1 GB SD suddenly empty

[Krischu]

Strange, I had about 450 MB of TomTom N5 maps (BNL, D) on my 1GB SD. All used to work fine until I decided to write an additional 350 MB of France map material onto the SD.

Suddenly my TTN5 said it had no maps found. When looking into the
SD card with WM 2003 explorer it showed empty (!!).

But putting the card into the USB SD reader attached to my notebook I could see all files and directories.

Strange. Could it be that WM 2003 cannot cope with +512 MB amounts of data in files and directories. Hard to believe but I'm clueless.

[oma]

Try to run chkdsk on the SD card (from the PC). Maybe the filesystem got corrupted somehow. If it doesn't work, try reformatting it. If this happens regularly, you could try FAT16 and FAT32, and maybe NTFS (no idea if it supports that).
I've had that on my Magician as well, chkdisk fixed it. It's quite certainly not related to file/directory size (at least on WM2003se), as I've had mp3 dirs way bigger than 512mb and also tried the image version of wikipedia once, which at that time was about 750mb.

[Krischu]

Try to run chkdsk on the SD card (from the PC). Maybe the filesystem got corrupted somehow. If it doesn't work, try reformatting it. If this happens regularly, you could try FAT16 and FAT32, and maybe NTFS (no idea if it supports that).
I've had that on my Magician as well, chkdisk fixed it. It's quite certainly not related to file/directory size (at least on WM2003se), as I've had mp3 dirs way bigger than 512mb and also tried the image version of wikipedia once, which at that time was about 750mb.

Thanks. That was indeed the culprit. I did a chkdsk /F J: and voila, all files and dirs are magically there again. :)

[cruisin-thru]

It is a good idea when copying files to the sd card on your pc via card reader/writer, to right click on the drive/card letter when finished and choose "eject". This flushes the buffers and makes sure that no files are left open and that the FAT is updated.

[Krischu]

It is a good idea when copying files to the sd card on your pc via card reader/writer, to right click on the drive/card letter when finished and choose "eject". This flushes the buffers and makes sure that no files are left open and that the FAT is updated.

Yes, that's what I'm usually doing in cases where I write to the SD card when
it is a drive on my card reader.

But in this case I was installing via the USB cradle through the TomTom
CD installer which possibly ill behaves.

Or would I have to "eject" the USB cradle after writing also?

[XShell]

I had the same problem - my SD 512 suddenly becomes empty! No files, but only about 100 Mb free space.
I've format this card and now from time to time make backup by card reader. But still i don't understand why does it happened!

[Captain Pervert]

I have this problem on my Wallaby with WM2003SE at least once a month. It's driving me nuts.