tomtom 5100, micro sd card slot

[pe2dave]

What is the max size the 5100 will take please? Any restrictions due OS? I failed to find any mention of the slot, so no size restriction given.

It comes with EU and UK, I'm now being offered a separate UK/Ireland download.
Most confusing - are they the same please?

Any sources of info?

 

[dhn]

That device should be able to take up to a 32 gb microsdhc card. That said, a 'sweet spot' seems to be a 16 gb SanDisk card.

 

[pe2dave]

Thanks. I found https://uk.support.tomtom.com/app/a.../which-memory-card-can-i-use-to-install-maps? which (again) is less than helpful. Seems to imply no limit!
Why a 'sweet spot'? Any particular reason?

 

[Arno]

Price? I have a 16 GB class 10 Kingston in mine which was on sale a couple of years ago.
This weekend I could get a 32 for CAD 14.99.

 

[pe2dave]

OK, I wondered if it was a device (as in TT) thing. Agreed, price seems to fluctuate without reason.
At5+Gb per map, I'll go for a larger one. 10UK pounds for 32Gb (todays price!)

 

[dhn]

Some brands are proving problematic for the new devices. SanDisk seems to cause no issues.

 

[canderson]

As for 64GB cards, these aren't SDHC, they're SDXC. At this time, we don't have a matrix that shows whether a given TomTom device copes with these larger cards.

The larger SDXC cards must be formatted in exFAT format to get a single 'partition', and the (up to) 32GB SDHC cards are all formatted in FAT32 format. We have heard that some devices that don't work with the exFAT format will see a 64GB card formatted into two separate 32GB FAT32 partitions as two cards. Again, do not know which (if any) TomTom units are managing this.

 

[pe2dave]

Yes @canderson, these are not mentioned on the link I showed. At 5.5Gb, the 'world' map is sufficient, I doubt
I'd need more than 16, holding 2 of everything! From the link, none are stretching FAT!

I've tried a 32 Gb card from another device - it was seen, but I didn't want to format it so I'll wait until I
get a new one for the TT.

 

[Arno]

Once FAT 32 is formatted in the device Windows will show it as 100% full when put in a reader.

 

[canderson]

Indeed. The TomTom creates its own partitions on top of the FAT32 format in yet another (Linux) format, so a PC will show the card as 'full' even though there's no real data there yet.

 

[pe2dave]

Indeed. The TomTom creates its own partitions on top of the FAT32 format in yet another (Linux) format, so a PC will show the card as 'full' even though there's no real data there yet.

Now you have me curious. I'll report back on what Linux thinks of it!

Seems to have Linux fooled!


$ ls -al /run/media/dpawson/5611-1584/
total 31248928
drwxr-xr-x 2 dpawson dpawson 32768 Jan 1 1970 .
drwxr-x---+ 3 root root 60 Oct 4 13:08 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.000
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.001
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.002
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.003
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.004
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.005
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.006
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.007
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.008
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.009
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.010
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.011
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.012
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 2147483648 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.013
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpawson dpawson 1934098432 Jan 1 1980 TOMTOM.014

$ file /run/media/dpawson/5611-1584/TOMTOM.002
/run/media/dpawson/5611-1584/TOMTOM.002: AmigaOS bitmap font

So it's 14 'files' (directories?) each of 0x200,000 bytes...

 

[canderson]

Indeed, a stock Linux system won't truly understand what to do with one of those cards that is formatted by a TomTom. It's a little complicated.

There was a huge %*&#ing contest between TomTom and Microsoft some years back about using the FAT32 system on their Linux based GPS devices. Microsoft had a much bigger legal war chest, of course. To their discredit, the entire Linux community put their heads in the sand on that one and let TomTom take all of the heat. TomTom's answer to that was to take the standard FAT formatted uSD cards and overlay with an old style Linux file system, avoiding the licensing costs for FAT32. So what you have on a TomTom formatted card now are one or more Linux partitions sitting ON a FAT32 formatted card. Since the card itself isn't formatted in ext2, all a vanilla Linux system sees are one or more 2GB files on a FAT32 formatted card. TomTom's system knows that those 2GB 'files' are actually an ext2 Linux partition and reads them accordingly.

So in your example above, TOMTOM.000 is a 2GB Linux partition, as are all of the other TOMTOM.XXX files you see there.

 

[pe2dave]

Don't you just love politics! Thanks for the explanation.
More fun this afternoon. Finally got my win7 box to 'see' my 5100. TT kindly deleted my 'only' device (720), but forgot to delete my
UK maps. There they were ready to download / install... but marked as 'expired' (untrue).
That was alongside the ?new? UK maps for the 5100 series.
Most confusing.

Even worse. the 'lifetime speed cameras' weren't installed. Ready to, but not installed.

So far I'm liking the device on the road, but less so on the desktop!

 

[Arno]

I forgot if you have to register your Lifetime Speed Cameras with Customer Service to activate the actual subscription.
That is how it was withlife time maps on the previous generation (NAV3). I think then, if the subscription was not activated within 3 month from initial use of the device, it would not be honoured.

 

[canderson]

Yeah - not sure what the process is in the UK at the moment on Nav4 units with their own SIM cards.

 

[pe2dave]

I forgot if you have to register your Lifetime Speed Cameras with Customer Service to activate the actual subscription.
That is how it was withlife time maps on the previous generation (NAV3). I think then, if the subscription was not activated within 3 month from initial use of the device, it would not be honoured.

I had to register - and take out a new ... subscription when I installed the PC software, I hope that suffices! I'll find out if they show up in the next day or so.