Does It Matter How Maps Are Installed?

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.

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.

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?

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.

Thank you for the replies. I will continue loading the Garmin maps from my Garmin device when I am using Base Camp. Setting up a clone drive might be worth doing.
I have provided tech support to Computer Support Staff and most programmers do not think in a logical manner. It makes more sense to them to download something twice rather than download once, and copy files over. I just do not understand how they think. When you try to explain logic to them they just do not understand it.

I would show them bugs in their software. They would tell me it was impossible, and that the machine was broken. I kid you not. I am just venting.

You bring back bemused memories! I may have succeeded in explaining deadly embrace ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock_(computer_science) ) infrequently but I never succeeded in getting a programmer to release his locks so another process or task can complete. GAK!!

EDIT: In my experience very few programmers understood that the actual execution of instructions may be in a sequence different from what they coded! Good thing it didn't matter.

The president of the software company told a computer dealer that the machine was broken. The computer dealer setup another machine and got the same error message. The fireworks flew. There were all sorts of meetings discussing what was going to be done to cover up the mess. It is never the fault of the programmers.

I install the map on the GPS first then the computer. It seems faster that way, at least to me.

It seems quicker to me doing it that way also.

Yes, this is how I do it also.