I bought a Patriot 4GB SD card today so I could load my mp3's into my Garmin Nuvi 350, however I ran into a problem.

1.) With the SD card in place, I couldn't figure out how to get the songs on to the card.

I plugged a mini USB cable into the Nuvi and into my PC and it wouldn't recognize that the Nuvi was hooked up--it recognizes other portable storage devices just fine.

2.) I decided I would transfer the files through my PC and it's SD card reader, but it told me the card wasn't formatted, so I formatted it, and now it had less than 1GB of capacity though it's supposed to be 4GB.

Thinking maybe it was wrong, I tried to transfer 3 GB of files to it, but it stopped at just under 1GB with a disk full message.

3.) I couldn't find a way to format the SD card with my Nuvi--that seems like would be optimal.

Any Nuvi owners have any advice?? Should I be focusing on getting my PC to recognize the Nuvi through the USB port??? How can I reformat the card to have full capacity??

Thanks!

Richard

 

Hi Richard,

Replied to your PM.

See this thread:
http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showthread.php?t=130856

Sounds like what you may be encountering... bad format turned it into a 1GB, but repairable...

Also, make sure you're using the latest Nuvi firmware (I bet you are!).

 

Got it Paul!! Thanks so much!!

Btw, I'm really loving the MP3 player on the Nuvi 350! I've got it going into my Aux port and the ability to control tracks and play them back is great! Much nicer than the iPod I think---of course playlists are kinda hokey, but so far so good!

Richard

 

Yep - the display on the nuvi is nice for mp3 playback - and it's cool to have it pause to insert directions while driving.
Sound quality seems good to my old tin ear, too.

Good luck getting a 4GB card that works right. I'm loving mine - plenty of tunes for most of the time, and I can always cable up the ipod if I want more...

 

Thanks solution was easy...not cheap..but easy. I bought a new laptop.

The SD card fit right in, and it told me I had 3.8GB of capacity after formatting. I did that, and voila--it's as it should be.

The last laptop I bought was 6 years ago, so it was about time anyways!

Thanks for your help.

Richard

 

Hi Richard,

Glad to hear that you figured things out.

BTW, if you use iTunes to organize your music, I wrote a cool little program called SyncMyPortable that allows you to synchronize the music you have stored in your iTunes playlists with just about any portable audio device.

It works great with the nuvi and even has a special advanced setting called "Standardize album artwork in MP3 files" that corrects the album art added to music files by iTunes so that it can be read/seen by the nuvi's MP3 player. It also fully supports the creation of M3U playlists which I believe are now fully supported by the nuvi with its latest firmware update.

-- MIKE

P.S. So I take that you've now given up on your MINI's built-in nav system??? I'm actually really enjoying mine now with the new MINI vehicle icon and more intuitive text strings in the OS.

 

Well I sold the MINI with the factory nav and bought a used 2005 MCS without one, so I had to go aftermarket. =)

Thanks for the info!

Richard