TOMTOM Nav 2 on go slow

[DavidW]

Serious recommendation - don't look for Lexar SD256-266 cards, as the latest packs with that part number seem to contain Made in China rebadged Sandisk cards, which failed in an Axim X5. There's a case of precisely that on the Dell Forums.



SimpleTech cards are available from www.clove.co.uk.





It is disappointing to hear your Dane-Elec card failed, as it was believed that all Dane-Elec cards used controllers that worked well in the Axim X5.



If you could pop over to the Dell forums here and reply to the post by Happycheesecake about Dane-Elec cards with a mention of your problem including all the markings on the back of your card, that would help those trying to understand SD problems on the Axim.





Jon, that is Happycheesecake, phoned me earlier in the week. He's put a tremendous amount of effort into trying to figure out which cards work and which don't in the Axim X5. Any information you can add about your card will help everyone.







David

[Buffy Beagle]

Thanks very much, David. It sounds as if a card reader should be a worthwhile purchase!



Hugh

[DavidW]

Correct - to my knowledge StorageTools is the only tool that allows defragmentation of a storage card on a Pocket PC. There is no built in defragmenter. Unfortunately StorageTools won't touch the iPAQ File Store or built in memory (reformatting the iPAQ File Store is particularly difficult).



I have no experience of a card reader and Windows XP's defragmentation tool (as I have neither a reader nor a Windows XP machine), but it seems a popular combination and is, I believe, used by at least one of the Pocket GPS staff.





I expect I'll buy a card reader soon - though I can copy information on and off my Pocket PC rather quicker than many as I have a Wireless LAN setup. If I change my PC, which is likely to be happening soon, the new box will run Windows XP Professional (currently I'm using Windows 2000 Professional on all my machines). In fact, I'm sure if I had a card reader on this box, Diskeeper would defragment the card very effectively (the built in defragmenters in Windows 2000 and XP are cut down versions of Diskeeper).





Does that help?







David

[Buffy Beagle]

Am I right in thinking that an iPaq 3970 has no built-in program for defragging a storage card attached to it, but that an additional program such as Storage Tools would do the job. Alternatively, if we bought a card reader to plug into our PC would Windows XP then be able to defrag the card without the need for any extra software?



Hugh

[DavidW]

It seems that TomTom Navigator 2 most shows the effects of slow storage in address lookups - though route planning is affected to a lesser extent and map display to a small extent. I am not aware of a perceptible change in navigation performance according to storage performance.



I know that route planning performance on long and/or complicated routes does depend to an extent on storage card performance. It's hard to notice this on routine route planning though, as Navigator is so fast at route planning anyway.





The other thought that comes to mind is - is your SD card defragmented. Fragmentation of the map files can really hurt performance.







David

[Buffy Beagle]

Thanks, David.



As I said, the only speed problem we have noticed with TTN is the address lookups. The apparently much more complex jobs of displaying maps, planning routes and navigating all seem to work fine, whichever storage card we use. It's all very odd.



Hugh

[DavidW]

As I said in my earlier reply, Sandisk SD cards can be awfully slow - and yours sounds pretty dreadful, Hugh!



Having ROM 2.00 on your 3970 will help - the SD drivers built in to ROM 2.10 slow SD memory rather. However, a slow SD card such as yours will still be slow on ROM 2.00.





My address lookups from SD memory are about the same as the speeds you describe from your CF card using my "Made in Japan" Lexar SD card. On my setup, the "hit" of the 2.10 ROM SD drivers is, subjectively, around halving the performance of my SD card, though I don't have benchmark results to hand for the 2.10 ROM drivers. There are some in the Dell forums, as I said, carried out on a 3950 with the 1.11 ROM (which has the same SD drivers as the 3970's 2.10 ROM).





Copying files to your Pocket PC via ActiveSync, particularly if you're not running ActiveSync over a wireless LAN connection, is frightfully slow, and using a card reader will be many times quicker!







David

[Buffy Beagle]

Something else that we noticed when we changed to a new set of GB maps was that all our favourites seem to have been displaced sightly, perhaps by as much as 100 yards.



Does anyone know why that might be? Do the European maps use a different "datum"?



Hugh

[Buffy Beagle]

I hope this is the right thread for this post. There seem to be a number of threads relating to speed problems using SD cards with TTN2.



We have an iPaq 3970. Up to now we've been using TTN with the program stored in main memory and all the GB maps in a Sandisk 256Mb SD card. we're now on version 2.22 of TTN. The only speed problem we've noticed has been that finding towns and streets has been very slow.



Having read comments about ROM versions I checked to see what version we have. It is 2.00, so there should be no problem there.



I decided yesterday to see if putting the maps on our 1Gb Sandisk CF card would make any difference. The CF card is in a standard iPaq expansion sleeve with a CF card slot plus an extra battery.



I thought I would try out our new European Maps CD set so I took the GB maps from there.



The address lookups now seem a lot quicker ... 2 or 3 seconds to find a new town compared with perhaps 10 or 20 seconds before.



I'm afraid this is not very scientific because I didn't do any precise timings before the change, and I'm not sure whether the maps taken from the European Maps set work in a different way from the single country set that we originally had. However, I thought other users who have the option of trying a CF card rather than an SD card might find our experience helpful.



Hugh



PS I installed the maps to hard disc then copied the directory to the CF card. The copying took around 20 minutes or so. I've previously noticed that copying files to the storage card is very slow, especially when copying large numbers of small files. Does anyone know if copying to/from a memory card is significantly quicker if it's done via a USB card reader rather than through the iPqq?

[DavidW]

Lexar SD cards are a bit of a crap shoot - particularly if you're a Dell Axim X5 user.





The problem is that Lexar SD cards can come from one of several manufacturers, and they don't all perform equally or have the same compatibility. There's a very long thread about this amongst other issues on the Dell Forums here.



In the second post on that page, you'll see a post by Jon (Happycheesecake) where he shows my Lexar 256MB and a SimpleTech 256MB owned by a mate of his, along with his SimpleTech 256MB. The two SimpleTechs work reliably in an Axim X5, and we expect my Lexar will as well (we intend to test this out sometime).



Jon asked LexarMedia UK to replace his 256MB Lexar that doesn't work in his Axim X5. The new card they sent him said "Made in Japan" on the packaging, but when he opened the packaging it contained a card made in China that appears to be rebadged Sandisk and doesn't work in an Axim X5. When he called Lexar again they pretty much told him that if it doesn't say "Made in Japan" on one of their SD cards, it won't work in an Axim.





If you buy a Lexar SD card now, it seems the chances are that you'll get a rebadged Sandisk card that doesn't work in an Axim X5 and doesn't seem to perform as well as other brands in other Pocket PCs where they do work. Read earlier in that thread for some benchmarks on both Axims and iPAQ 3900 series hardware (for the latter, look for posts by Mr C - look around page 64 of the thread).





Quite apart from these problems, there have been several outright bad batches of Sandisk SD cards - that's a topic that has come up repeatedly on the microsoft.public.pocketpc newsgroup.







So far as buying a card on eBay for GBP56, you can buy a 256MB SimpleTech new from ebuyer.com for not a lot more, though they are currently out of stock (search for SimpleTech SD, then change the result to show All Items).



I'd recommend that approach, in that SimpleTech do seem to be consistently turning out "Made in Japan" cards that seem to offer better performance than many SD cards and good compatibility. If you land up with a dud card, or it goes faulty within warranty, you know who to turn to for a replacement. Whilst some eBay sellers may be able to help you out, some may no longer be around if you hit problems with your card after a few months.





I realise that many people buy SD cards of any brand and they work reliably for as long as they're still of any value (I wouldn't think cards smaller than 64MB are still regarded as having much value). However, some are not so lucky, hence this post!







David

[Golfer]

I can also recommend Lexar SD cards. I bought another 256MB one today on ebay for £56.
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Take the shot. Go for it .....

[mshah]

Quote: Originally posted by GFawkes on 27 May 2003

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I had the same tedious slowness on my IPAQ 3970.

I also have all the GB Maps installed on a 128mb SD card.



I first tried formatting to 32k clusters and FAT32, which made a small improvement.



However, downgrading the ROM from 2.10 to 2.00 (Leaving the SD card formatted to Fat32, 32k clusters) made a huge difference. The searches are no longer painfully slow, and the Map refreshes are much faster.

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I've tried formating my card to 32K clusters but then the my Ipaq 3870 can't read it and insists that I must format it before I can use it. Is there anything I am doing wrong?



Thanks


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<br>
--> Milan

[Garry Platt]

Well I've caved in and gone back to Rom 2.00. I got sick of waiting for routes to be plotted under 2.10 despite using a Lexar SD. Now it flies through even with the calculation speed set to strict.
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Garry Platt

[Garry Platt]

As regards increasing speeds for routing etc etc. Take a look at this discussion:



http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/forum/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=62&TopicID=2495&PagePosition=1




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Garry Platt

[Scholasticus]

Sorry, I meant SimpleTech Cards.

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