Go 750 - Base operating system core files

[Revere]

Hi All,

I'm new to this forum, nice to meet ye all.

When you plug the unit into a PC using the supplied USB cable and power on the unit:
It asks you "Do you wish to connect to Computer?"

If you select No then you will never see the USB drive appear on your Windows Explorer
If you select Yes then the USB drive will appear. (Along with 2 other un-inserted drives)

The USB Drive that appears contains what appears to be the entire "Operating System" so to speak of the Go 750 device. (directory names art ASR bin contacts cp ephem Europe_2GB etc.etc.etc...)

then format/erase the USB drive

would it be then impossible for me to restore the unit back to working order using a backup of the drive?
i.e. the USB drive would never re-appear on my PC when I turn on the unit because the software that used to ask you "do you wish to connect" is now erased?

Has any one on here experience with this kind of scenario?

Rev.

 

[Rayszy]

USB Drive

I am not sure I am reading your post correctly, I have a Go 720 and when I connect mine, I see the same message about connecting to the computer. I also see two drives. One of those drives is the internal storage of the Go720 the other is my SD card. Did you format the SD card or the unit itself? If you have not inserted an SD card, i have to assume you formatted the device itself. A restore of a previous backup may put things back for you but Tomtom's backup and restore is not very reliable. I would recommend always using explorer and backup the entire device. If you remove any sd cards that may be in the unit and it does not boot up, try using a pin reset of the device and try re-reconnecting it to your computer (without the SD card) and see if your computer recognizes the device. If so, you have a pretty good chance of recovering the device. IF you can reconnect to Tomtom home, it may reinstall the operating system for you.

 

[Revere]

Hi again,

I'm kind of looking for someone who's done a lot of tweaking and modding of their unit adding applications and custom scripts etc.

I just want to make sure first before I start messing around with the unit that I can always get it back to a known good state if I mess things up and accidently remove core files.

I'll have a look for a modding section on the forum

 

[mikealder]

Yes you can format the device and it will still be seen by the computer even when there is nothing loaded to the internal flash drive. Before you do this make sure you have taken a full backup of the device using Windows Explorer NOT TomTom Home, and for re-installing files/ folders use Windows Explorer as its far more reliable.
Might I ask what you have in mind for the device as I have tried most things on the devices over the years, and its quite surprising what these little machines can do with a little messing around - Just watch the bootloader though, if you increment that by installing software intended for a different device its an unreversible change that even a format/ re-install won't undo - Mike