Struggling to find answers. Slow Communication and Device Full.

[BradB]

As the subject reads, I am struggling to find answers. My frustration level has reached 10! I have searched online but frankly the discussions quickly get beyond my limited expertise and the references to other Garmin units confuse me. If anyone can offer any advise or point me in a direction I would greatly appreciate it.

I have a Navigator V on a BMW motorcycle. (Not sure what other Garmin unit name it equates to. Zumo?) I use Basecamp on a MacBook Pro and have updated all my software via Express.

Questions:
1. The time it takes for my Mac/Basecamp to recognize my Nav unit after plugging it in via the USB is excruciating. Sometimes its 10 minutes. Sometimes its an hour. It's just nuts! My USB ports on the laptop are fine. Any ideas?

2. In an effort to find a solution to problem #1 I noticed that my Nav unit says the Internal Storage is 99% full. WHAT? How can this be? I haven't used the unit a lot. I do delete routes from the unit after they have been ridden. The unit has 12 routes in it now. How can it be full? What can I do to clean it up? I've looked at the folders within the unit but I don't know what the files really are and don't want to delete the wrong things.

Thanks in advance for any help. I spent a crazy amount of time teaching myself the basics of creating routes and can see this is a powerful application but it really can be frustrating!

[sussamb]

As you're on a mac have you emptied the trash?

[H2R]

BradB,

Is BaseCamp reading the current map off of your Navigator when you connect it via USB? This can take some time (although not an hour).

I use an option in Garmin Express to install the current map on both the Navigator and my Mac. I believe this will eliminate (or at least speed up) the need for the current map to be downloaded from the Navigator when it is connected. The option to load the map onto the Mac is somewhat hidden if I recall, but you should be able to find it in the several screens you work through when doing a map update on the Navigator in Garmin Express.

On the second point, you may be able to save space by cutting back on the map area that you load onto the Navigator. I'm not sure what the current total map size is or how much memory you have on a Nav5. Loading only a portion of the geography may help. (Perhaps US only instead of all North America.) You may also be able to relieve some of the memory crunch by adding a memory card. That's the approach I took for several cross-continent trips with a Zumo 660 which was short on memory given the size of the current maps.

-H2R

[BradB]

As you're on a mac have you emptied the trash?

That's a good one! But, alas, made no difference. Thanks for the idea.

[BradB]

BradB,

Is BaseCamp reading the current map off of your Navigator when you connect it via USB? This can take some time (although not an hour).

I use an option in Garmin Express to install the current map on both the Navigator and my Mac. I believe this will eliminate (or at least speed up) the need for the current map to be downloaded from the Navigator when it is connected. The option to load the map onto the Mac is somewhat hidden if I recall, but you should be able to find it in the several screens you work through when doing a map update on the Navigator in Garmin Express.

On the second point, you may be able to save space by cutting back on the map area that you load onto the Navigator. I'm not sure what the current total map size is or how much memory you have on a Nav5. Loading only a portion of the geography may help. (Perhaps US only instead of all North America.) You may also be able to relieve some of the memory crunch by adding a memory card. That's the approach I took for several cross-continent trips with a Zumo 660 which was short on memory given the size of the current maps.

-H2R

I have the latest map installed (on Basecamp) though I'm not sure how Basecamp is reading it. Not sure how I can confirm this. I always thought that the Nav V unit had a map already installed. Is that not the case? (Not sure how this all works) By the way, in Basecamp it shows I have 2021.2 map, but also the previous versions 2021.1 and 2020.2 are listed. Does this mean there are really 3 maps taking up space?

The option of loading a map on the Mac is interesting but I haven't seen how to do that yet.

The idea of loading a limited geography size makes sense, too, but again, I thought the map was on the Nav V unit.

Also, I do have an SD card in the Nav unit and it says that only 20% of it is being used when I look at it through Garmin Express. It's interesting though when I look in the SD card folder (going through the Finder on my Mac) it shows that the SD card folder is completely empty. That doesn't make sense to me.

I do have a question about the SD card. When I "Send the Route to the Device" I get a choice of the the Garmin V main unit or the SD card. When I send routes to the Garmin it seems to work just fine. When I send routes to the SD card they don't appear in the "do you want to import these routes into the trip planner" option on the Garmin V. After some fishing around inside the Garmin V unit I found the missing routes that I thought I was putting in the SD card. I have to then manually import them. It's all rather tedious and slow. So, how do you use the SD card?

Thanks!

[swedak]

On your SD card you have to create a folder that you name "Garmin"