Trying to load Garmin updates on to new SD card

[HarrisBikeNut]

Bought a new 4Gb Sansdisk SDHC card this week to load the updated Western Europe maps from my recently purchased Garmin lifetime updates for a European trip this July.

Load SD card into desk top, start her up, click on my Garmin icon and instruct to save to computer only.

Leave it to load overnight thinking it will take a while. Wife switches off computer in the small hours forgetting why it is on. I restart in the morning and it seems to start where it left off. However 24 hours later the screen is still telling me it is building maps which I assume is not correct.

Have I a problem? Solution? Or is it what / the way I am doing things that is the problem?

Also, do I need to format the SD card for this process?

Regards
Bob

 

[illustratedman]

I'd say switching it off has buggered it up, also saving to computer will not save it to the card but the hard drive. You need to insert the card in the unit and update it that way saving to pc and unit.

 

[pistolpete]

i had the same sort of problem whereby i couldnt load maps onto my 550, it was saying there was not enough storage space or something, i emailed garmin and was sent a walk through guide that even i could use and i got the entire westeren europe on my sd card/sat nav in a couple of hours, i can forward you the email as i dont know how to put it here, (im not great with computers) so pm me your email and i can send it to you as a attachment it really is so easy when you are shown how

 

[GSTourer]

i had the same sort of problem whereby i couldnt load maps onto my 550, it was saying there was not enough storage space or something, i emailed garmin and was sent a walk through guide that even i could use and i got the entire westeren europe on my sd card/sat nav in a couple of hours, i can forward you the email as i dont know how to put it here, (im not great with computers) so pm me your email and i can send it to you as a attachment it really is so easy when you are shown how

Pete,

If I pm you my mail address any chance I might have it too please

 

[pistolpete]

pm

yes no probs send me your email and i will send it to you

 

[pistolpete]

for anyone else having a drama putting maps on the simplest way i can say to do it is,

1-put sd card in zumo
2-plug zumo into computer and let it load up and do its thing
3-go to your start menu (bottom left of screen, mines a blue circle)
4-click on all programs
5-scroll down until you find garmin (providing you have installed the disc you got with your zumo it should be there)
6-in garmin click mapinstall
7-follow the steps and click and drag over the areas you want to install

a few hours later and job done, remember this will install to your memory card not your zumo ie. take the memory card out and you will only have whatever maps you have installed to you zumo. this is a simple way that i used and it worked for me

 

[GSTourer]

Thanks Pete I will take it from above.

 

[Mick-B]

for anyone else having a drama putting maps on the simplest way i can say to do it is,

1-put sd card in zumo
2-plug zumo into computer and let it load up and do its thing
3-go to your start menu (bottom left of screen, mines a blue circle)
4-click on all programs
5-scroll down until you find garmin (providing you have installed the disc you got with your zumo it should be there)
6-in garmin click mapinstall
7-follow the steps and click and drag over the areas you want to install

a few hours later and job done, remember this will install to your memory card not your zumo ie. take the memory card out and you will only have whatever maps you have installed to you zumo. this is a simple way that i used and it worked for me

But this does not fully answer the OP's question - it helps to understand that you can't get the total European mapping to fit into "internal storage" on the Garmin. At best you might get North West Europe to fit, for the rest you need at least 1gb SD card. 4gb is clearly plenty big enough.

The Lifetime Updater does take a long time to download it's files - maybe not a lifetime but certainly hours (and then some).

So, using the online updater I install what I can into the Garmin internal memory - like I said earlier, North West Europe will fit.

When that's done I then download the entire update to PC. I then run Garmin Mapinstall and thereafter it's pretty much a matter of selecting all the areas that you could not install direct to the device, and then install these to the memory card. Again, this takes a good few hours.

Yes, you can skip the limited install to device step and have all your mapping on the SD card - just a personal foible I guess.

Note you can't just copy and paste in Windows Explorer - Mapinstall does some processing stuff during the install, matching the files to the device for which they were purchased. Otherwise you could copy all the maps to lots of different devices...

If the download is failed (due to the PC being powered off midway through) you may need to delete the partially downloaded files - but that's potentially complex and you might be best off researching the the Garmin Users' forum.

 

[pistolpete]

your away over my head, i have all the maps i need on my 550 now, the guide i posted is what i done and it worked for me