What data in which folder?

I have been using an Etrex30 and Basecamp successfully for about two years now. Currently we live in Delhi, India, but we still visit our home country the Netherlands on a regular basis. So I have installed the map of the area around Delhi and the Dutch bicycle map.

I plan routes on my Mac with Basecamp, upload them in the Etrex and set off on my Royal Enfield Bullet in Delhi, or my bicycle in the Netherlands.
I switch between the Indian and the Dutch bicycle chart on the Etrext, depending in which country I happen to be.

So far, so good. However, somehow my Etrex / Basecamp has started to surprise me. The other day all my waypoints, routes and tracks had disappeared from my Etrex. So I thought I would just put them back in from Basecamp. Selected the respective folders and transferred the lot. At least I thought I did, but when I checked by starting up the Etrex and checking the routes/waypoints/tracks, still nothing there.

After a bit of trouble shooting I found that all my route, track and waypoint data sits in the folder GARMIN/garmin/GPX

I have also a micro SD card installed. It also has a GPX folder which was empty and which shows as NO NAME/garmin/GPX

When I copied all the data from the memory of the Etrex to the SD card, all route, track and waypoint data became visible and useable again on the Etrex.

So the good news is, at least I’m up and running again. But I still don’t understand what data should sit in which folder, the internal memory of the Etrex or the external SD card. It appears as if the Garmin reads from the SD card, but Basecamp writes to the internal memory?

Anybody that can provide some insight here, what is going on, or how to fix this permanently?

Thanks

Jeroen

Your GPS reads the data on both, SD card and internal memory. It is recommended to store pois, routes and tracks on your SD card, in case of corrupt data you can simply remove the SD card from your GPS and reboot the unit. The Etrex*)** writes** its waypoints, routes and tracks by default to its internal memory (garmin folder), you can’t change this unfortunately. I lost some data too because of crashes. In Basecamp you can either choose to copy the data to the SD card or the internal memory.

*) New series, the older units could write the track data onto the SD card.

Thanks, that is usefull. So why would the Etrex not show me the routes, tracks and waypoints when they were only in the internal memory? I had to copy them to the SD card and only then everything became useable again?

maybe I should try and clean all data out and start loading the Etrex from scractch. Because the other behaviour I have noticed is that sometime the routes and tracks get duplicated. When I sync the Etrex with Basecamp I end up with duplicates of some routes and tracks as well.

Jeroen

I have no idea what went wrong there, you could check your device with http://www.javawa.nl/jdm.html

Thanks. Im travelling this week. Back home next week. Ill give it a try

Jeroen