Using SD Card with a Garmin Montana and an Apple Mac..

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FlyinYian
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Using SD Card with a Garmin Montana and an Apple Mac..

Post by FlyinYian »

Hi all….

Some of you may have been suffering with your Montana as I was. I could not get my Montana to display info stored on the SD card. I knew it could as I had asked many of you and yes, you clever people were able to view maps and the like stored on your SD cards. Only fellow mac users seemed to have the same problem as me. Even the world of Garmin forums did not give me a solution; they only confirmed other have the same problem as me.

Well the solution was simple and obvious (well it was after I figured it out). It was all to do with the format of the SD card. User error I fear. The solution is to use your mac to re-format the SD card and select the correct format type.

Follow the directions below if you are a mac user suffering as I was.

Cheers
Iain (FlyinYian)




Make sure there is no information on the SD card that you need, as it will be completely cleared.

Put the SD card in the Garmin Montana (I assume this will work for all Garmin devices).

Connect the Garmin to your mac.

Make sure all Garmin applications are closed (eg Base camp etc). I did this just to be certain no other applications are “reading / talking to” the SD card.

Open the “Disk Utility” which can be found within the “Utilities” folder, which is within the “Applications” Folder.

Select the SD card, which should be shown on the left hand side of the disk utility along with all the other media devices attached to your computer. Make sure you select the SD card and not the Garmin internal memory (as both should be shown).

Select the “Erase” tab (you choices are “First Aid”, “Erase”, “RAID”, and “Restore”.

You are now about to delete all the data on the SD card and reformat it.
1 – Select Format: “MS-DOS (FAT)”
2 – Rename to the SD card to a name of your choice. I chose MONTANA_SD (i.e. Name: MONTANA_SD).
3 – Click (select) the Erase button (to be found on the lower right of the Disk Utility window).
4 – You will be asked to confirm - Click (select) the Erase button on the “Are you sure you want to erase the partition “ORIGINAL SD CARD NAME”?” prompt window that opens.
5 – Watch and wait (progress bar will be on the lower right of the Disk Utility window).
6 – DONE…. The SD card is now ready to use with the garmin.

Open base camp and copy data (waypoint, map, birdseye image etc) to the SD card.

Disconnect the Garmin from you mac and test to see if you SD card data is now visible.

I used a 64 gig card and copied loads of data across which was all stored and is now visible.. :D
FlyinYian 0504451470 JK (Iain)

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DesertDawg
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Re: Using SD Card with a Garmin Montana and an Apple Mac..

Post by DesertDawg »

Great Info Iain!

Hope you don't mind, but I have replicated this in my Montana resorces thread.

Dave
Travelling in my truck...

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FlyinYian
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Using SD Card with a Garmin Montana and an Apple Mac..

Post by FlyinYian »

Thanks Dave and no worries about sharing - spread the word :D
FlyinYian 0504451470 JK (Iain)

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