Basecamp / Nav V Map Update/Route Issue

[G&T]

I was on the ferry to Spain about to spend relaxing hour or two plotting some routes when I discovered that I no longer had South Europe on my NAV V after a pre trip update so Spain wasn't a country option. Had Slovenia.

Blimey, I mean talk about cutting it fine, plotting whilst on the ferry.

 

[Becksy]

Nav V is now importing routes in correctly,.. Huh?

 

[Wapping]

Nav V is now importing routes in correctly,.. Huh?

As you mum doubtless told you, don’t fiddle with it again.

 

[TonyZZR]

There are other threads about this. No one seems to know why it happens. All you need to do is recalculate the route after you have loaded it onto the NAV (just change the route preference) and the straight lines will disappear and all will be well in the world.

 

[Becksy]

The problem is back, clearly shouldn't have fiddled with it again.

Wonder if it is to do with the fact that the North and South Europe files are installed as separate files on the Nav. They appear to be in two different folder locations as well,
1 file at SD Card/Garmin
1 file at SD Card/Maps
Maybe try moving all the files in SD Card/Garmin to SD Card/Maps....? Would welcome thoughts on that.

The maps file on my Mac appears to be one file for all of Europe.

 

[Becksy]

The problem is back, clearly shouldn't have fiddled with it again.

Wonder if it is to do with the fact that the North and South Europe files are installed as separate files on the Nav. They appear to be in two different folder locations as well,
1 file at SD Card/Garmin
1 file at SD Card/Maps
Maybe try moving all the files in SD Card/Garmin to SD Card/Maps....? Would welcome thoughts on that.

The maps file on my Mac appears to be one file for all of Europe.

I tried this and it made no difference.
(an aside question, whilst exploring the Nav files structure etc. I have noticed that if you import routes to the SD, they are in the import submenu in trips, but there seems to be no way to delete them, and the more I transfer, the bigger this list gets. Any ideas how to delete these files? I have tried deleting them directly from Finder, but they keep reappearing each time I restart the Nav.)

 

[Mzokk]

This is my old Zumo 340 connected to one of my laptops. One "half" of the Europe map is loaded on the unit (which has 7.13gb of internal memory) the other "half"is loaded on the SD card. The latest maps are a smidge over 9gb and Garmin units only recognise SD cards formatted as Fat32 which limits individual file sizes to 4gb. which really only comes into play if you are loading Garminised mapsets onto an SD card as express utilises an indexing system to get round the 4gb file size limit.



The internal memory of the Zumo 340 is the same as the Nav 5 at about 7-8gb About 6gb of mapping is loaded into the internal memory of the Zumo and 3.20gb is loaded on the SD card.



If Garmin express has loaded the latest split mapsets both on your SD card I suspect (but don't know obviously) that express may have failed to remove an older mapset when installing the latest one as there should be room on the unit for 2/3rds of the mapset. Which "could" be the cause of your woes.

If you do mess around in the Nav 5 unit memory/storage just be careful you don't delete any system files as you will brick your unit and be in a world of pain sorting that out.

I have no MAC os knowledge so bear that in mind given the information above.

 

[Becksy]

Thanks, interesting point as I could have sworn when I first put more maps on this device the maps were on the system memory. Afterall, it didn't come with an SD card, I only got on one of those when I wanted to add Spain and Europe maps.

I cannot see anything obvious to delete from the system memory to free up the space.

There is nothing in the Map folder on the Nav itself. All the maps are on the SD card. It's not possible to tell which maps are which (i.e. north or south Europe) as they have the same name in Basecamp.

 

[Mzokk]

How much space is used in the internal storage v's the SD card?

 

[Becksy]

On device storage I have 2.7GB free
On the memory card 23.1GB free

The two sets of Euro maps (north and south) on the SD card are about 3.5gb each.

 

[Wapping]

It's not possible to tell which maps are which (i.e. north or south Europe) as they have the same name in Basecamp.

I guess a workaround would be to summon up the map screen on the device and zoom in around Europe from Finland to Portugal to Croatia to Eire, to see if you can see the intimate small street details. At least that way you’ll know that the detailed maps are all present and active.

 

[Becksy]

I guess a workaround would be to summon up the map screen on the device and zoom in around Europe from Finland to Portugal to Croatia to Eire, to see if you can see the intimate small street details. At least that way you’ll know that the detailed maps are all present and active.

Yes I can see which map is which in Basecamp comparing UK with France for example and increasing the detail, but I cannot trace it back to the file names. i.e. to identify which set of files on the SD card is which.

 

[Mzokk]

On device storage I have 2.7GB free
On the memory card 23.1GB free

The two sets of Euro maps (north and south) on the SD card are about 3.5gb each.

if you only have 2.7gb free on the unit out of 7.13 or more on the device then you have something large lurking in there, On my 340 above you can see I have 1.73 bg of free space still available despite having 6 ish GB of mapping in there.

 

[Mzokk]

OK I hesitate to have you messing around in the .system files of your nav5 because I have no clue how these things interact with a mac. So if you follow any of this and brick something on your own head be it.

On a PC my Garmin devices default to MTP mode when connected to the computer so they don't have a drive letter assigned and you cannot see the hidden system folders on the device. However, if you go into the developer menu on the device you can make it go into Mass storage mode so that the unit and SD card in the device are assigned a drive letter by the Windows operating system. Now I think (Mac experts help me here) that Macs only use mass storage with Garmin devices so you may already be able to see "hidden" system files. This is turned off by Default on Windows. On a Mac I've no clue how to show hidden files if they are hidden by default. If you have to turn on Mass storage on Garmin Device connected to a MAC you can do it on the unit as follows



Hit view map



Hit speed



hold the centre of the speed semicircle for about 5-10 seconds



Scroll Down the Diagnostics page to MTP settings



And select Mass storage single session.



As stated you may already be in this position on a MAC and the above steps may not be necessary.

On a PC when you get into the unit as a Mass Storage Device and have enabled viewing hidden files you can see where the maps are installed and when!!

As you can see below I updated this device on the 4th of Feb. The largest chunks of data are in the big map file gmapprom.img and the folder marked SID. As you can see they are all created with Express when updating the maps.

It might be worth having a look at these and see if there is anything spurious in them. I'm not sure if there is what you can do about getting rid of the spurious files and reinstalling everything properly with Express. But it might give you a starter for 10 on a conversation with Garmin's help desk??

 

[Becksy]

Thanks Mzokk. The file structure is visible with a Mac, it looks different though. Here are screenshots of the device folder and SD card folder (just noticed some of the dates are 1979!?!?!):





I cannot see anything obvious in the Nav folder that could be deleted. There are manuals, but deleting those won't give me the space. I'll take it up with Garmin support.

Weirdly, using MRA instead of Basecamp. If I import the file from MRA using "BMW Motorbike GPX 1.1" I get the same issue. But if I import the file using "Garmin New GPX 1.1", it imports fine.

 

[Mzokk]

Thanks Mzokk. The file structure is visible with a Mac, it looks different though. Here are screenshots of the device folder and SD card folder (just noticed some of the dates are 1979!?!?!):

View attachment 397275

View attachment 397274

I cannot see anything obvious in the Nav folder that could be deleted. There are manuals, but deleting those won't give me the space. I'll take it up with Garmin support.

Weirdly, using MRA instead of Basecamp. If I import the file from MRA using "BMW Motorbike GPX 1.1" I get the same issue. But if I import the file using "Garmin New GPX 1.1", it imports fine.

That is helpful and odd... I notice that there are two bits of map on the SD card both with different install dates. Not sure what that's about. On the unit itself it looks like you cannot see the .system file'. I don't know how you make these visible on Mac. On the PC when you unhide the files the root directly looks like this. The hidden folders are circled


The .system file contains a this directory tree and a fair old chunk of mapping installed on the system memory.
with the install date and time 04/02/2025




On the SD card I have these folders.


In the Garmin folder is this a very small file with the same date



and this with the remaining chunk of map that wasn't installed on the device memory.


All of the mapping data matches the install date on yours there "Might" be an old map remnant that was not removed. It would be useful to contact Garmin about how to sort that and to have a look at the .system file to see which map is lurking in there?? I would imagine that Mac's have some way of making hidden files visible.

 

[Deleted account 250722001]

Titbit
With Garmin units, I have found that it is best to keep as much memory free IN the unit itself- seems to help with speed of calculations/recalcs.

 

[Becksy]

Got into the system file see here
Not sure what that tells me, all the large files lare 3D and DEM maps which I think are base maps. Best to contact Garmin I think

 

[Mzokk]

Things look ok on the SD card apart from two different installation dates for the gmapprom.img file on yours being 26/03/2025 the D6159310A.img is 6/03/2025 and the SID files all having different dates. If you look at mine they are all on the same installation date and around the same time as the unit updated. Hopefully that can pin down your discussion on how to sort it with Garmin.

Garmin Express gives the option to Reinstall the maps on the device and you might want to give this a try and see what effect it has.

 

[Riktus]

My NAV V is doing this as well - all maps on both Basecamp and Unit are the same 2026.10 and the route imports like a spider graph - only way of curing it seems to be to recalc as fastest route then switch back to shortest route and it fixes the map on the device. Only issue is if you are riding a route and skip a waypoint you loose all your shaping points. seems to be no work around for that issue but it is manageable.