The peculiar case of the disappearing tracks. XT & 595
Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2023 2:55 pm
I haven't noticed this before, but this oddity appears in my XT and in my 595. I don't know about the 590.
Tracks can be deleted from the system without you realising.
During transfer data from (say) Basecamp is put into Internal Storage / GPX as a file. If it is done just using Basecamp, this gets written to temp.gpx
Temp.gpx gets over-written if the USB cable is disconnected and then subsequently further transfers are made. Only the last transfers survive.
But it also happen if you use Basecamp to create a GPX file with your routes, tracks and favourites (saved). This doesn't involve temp.gpx. You copy the GPX file that you have created and place it into the Internal Storage / GPX folder. I always thought that would be safe as it doesn't involve temp.gpx which we know that Basecamp overwrites each time the cable is reconnected and more transfers are made.
No - these separate GPX files are not safe - including shared files and files transferred by Garmin Drive - which end up as GPX file saved in exactly the same place. What seems to happen is that when you use the Zumo to import the favourites, the Zumo removes the lines in the file that relate to the imported track. They are gone. Thats OK - the tracks are still there on the XT to use. But the original data in the original GPX file has been extracted and removed. The file is now shorter and all of the track data that was in it has now gone.
The good news is that if you use basecamp to send the routes tracks and waypoints to the Zumo - either by creating a GPX file and placing it in the
SD Card/Garmin/GPX folder, or by dragging and dropping it - then the Zumo doesn't seem to be able to touch that and routes, tracks and favourites can be deleted safely and then reimported at any time.
There is one small issue with Favourites. If you delete all of them, then Zumo is unable to find any favourites to import. This is another feature that Garmin have not yet addressed. The answer is easy. Just tap on the map anywhere to create a favourite and save it. Then try to import favourites again. It will be able to find them.
There is another vaguely related issue. If you load a route, and then mess around with it in some way - eg by changing the preferences or the vehicle, this causes the route to recalculate, and it may be different from the route that you loaded. Once, this was easily solved by reimporting the original route. But not now, apparently. The route being imported seems to have changed to the altered one.
But I have been testing this and not only do the tracks stay intact, so do the original routes. So far, everything that i have put onto an SD card has allowed me to wirp out everything form the route app, the track app and the favourites/saved app - and then reimport it.
I have long resisted the use of the SD card for storing routes. It is marginally slower and it bypasses the processing that Garmin does to get things in the correct place. Instead you have to manually import favourites, manually import tracks. SD cards used to be physically large and of relatively low capacity. The 1.2Gb of internal storage was massive when the 550 came out, and cards were of relatively low capacity if you wanted to buy one that you could afford. And they failed far too often for my liking (once is far too often when it is something important that is on there).
So any disadvantages that I care to list are trivial compared to the significant advantages to the user and are probably down to me being stuck in my ways and trying justify it without considering that SD cards are much faster, and much more reliable.
But it seems that using the SD card gets rid of the opportunity for the Zumo to spring some of these nasty surprises on you.
And another issue. Russ's ears will prick up at this. For ages I have had in the back of my mind a comment that @rbentnail has frequently made that in order to delete routes, tracks, waypoint you just use the list in Basecamp. Except I couldn't. So there had to be a difference in the way that we were setting things up. I didn't know if it was an Media Transfer Protocol vs MAss Storage setting, or a slightly different generation of Zumo.
The difference seems to be that I always put my routes into Internal Storage. But testing these things today, that is a habit that will be changing. And yes, I can delete tracks and routes using Basecamp if everything is on the SD card.
What I now have to remember, is that people coming from the earlier Zumos will may have developed habits like mine - trusting the internal storage to do its job. Clearly this is no longer the case. Using an SD cars would solve a whole list of problems
Lost data transferred from Basecamp to Internal storage due to temp.gpx being overwritten each time
Lost tracks.
Easier deleting of data using Basecamp
Reimporting routes for SD gets the original, not the edited one.
A foolproof low tech method of sharing routes.
Tracks can be deleted from the system without you realising.
During transfer data from (say) Basecamp is put into Internal Storage / GPX as a file. If it is done just using Basecamp, this gets written to temp.gpx
Temp.gpx gets over-written if the USB cable is disconnected and then subsequently further transfers are made. Only the last transfers survive.
But it also happen if you use Basecamp to create a GPX file with your routes, tracks and favourites (saved). This doesn't involve temp.gpx. You copy the GPX file that you have created and place it into the Internal Storage / GPX folder. I always thought that would be safe as it doesn't involve temp.gpx which we know that Basecamp overwrites each time the cable is reconnected and more transfers are made.
No - these separate GPX files are not safe - including shared files and files transferred by Garmin Drive - which end up as GPX file saved in exactly the same place. What seems to happen is that when you use the Zumo to import the favourites, the Zumo removes the lines in the file that relate to the imported track. They are gone. Thats OK - the tracks are still there on the XT to use. But the original data in the original GPX file has been extracted and removed. The file is now shorter and all of the track data that was in it has now gone.
The good news is that if you use basecamp to send the routes tracks and waypoints to the Zumo - either by creating a GPX file and placing it in the
SD Card/Garmin/GPX folder, or by dragging and dropping it - then the Zumo doesn't seem to be able to touch that and routes, tracks and favourites can be deleted safely and then reimported at any time.
There is one small issue with Favourites. If you delete all of them, then Zumo is unable to find any favourites to import. This is another feature that Garmin have not yet addressed. The answer is easy. Just tap on the map anywhere to create a favourite and save it. Then try to import favourites again. It will be able to find them.
There is another vaguely related issue. If you load a route, and then mess around with it in some way - eg by changing the preferences or the vehicle, this causes the route to recalculate, and it may be different from the route that you loaded. Once, this was easily solved by reimporting the original route. But not now, apparently. The route being imported seems to have changed to the altered one.
But I have been testing this and not only do the tracks stay intact, so do the original routes. So far, everything that i have put onto an SD card has allowed me to wirp out everything form the route app, the track app and the favourites/saved app - and then reimport it.
I have long resisted the use of the SD card for storing routes. It is marginally slower and it bypasses the processing that Garmin does to get things in the correct place. Instead you have to manually import favourites, manually import tracks. SD cards used to be physically large and of relatively low capacity. The 1.2Gb of internal storage was massive when the 550 came out, and cards were of relatively low capacity if you wanted to buy one that you could afford. And they failed far too often for my liking (once is far too often when it is something important that is on there).
So any disadvantages that I care to list are trivial compared to the significant advantages to the user and are probably down to me being stuck in my ways and trying justify it without considering that SD cards are much faster, and much more reliable.
But it seems that using the SD card gets rid of the opportunity for the Zumo to spring some of these nasty surprises on you.
And another issue. Russ's ears will prick up at this. For ages I have had in the back of my mind a comment that @rbentnail has frequently made that in order to delete routes, tracks, waypoint you just use the list in Basecamp. Except I couldn't. So there had to be a difference in the way that we were setting things up. I didn't know if it was an Media Transfer Protocol vs MAss Storage setting, or a slightly different generation of Zumo.
The difference seems to be that I always put my routes into Internal Storage. But testing these things today, that is a habit that will be changing. And yes, I can delete tracks and routes using Basecamp if everything is on the SD card.
What I now have to remember, is that people coming from the earlier Zumos will may have developed habits like mine - trusting the internal storage to do its job. Clearly this is no longer the case. Using an SD cars would solve a whole list of problems
Lost data transferred from Basecamp to Internal storage due to temp.gpx being overwritten each time
Lost tracks.
Easier deleting of data using Basecamp
Reimporting routes for SD gets the original, not the edited one.
A foolproof low tech method of sharing routes.