How to remove *all* info from 256MB storage card ?

mogette · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 31, 2004 Posts: 7

I bought a 256MB storage card yesterday so I could have the whole map of France (233MB) with my ipaq HP1940 rather than separate chunks of the country on smaller cards (as I have at present).
I aborted the first attempt to copy the map across from the TT3 CD, as a thunderstorm was brewing and I wanted to turn the PC off.
At second attempt, the copying process got about halfway through after an hour or so, and then stopped. Trying to get it going again resulted in "no connection available" messages.
Tried again today. TomTom3 then said "not enough room on storage card". (I found it had put quite a lot of the map on it yesterday, before it locked up, and was showing 100 MB or so as used up.)

My problem is that I can't seem to get back to a completely blank storage card that will have room for the 233MB France map.

I tried Start>Settings>System>Remove programs, but that had no effect.
I went to the PC, with ipaq conected, and using Windows Explorer I could see quite a few files on the card. I deleted everything from the storage card, and hoped that would fix it.

However, doing Start>Settings>System>Memory>Storage card on the PDA now says:
"Total storage card memory 243.13MB. In use 12.75MB Free 230.38MB"
so obviously there is not room for a 233MB map.
I don't know what this odd 12.75MB is that's still stuck there on the card. I can't see it on the PC. Any ideas how can I get rid of it please?

(On the PDA, doing Start>Programs>FileExplorer>Storage Card shows the card to be blank!)

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Ipaq HP1940 Bluetooth / TomTom Navigator 3 / SD card 256MB "Fujifilm", made in Japan

longwori · Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 12:26 am Post subject:

I am pretty sure you never get the full 256MB on a 256MB card. Sounds a bit of a rip-off I know but I think its something to do with file structures or the way its indexed or something. Just to be sure its empty, you could try formatting it but I dont think it is possible to have access to the full 256.
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TomTom Go 520, HTC Wildfire with CoPilot Live Premium UK & CoPilot Live Standard USA

SteveW · Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 1:34 am Post subject:

Plenty of room for the French maps on a 256 CF or SD card, I have them loaded on one. You actually get 244MB of space. You need to load Storage Tools a great bit of software, this will allow you to format the card and start from scratch. Once you have used it a couple of times you will be glad to pay the fee of a few dollars when the trial runs out.

Hope this helps,

Steve

mogette · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 31, 2004 Posts: 7

Many thanks for the input above. Yes, I was prepared for finding less than 256MB - unfair as that seems. However, the 243.13MB that my SD card actually offers seemed enough to take the map of France (233MB). It's just that my first attempt to copy the map across has resulted in the card now having 12.75MB still stuck on it (it seems to be a file called "ignore-my-docs", by the way).

Steve, I have now downloaded the Storage Tools utility as you suggested. At the risk of sounding incredibly stupid, could I ask how I go about re-formatting the SD card with it? Do I go into Windows Explorer on my PC (with the PDA connected) and do it from there, rather like formatting a floppy?

Thanks again for the help
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Ipaq 1940 Bluetooth / TTN3 / SD Fujifilm 256MB / PC running W98

Tim Buxton · Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 1:19 pm Post subject:

I think StorageTools is a PPC application so you install it to your device and run it from the device, witht he card in the device slot.
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Tim

mogette · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 31, 2004 Posts: 7

WOW! I've succeeded!

The Storage Tools was very intuitive in the end, and the reformatting was easy.
It took three hours to download the map of France, but it's safely on my PDA now.
Thanks for the advice everybody...

SteveUK · Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 5:43 pm Post subject:

Hi,

Have you thought about getting a card reader for your PC so that you can download directly to the SD card? Instead of three hours, you would be looking at a couple of minutes or so.

Steve

SteveW · Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 2:10 am Post subject:

Hi there

Glad you got it working in the end. It is a good peice of software. Hope your SD card is fast. Big country is France and if you are travelling across it it needs a fast card when recalculating routes! Wink

SteveW.

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