Updating Preloaded SD Cards?

Have you looked here or on Garmin's website??
An e-mail or phone call to Garmin would be the best idea if you can't find it on their site

Are you thinking along the lines of buying a City Navigator map update at some point in the future, working on the theory it will be cheaper than buying another new card?

Technically, I think this is possible (though maybe not using the Unlock Wizard...). Whether Garmin would actually sell you such an update is another matter.

Or are you wanting to put some other, completely unrelated data on there?

The cards are not updatable. And you can't use them with MapSource on your computer. And if you accidentally overwrite the data on the card, that is not covered under the warranty.

The only real advantage to the cards is that they aren't locked to a specific GPS unit, so you can use them with multiple GPS units, and you can sell them when you are done with them. Otherwise, it's generally advisable to by the maps on disk.

It turns out....
....that if you generate an unlock code at Mygarmin.com, using the serial number of a card, instead of the serial number of a unit..then you can build your own 'locked' SD cards. (You can get the card number from the SD card diagnostics). I don't know if Garmin want you to do this, but that's another story

And it's highly unlikely that the Unlock Wizard would understand what you were doing!

So, if you purchased a card today of for example CN NA (suppose you were located in the UK), and next spring when the updates come out, do you think that you could run the CN NA update disk and have the card in a card reader (or in the unit for that matter) and have it update the maps?

Thanks for the help, maybe I should just call Garmin and find out.

I seriously doubt if the cards are SD. They are probably MMC. Either way, they are certainly read only and can't be updated or erased.

There might be all manner of practical difficulties. For starters, I don't know what you have to provide to Garmin to get an update, as opposed to the full product. The Installers on the Update disk might refuse to update a card and the Unlock mechanism at Garmin's website might have issues related to the 'voucher' code of the update disk and a serial number that's not connected to it.

That said, if you can coerce a GMAPSUPP.IMG onto the card (either by renaming a GMAPPROM_L.IMG or by selecting all the individual maps in Mapsource) ... and then create a GMAPSUPP.UNL containing a code relating to the SD card's serial no. ... the maps will unlock.

This technique is probably of more use to someone with multiple GPSr's, who also wants a copy of the maps on a PC. (Maybe a 'Brit' heading for Florida in July ). In other words - buy the DVD product and make your own SD card.

(Don't get excited, you could only make one!)

I don't think the Nüvi's support MMC (...I tried ). Since MMC is roughly SD without the security bits, I assumed that was why.

You could be correct that the 'Write Permit' tab is missing from Garmin supplied SD cards (it would make sense).

Can you BU the maps on the SD card? Can you just copy the maps from the SD to the GPSr memory, and if you do, does it leave a copy on the SD card?

I looked into that a few weeks ago for an upcoming trip to Spain in March 08. I decided to buy the City Navigator NT Europe and just received it last week.
I installed it on my PC and with MapSource I copied on a SD Card only the maps of the countries I was interested in and it works perfectly. I was able to search all kinds of locations in Spain on my GPS. Also I am presently working on some custom POIs for Spain that I will also load on my SD Card.
I think you have more flexibility with the DVD than the preloaded SD Card.

What you've described there, is a more normal way of doing things Although the maps are physically on an SD card, the Unlock Code is tied to the unit number of your C530. In other words, if you put the card in another unit, it wouldn't unlock. (Which probably doesn't bother you in the slightest!)

I was musing about making a card that would work in any unit (kinda off-topic, now I come to think about it )