Can a hot swap be done with a NUVI memory card?

I was wondering that too-

I've done it often to edit contents on the SD card without seeing any bad effect. I always "park" the card, ie, wait until when the content of the card is not being accessed or displayed by the GPS, before I pull it out though.

I'll let everyone know if the unit smokes next time.

I don't think there's a problem from an electrical point of view.

File system corruption is not an issue for most of us, because nothing is being written to the card, only read.

However, for those units that do Track logging - the potential would exist ... if that logging is being done to the SD card.

Not owning such a unit, I don't know if logging to the card is actually an option or not...

EDIT: That said, it wouldn't be a good idea to interrupt it copying a large .GPI file, from the card to internal storage. Although you would only end up with a corrupted file (not a corrupted file system), the Nüvi's can get themselves into quite a knot when encountering corrupt data...

Any further info on this one?

I have installed and reinstalled the sd cards while my 200w was on. When you insert an SD while its on, it will go to the screen that asks if you want to load the POI's onto the internal memory. The custom POI's automatically update to the new SD inserted. BTW I select no when asked to install to device.

From an electricians point of view, personally I wouldn't do it. There is probably a voltage present at all times on some of the contacts and no matter how many times you swap them hot successfully, there could be the one time when you arc a contact. In fact you might be drawing a small arc every time you swap cards which at some point in time could prove to be a problem. I wouldn't worry so much about the card, but if you would arc a contact in the GPS bad enough you might be in deep trouble.

Here is a simple test you can all do to protect your SD cards from damage, it takes less than a minute to do. and will save you bucks

To help protect against corruption make sure the SD Card is write-caching disabled. It's simple enough to find out if write-caching is enabled. Place your SD in your computers reader, then in "My Computer", right-click on the SD Card icon and choose "Properties", then "Hardware" and then highlight your SD Card and again select "Properties". Lastly, click the "Policies" tab. You will see two options in this box, one for "Optimize for quick removal" and the other "Optimize for Performance". Normally windows defaults a new SD Card to "Optimize for quick removal", For some reason this is not always the case. If your drive is "Optimized for Performance", and you unplug the drive at will you will most differently corrupt data. If "Optimized for quick removal" you can safety remove the SD card without worry of corruption or damage.

The difference between the two modes is not noticeable in a GPSr's operation, so be sure to disable write cashing.

As far as arcing the contacts is concerned, I wouldn't give it a thought, they are rated for this use.

Bob

To each his own, but in my 37 years as a special maintenance electrician, I or none of the guys I worked with would ever dream of plugging or unplugging a card, board, or anything else that had contacts on it hot. The different manufactures kind of frowned on it also.

If I was going to do it I think I would at least ask the people that made the unit if it was alright to do.

Products have been designed for hot-swap for quite some time. The USB and SD standards require hot-swap capability in order to be compliant with the standard.

If you look at the contacts of an SD card, the contacts are different lengths. This gives an orderly progression of make/break when they are inserted and removed. Power is disconnected first. As a maintenance electrician, I'm sure you could appreciate that there is no electrical difference between this approach vs installing an on/off switch for the SD port. Both approaches would give a make/break to the power before insertion/removal.

Hi Don. I agree that many card bus designs do not support hotswap, however SD Cards in particular were designed to be hot swappable from an electrical point of view. That's why the contact pins are staggered with slightly different lengths (ground and power go on first, signals, then finally a short pin to activate/deactivate the interface). No risk of electrical arcing or destruction. See the SD Card Association spec
http://www.sdcard.org/about/memory_card/pls/
As mentioned above, the issue is not a hardware one but more of if files get corrupted or if the device's software tolerates hotswap.

EDIT: johnc, sorry for similar post, but I walked away from my compose screen (so much good reading in the bathroom ) so my post crossed yours.

I will stand corrected on the SD card issue. It's been about ten years since I retired and I'll admit I don't always keep up on the latest technology. When I was working it was a big no-no to swap anything hot, especially when we were dealing with boards that could cost anywhere up to a couple of thousand dollars. The boss got a little upset if we fried one through stupidity.