custom POI files. Cards up to 6 GB have been shown to work the same way.
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"2Gb Kingston micro SD w/ Sd adapter - $7.00 promo price with free shipping. Have bought from them twice and always received them in 3 days. shop.kingston.com"

 

Thanks for the info, I was actually going to pick up a new MicroSD card this weekend from Radio Shack. For the same price I got three from Kingston, plus I added a 2 GD flashdrive and got a 1 GB flashdrive free. As an added bonus, shipping was free.

Edited by SAPD
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"" only the first 2 Gb are used for storing the maps to, if you go larger than a 2 Gb card. ""

 

Can I take this to mean that at 4GB card will work in my 60CSx, with upto 2GB for maps and the remainder for POI?

 

Yes, that is correct. The additional 2 Gbs is a lot of over kill considering the very small amount of memory that the "Custom POIs" take up. I have 19,300 Custom POIs on my 2Gb card and they only take up 2.70 Mb of memory on the card. Tracks can also be saved to the memory card in addtion to saving them to the units internal memory, all tracks saved in a single day in this manner are saved as a single file for that day. Tracks saved in this manner also take up very little memory on the memory card. This is why I made the comment in a previous post here that unless the memory card is also going to be used in other electronic devices any addtional cost for a memory card larger than 2Gb is really a waste in my opinoin, for the average person. The only exception I could forsee is someone saving hugh volumes of tracks (many, many days worth) before being able to get back to their computer.

 

On my 2Gb card I have all of the continental U.S in City Navigator N.A. NT v2008, plus 1/4 of the U.S. Topo (all of southeast plus CO and OR), plus most of the U.S. east of the Mississippi River in U.S. Inland Lakes and Waterways, plus Caribbean Roads, plus 12 Custom Maps (10 of Trails and 2 Topos) and all of this only takes up 1,436 Mbs.

Edited by eaparks
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I bought a Kingston 4 Gb MicroSD HC card. It didn't seem to work well w/ my Legend Cx. I went back to the 512 Mb card & the GPSr seemed to work OK. Is the HC "format" incompatible w/ my Legend?

More likely, based upon some of the other replies here, it's because only 2GB is "officially" supported on the device.
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I bought a Kingston 4 Gb MicroSD HC card. It didn't seem to work well w/ my Legend Cx. I went back to the 512 Mb card & the GPSr seemed to work OK. Is the HC "format" incompatible w/ my Legend?

The Garmin "official line" notwithstanding, others have successfully used 4 GB SDHC cards in a Vista HCx.
After reading through a lot of messages on this board and getting a lot of conflicting results on just what the heck happens if you try to use a 4GB microSDHC card in the vista HCx, I just bought one and tried it out myself. Here's what happens:

 

It's true that you can only access half of the card for uploading maps, HOWEVER, this still makes it a bigger card that the 2GB microSD, because half of the the 4GB microSD card allows you to upload 2048MB of maps, whereas with the 2GB card I could never load more than 19xxMB (I forget what the acutal limit was, but the point is you get about an extra 100 MB of maps with the 4GB micro SD card).

 

Furthermore, after absolutely filling the 4GB microSDHC card with over 2GB of maps (all of mapsource NA NT, Mexico NT, and western europe (CNE NT), I checked how much space was available on the card for track log storage, and it said that the card was 1/2 full, which I'm assuming means I still have ~2GB remaining for track logs, which should last me the rest of my life.

 

So the bottom line is, I think everyone should be running the 4GB cards in the Vista HCx devices, I know I'm glad I made the switch.

 

Finally, it seems pretty clear to me at least, that if I can load 2GB of maps on to one part of the card, access these maps with the Vista HCx, whilst simultaneously saving track logs to the other 2GB of the card with the same device, that in one way or another, the Vista HCx CAN access all 4 GB of a microSDHC card. So the question is, why hasn't Garmin come out with a mapsource/Vista HCx patch/firmware upgrade that allows us to upload up to 4GB to a microSDHC card and access all 4GB simultaneously on the GPS device? The size of all Garmin's city navigator NT products is somewhere between 2 and 4 GB, but still well under the maximum map number limit (whatever it actually is, I don't know, although I'd say the max map number limit should also be fixed).

I don’t have a Vista, but as far as I can tell from reading the posts in this forum, they seem to handle large capacity cards just like the 60/76 series.
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I have a 2GB Kingston card and have 199X map segments. It only takes up 1605MB of disk space leaving the remainder for tracks and "miscellaneous space". Given the 2025 map segment limit, I don't see much need for more than 2GB, but for $2, all you risk is "official" incompatibility.

 

Why not try a borrowed 4GB to see if it will work correctly before you buy?

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