Over Coming 4GB File Limitation [fat 32 Nuvi Unit]

@dravidham

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Some devices are capable of seeing a map .img with <any-name> in a folder named either Map or Garmin on sd card. Certainly your nuvi 265 is not one of them however from memory the nuvi 1xxx range can. What is certain is that both of them can see a file named gmapsupp.img in a Garmin folder on a card i.e. x:/Garmin/gmapsupp.img because that's universal for any garmin device with a card slot.

As said the so-called "4GB limit" is a FAT32 limitation and it's 4 gibibytes minus one Byte. As GiB is binary that's a factor of 1024 being used so the limit is 4,294,967,295 Bytes: (4 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024) -1. However GB or gigabyte is now considered decimal, a factor of 1000. So a 4GB card theoretically has 4,000,000,000 Bytes available, at least it should nominally. In fact it's even less because some space is used up already for hard-coded information but regardless the full EU image cannot fit so you need a bigger card. Windows OSs unlike Mac and Linux still report GB as it's original binary interpretation not decimal further adding to confusion.

B1ng0 Reviewed by B1ng0 on 22nd November 2018. Over Coming 4GB File Limitation [fat 32 Nuvi Unit] Hi, I have a Nuvi 265 with lifetime full European updates. I’ve just updated the map via Garmin update to City Navigator Europe NT 2019.20; however, the new update (unlike 2018) exceeds the 4GB limitation of my unit and it subsequently can’t be recognised by my unit. I downloaded it to an sd card but with the unit system being fat 32 understandably the Nuvi won’t detect the map. Has anybody here had a reliable outcome by using gmaptool to split the full map in to 2 segments? Rating: 5

Hi all,

I can only assume that my initial sd was card corrupt - everything is sorted now with a new SD card.

Many thanks to all for your advice and also for taking the time to reply :-)

David.