Etrex 20 lost routes and waypoints

[fhills]

No idea why this has happened.

I loaded up a large map (Openfietsmap- took 30 mins to transfer to the Etrex after it had unzipped but there was enough room for it) onto the memory card on the Etrex 20.

Map looked fine - can't remember if on first looking at it I could see my waypoints - I wasn't looking.

Soon afterwards I switched the Etrex20 on and it seemed to freeze in its load-up so I switched it off.

Switched it on again and the map was still there but I noticed that I couldn't see waypoints I was expecting to see.

Further examination showed that all waypoints had disappeared when I went into "waypoint manager" on the unit.

Ditto all routes disappeared.

Have connected the unit to the PC and if I look on the main unit "disk" I can see the Garmin folder with the GPX folder within that and I can see some routes as gpx files.

I can also see GPX files marked as waypoints for a particular date etc, though if I go into "calendar" on the Etrex20 it shows nothing for those dates.

Very puzzling.

Also a bit of a drag.The routes are all saved on my PC but an awful lot of the waypoints were directly entered into the Garmin as somewhat specialist points of interest etc. Am at a loss to understand what has happened as it's my understanding that neither the internal memory or the card are dependent on battery back-up.

Some sort of indexing issue? An index file which is corrupted?

Two extras I had installed - the archies campsite list and the JD Wetherspoons pub finder are still there.

I have now deleted that large map I installed but that seems to have made no difference.

The firmware for the unit is by the way not the most recent - I updated it on purchase but after a bad experience and some frankly contradictory information from Garmin on how to do this I have not bothered since.

[hexhome]

What method did you use to install the map? Could you have created another folder which has 'hidden' your data?

[frankly frankie]

I imagine that Waypoints directly entered into the GPS aren't written to either of the  /Garmin/GPX/  folders.  They may get written to whatever location your archiving goes to, but that would possibly only occur on a daily basis so maybe you could lose stuff if there's some shut-down or boot problem before that deadline.  Or they may not get written to GPX at all - you would retrieve them by connecting the GPS in 'Garmin' mode.
There's a difference between the Garmin memory that is used during navigation (which you access via the various menus), and the 'visible' memory dumps on the GPS and on the mSD card (which you access via the PC file manager).

Also when looking for Waypoints [edit - and Routes I think] in the menus - are they reasonably close by? - more than about 50 miles away and they may not show, at default settings (which sort by proximity).  You can change the sort order to alphabetic which reveals the more distant ones.

Apparent freezing during booting is often one of two things - loading a new map file for the first time (or just reloading an existing very large map file) - or synchronizing newly-added GPX data.   

[henshaw11]

I doubt that you've actually lost your directly entered waypoints, more likely it's a symptom of it getting it's knickers in knot. You could try renaming the big file to a different file extension(eg add a letter) - don't forget to sync/safely disconnect to ensure the file write happens - then restart to see if they reappear.

I've just had a look at mine in mass storage mode, for the handful I have entered they appear in Garmin/GPX as Way points_<date> <time>.GPX - I suspect you get one file per day when a way point is saved, rather than  a file per point - and the default Garmin Way points file contains a handful.

Fwiw, I put maps onto the removable sdcard and use a usb/SD adaptor - it's a lot faster than USB direct to the etrex

[fhills]

Thanks for the replies folks.

I will read them carefully.

Will also try to report back if I find out more after I've had time to do some tinkering.

The curious thing is that when I connected the Garmin to the PC and loaded up Basecamp it seemed to find pretty much all of the waypoints I could remember, including the hidden sussex spot where I freecamped last autumn and the way into the wood I also marked. If even semed to show a track from my departure from said freecamp about 6:30 in the morning. All very weird as I cannot see these on the GPS.

I had one go at exporting these all back but so far with only partial success.

So you may well be right henshaw11 that it might just be a case of twisted knickers - as I say I'll gtry to get back after some determined knicker fiddling. Good idea about the usb/SD adaptor though don't have one with me at the mo.

[fhills]

PS

I did here:

http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=5553

find something maybe relevant under:

Changes made from version 2.70 to 2.80:

Mine is on version 2.4

As I said above have never updated it after a glitch on an earlier update when following a call to Garmin support I was told to do something that the update instructions told me I should under no circumstances doon pain of screwing the unit's brains. Although Garmin support sorted things I rather lost confidence in their instructions.

[fhills]

Update

Well it looks sorted - have got the waypoints back - will look at routes later but they aren't so important as they are backed up/created on the PC.

As I said above, I could see a whole load of waypoints on the Garmin when I looked at it in "remote disk" mode - labelled by the date they were created - but they wouldn't show on the Etrex.

So I deleted the lot.

Then connected the Etrex with Basecamp booted up - transferred the waypoints from Basecamp to the Etrex's memory card. The process seemed to create a "GPX" folder that wasn't there before and dumped all of the waypoints in showing as a single file when looked at in "remote disk" mode.

All now accessible from the Etrex.

Am assuming that some sort of indexing file was screwed up and that by deleting the old stored waypoints I forced the thing to reindex in some way.

Thanks for the posts and advice folks.

[fhills]

er update.

Since the initial problem I took the plunge and a few days ago updated the firmware to the latest available - all went well with the update.

But now I have still have intermittent loss of routes and waypoints.

Have managed to sort it by just switching it off and on until they reapear.

Anyone else had this problem?

Sounds like it might be a good idea on multi-day/longer trips to take at least a USB-storage thingy with back-ups so at least you can put the stuff back once you get access to a PC/laptop whatever - am loathe to take a computer just for this.

Am somewhat worried that the whole device might just throw a wobbly/refuse to boot one day.

[fhills]

Another update.

It's still doing this - sometimes it boots up and they aren't there - other times they are.

A right old fag having to boot up and switch off and reboot until it figures that it can see them.

One advance in my research - it turns out that the waypoints and routes it is refusing to show on some (maybe half?) of boot-ups are on the card, not the internal memory - anything on the internal memory is fine - this explains why I could see some waypoints close to my house but not others.

This could suggest some sort of card problem if it weren't for the fact that the OSM map I'm using is on the card and that is ALWAYS OK.

Have tried taking waypoints and routes off the card, rebooting the Etrex20 and then switching it off. Then reloading them, switching it on to boot and then off. Hoping that this might force it into some sort of reindexing.

But to no avail.

Very puzzling.

Any clues/suggestions?

Anyone else had this?

[fhills]

sorry about this (in danger of becoming a one-man thread     )

another possible pointer.

I right clicked on Properties for the internal memory and the card on a Windows XP PC.

For the internal memory it said the file system was: FAT32

For the card it said: FAT

The card is 2GB.

Is this relevant?

I stress that the map on the card seems to read fine every time.

[fhills]

Many thanks to the folk who contributed to what was in danger of becoming a thread with a mad fool talking to himself

An update in case it's of use to others.

After a lot of fiddling and taking all of the routes off and then putting them back on one-by-one in an effort to see if one route file was corrupted and so messing things up I seem to have discovered that the problem was having the routes on the card.

The only thing now on the card is a single openfietsmap - I took all the other maps off in an effort to isolate the problem.

All routes and waypoints now seem to load every time.

And, maybe oddly, the map from the card does as well.

So I can only conclude that the routes weren't corrupted but that the loading of the map from the card was in some way interfering with the loading of the routes from the card.

That's my non-techie conclusion by a process of elimination.

Hope this is of help to anyone who encounters the same problem - surely I can't be the only one?

Thanks again to everyone who responded.

[fhills]

No one tick me off please for posting an old thread (and one that as a high ME content) but an update which may be use to others who search the forum for solutions to this problem.

I searched for this thread to remind myself what I had done when this happened again the other day.

The Etrex 20 started doing something odd when booting so in a stupid minor panic I switched it off.

This switch off during booting clearly upset it for again All of my waypoints on the unit could no longer be seen.

Ending was happy, so here's the step by step solution, which hopefully I have remembered.

If I have misremembered anything (too lazy to double check things) folks feel free to correct me.

@ Connect Etrex 20 to laptop and have a look at it via Basecamp. Aha, the waypoints could actually be seen. So they were there but the unit couldn't process them properly. From this and previous experience I reckon that if you can see the waypoints ON THE ETREX from the PC you are in luck and salvation awaits.

@ I think I also then looked at the Etrex using the normal windows explorer and could see, on the main memory (the card is used for extra maps I install) a series of separate waypoints.

@ The solution.

@ In Basecamp, go to the waypoint list. Its in a folder called Garmin/GPX I think. Here you wll see a series of waypoints. Highlight them all. Right click. Select SEND TO. Send them to the Garmin's internal add-on card. It should end up in a folder Garmin/GPX. Then as a precaution make a copy of the resultng SINGLE waypoints file (the system aggregates them all) and put it on your PC's desktop.

@ Delete the entire list of separate waypoints on your Etrex's INTERNAL (ie not the single file on the add-on card) memory.

@ Move the single file you just created on the Etrex's add-on card to the internal memory in folder Garmin/GPX.

@ Disconnect the Etrex from the PC in the normal way.

@ Boot it up and all should be well.

The problem as far as non techie me can see was that the indexing had become screwed up. The above steps kick the system into re-indexing the waypoints that were still there all along.

[frankly frankie]

I've just finished a tour using a E30 and Sheila was using a E30x - both with the latest soft/firmware installed,  A mix of tracks, routes and waypoints was loaded in from a single GPX file, placed on the mSD card.

Both models occasionally and randomly boot up to apparently have no tracks/routes/waypoints on board.  Quite alarming halfway through a long tour. (Though i did also carry a spare E30x in my luggage, all loaded up.)  The maps were unharmed, they were on a mix of mSD card and device memory.  (I do know the same thing happened on older versions of the soft/firmware, too.)

Simply re-booting usually restored the missing info. On one occasion I had to reboot twice. It only ever happened on power-up, not while in use.

Fortunately on these models the original GPX file(s) as loaded in the /GPX/ folder remain untouched.  Unlike the Edge models where the GPX file is deleted once the info has been imported.  However what did surprise me was that when the tracks etc re-appeared (having been re-loaded from the GPX during re-boot) any attributes that I'd previously applied in-GPS (colour, visibility) were retained.

Anyway, bottom line is, on these models, when everything disappears, don't worry, just take a deep breath count to 10 and reboot, and all will be well.

[Kim]

Yes, I've experienced that behaviour a few times, often in combination with taking an unreasonably long time to boot.  Sometimes the SD card being loose can be involved.

And (more understandably) a GPX becoming corrupted during a crash and never loading on subsequent reboots.  Only happened the once, though, and the data was recoverable with a bit of manual editing.

[frankly frankie]

I think it's related to some irregularity during the previous shut-down.  Maybe how long you press the power key, something weird like that - or shutting down from one particular mode.

[Kim]

Battery failure certainly seems to cause it.

[fhills]

Well it happened again and repeated switching on and off didn't seem to help, as I think was suggested up above.

But have discovered that the remedy is simpler than I indicated above.

No need to fire up basecamp.

Just connect the Garmin to the laptop.

Find waypoints files on garmin internal memory.

Move them off temporarily.

Reboot and then switch off the garmin (this stage may not be necessary but belt and braces and it is reassuring to see that it still boots at this stage)

Reconnect Garmin to laptop and move the self same waypoint files to where they were before.

Unplug Garmin from laptop and boot it up.

As before  assume that this forces the stupid thing to reindex or whatever the juicy waypoints the thing has just, to its sheer delight, discovered it has.

All very useful since as in this thread:


https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=82691.0

I have just discovered that my Android tab can connect to the Garmin after all so I should be able to sort this when on the road without needing access to a powered laptop.