Does It Matter How Maps Are Installed?
Thu, 05/28/2026 - 8:29pm
  8 years
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If I install map updates to my Garmin unit first, will the Garmin Base Camp install quicker to the computer?
Is there a way to copy updated maps from the gps directly to base camp?
Thanks for any input
Yes, It Matters
1. No. The BaseCamp installer is rather stupid and basically downloads the map twice when you update to both PC and unit.
2. No. BaseCamp can read the map on your device however.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." --Douglas Adams
in addition
2. No. BaseCamp can read the map on your device however.
I will add to this...it will also work with a clone of your device. You can dump the entire contents of your real device (in reality, it only really needs the Garmindevice.xml file in the Garmin folder along with the maps in wherever their default locations are on the unit) to an SD card or thumb drive and use the maps in that manner. Using the clone will also be much faster when accessing the maps since nearly every Garmin devices I've ever used has a much slower interface speed (some still use USB 2.x) than an SD card or thumb drive.
Note that this will only work with removable media.
nuvi 760, nuvi 765T, nuvi 855, nuvi 3790LMT, nuvi 3490LMT - SoCal area
There's another approach too
If you have a Mac, you can use Disk Utility to create a disk image on your computer that will behave just like a SD card or flash drive and will be as fast as your internal SSD. You can also do this on a PC but will need third party tools.
Is it worth it? That's up to you, I no longer use Garmin devices and software myself.
See this for details
https://www.javawa.nl/virtualdevice.html
Javawa has some other nice, free tools on his site that are worth a look. A number of years ago, he suffered a stroke though. He recovered but said he was no longer going to develop software, which was a shame because I've always been very impressed with his work. More recently, I noticed that he has been making some posts at the geocaching forums however, so maybe he has improved to the point of resuming work on his apps?
boydsmaps.com
there are some interesting
there are some interesting items on the site. It would be good if that gpx fix app was downloadable. I'd hate to see it go away if the site went down.