Accessing GPS Hard Drive

When I hook my Nuvi350 to the computer, the device itself shows up as a drive letter under 'my computer' - and the sd card shows up as another drive letter - from what I've gathered, this is pretty much standard among Garmin units.

My Nuvi 660 works exactly as KCH relayed how his 350 operates.

ditto for my 360

I can confirm that the Garmin C330 does NOT show up as another drive when the USB cable is hooked up, as stated by denis327.

Have you installed the USB cable drivers from the set-up CD that came with the unit?

c330 USB Drivers can be obtained at:

http://www.garmin.com/support/collection.jsp?product=010-004...

My c550 shows up as kch50428 describes. Under "my computer" - "devices with removable storage" (I have 577MB of free space).
With an SD card inserted, that shows up as another drive also.

I did install the USB drivers before connecting the GPS for the first time. Can there be a reason for c550 to be identified as a drive but not c330 ?

What operating system are you using on your computer? Maybe it has to do with something with that.

Using Windows XP. Can any other c330 user confirm me that the hard drive can be accessed as a removable drive ?

I know the nuvis have the mp3 and photo viewing capabilities (don't know about the 550). They would need the unit to show up so they could trasfer those. I guess garmin figures since the 330 doesn't have those capabilities, then we have no use to be able to view it in "my computer".

Can there be a reason for c550 to be identified as a drive but not c330 ?

Yes - if your driver installation is somehow messed up. Try re-installing the drivers.

The Garmin C550 does show as another drive and has 2 folders Garmin and MP3.

I have a C330 as well and it does NOT show up on the computer. I have used various freeware programs though to show that it does work on the computer. As one of the previous posters has said, I think the reason is that the other devices support different formats. I was also able to use the POI software from Garmin to connect to the device.

Or directly into a USB port on the computer? Sometimes, USB hubs can be problematic - if using a hub, try a USB port on the computer itself.

Other thing to try...right-click on 'My Computer' and select 'Manage'. Look at Device Manager on the left-hand side, and then on the right, look for either a disk drive, or USB port with some sort of indicator on it (such as exclamation point in a yellow circle). If you find such a beast, it means your drivers are installed correctly, yet still not working. Try re-installing the drivers and reboot your computer.

dganggreen: just saw another post of yours - are you using a 'virtual pc' application on the mac and not seeing your unit as a drive letter that way? If so, that is probably the problem. Saw on another forum that people doing this could not get the drive letter access of their device and sd cards.

No, I am using "BootCamp" to switch between Mac/Windows. Neither of the OS show the C330 as a device, but I can load the POI's using the Garmin software so it's not a big deal. I don't have a card in it though, maybe that makes a difference.

Check your OS. Your GPS may not show up as a drive if you have Win98 or WinME or some older version of windows.

Win XP, connected directly to USB/no hub. I will try it with a card in it later today.

Had me wondering. connected with cable and opened windows explorer, and it showed the garmin 350 and as another drive the sd card.. windows xp.

Now can files just be droped into the garmin hard drive?
thanks,lonz

...in the sense you are using the term - it's technically a removable mass storage device - and through windows explorer, you can treat it like any other removable mass storage device.

I am unable to get my c330 hard drive to show up as a Mass Storage Device. I am able to load POIs using POI Loader. I have downloaded Version 2.1 of USB drivers. The c330 is connected directly to a USB port in a Dell computer using a Garmin cable. The Device Manager confirms that a Garmin device is attached. My conclusioin is that the c330 is incapable of showing up as a Mass Storage Device.
My problem is that my c330 needs a new internal battery and I want to download my Favorites before I send it to Garmin for service.
Any ideas? I do not see that POI Loader allows POIs to be downloaded off of the c330.
Are there any third-party programs that can download POIs?
Thanks, dr