TAWS/Terrain cards being killed by latest GPS update?

[carusoam]

Great follow-up s.s!

Thanks for sharing what worked…

Best regards,

-a-

[BillGaffin]

GNS 430W terrain data error, Garmin told me to get a new card ($250) I'm reluctant, since some users say new cards have been corrupted, is Garmin telling the truth about this issue?

[PT20J]

I don’t know, but my problem went away when I got a new card and I did several updates on the new card with no problems. Garmin would not admit to any issues with the downloading on their end, but did recommend selecting and downloading only one card at a time. Seems funny that only the Terrain cards have been having problems. 

Skip

[carusoam]

Welcome aboard Bill!

Good luck with the technology….  

Best regards,

-a-

[Mike Racine]

Went to update my 530W and 430W databases today. Got through 3 of 4 cards, and the app stopped working while updating obstacles on the terrain card. Now the updater won’t see the card at all. Garmin says not their fault, but rather bad card. I’ve been flying with a GNS530s for 20+ years and have never had this problem. The card isn’t that old, and magically it crashes while updating…? I don’t think it’s the card that caused the problem, it’s the updating software that’s taking the cards out. If it’s the cards, why aren’t we seeing in-flight failures or on-start-up failures? Something is fishy here. 

[kortopates]

Went to update my 530W and 430W databases today. Got through 3 of 4 cards, and the app stopped working while updating obstacles on the terrain card. Now the updater won’t see the card at all. Garmin says not their fault, but rather bad card. I’ve been flying with a GNS530s for 20+ years and have never had this problem. The card isn’t that old, and magically it crashes while updating…? I don’t think it’s the card that caused the problem, it’s the updating software that’s taking the cards out. If it’s the cards, why aren’t we seeing in-flight failures or on-start-up failures? Something is fishy here. 

Sorry, they do fail in brief handling of updating them. The only good news is that when you eventually upgrade to a new one, they all use inexpensive off the shelf memory cards - no more proprietary memory cards. I went through several in less than 20 yrs.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DCarlton]

On 3/4/2021 at 7:42 AM, hmasing said:

The most recent GPS update nuked BOTH of my terrain cards (010-10201-21).  I have also heard from other Mooney drivers that this recent update killed theirs as well. The second card was seen for a moment, but as soon as it started to push data, it disappeared and hasn't been readable since - both are corrupted and cause my GNS-530W to crash on boot.



I have one more spare brand new card, and am really reluctant to put it in my programmer to update.  Without the terrain card, my GNS530W boots up just fine, except for the missing GPS data.

Has anyone else had a problem here?  I'm thinking that this is a Garmin issue at this point.

 

[DCarlton]

I spent hours on the phone with Garmin over two days.  See post above.  They’re grasping to identify root cause of update and card failures.  Different techs give you different ideas of root cause and tell you to try different solutions.  Files being written to the card by the computers OS that corrupts the card; USB 3.0 interfaces that are too fast, Etc.  They acknowledged getting several calls a month due to this issue.  I bought a spare card but haven’t tried it yet.  

[Fly Boomer]

13 hours ago, kortopates said:

fail in brief handling

???

[kortopates]

4 minutes ago, Fly Boomer said:

???

memory cards are fragile, removing them from GNS, (perhaps transporting them home), inserting into Card reader to program, is about the ONLY way they fail. Ever hear of one stop working while in the GNS? Very rare if ever.

These are proprietary memory cards that where bleeding edge when they were designed and first produced. They don't benefit from the commercial mass production of modern compact cards available today. Sadly, by the time the new GNS navigators finished product certification and went into production, the newer more reliable memory cards where just coming out. But Garmin had to freeze their design before that. They did manage to double their memory size when they went to WAAS units - would of been nice if they could have switched to a modern memory card then, but they promised us only $1500 to upgrade to WAAS and held up to their promise (amazingly a number of owners that probably bought their units second hand didn't take advantage of the $1500 upgrade when they could, leaving future owners to pay double that).

They've always been $200 to $250 each as far back as I can remember and good to hear that their price hasn't gone up with inflation.

I suffered several failures over the years but every failure was corrected by a new card. Many owners, myself included, took to carrying a spare card because we didn't want to be on trip when the data expired and risk loosing the card during the update process. I have never heard of a new card not working.

So I just can't buy the apparent belief that the card should not be failing when it does and it must be their software that's bricking the card. Of course Garmin get calls every month on these, their is huge number of them out them out there. Given how expensive they are, we all call to confirm with them before spending the couple hundred for a new one.

The thing that has changed though is folks updating their terrain and obstruction data. Before the GTN came out, with all the different databases all we ever updated on the GNS's was the Nav data. I don't really get the point of updating obstruction data or terrain. Burnt earth terrain data doesn't change, although obstructions data does, most find the MAP display on the GNS to be lacking to use it for that purpose - I never used the map page. I had a better MFD display for that purpose (GMX200). 

One of the big benefits of the newer technology is the bluetooth database concierge (flight stream) service that allows database updates (except for massive terrain updates) without removing or touching the card. And of course the new cards are dirt cheap and more reliable.

 

 

[Fly Boomer]

59 minutes ago, kortopates said:

And of course the new cards are dirt cheap and more reliable.

So just "mechanical" failure as opposed to software failure?  I used to design, sell, and install call center hardware and software.  Some of the add-in boards we used in servers were $10,000 (1990 dollars) and could be destroyed electrostatically by just touching them.  We had to work on anti-static pads with anti-static grounding bands around the wrist.  Not a very robust design, but it was that or nothing.  This sounds similar.

Any idea why people have so much trouble with more recently manufactured general purpose memory cards?  I have read that it "must be a Garmin card" or it won't work."

[LABravo]

Had the same thing happen to me with the latest GNS 430W update using Garmin Software and card reader.

After contacting Garmin Tech Support four times and waiting on hold over an hour, they sent me a new card at no cost.

Thank you Garmin!

 

 

 

[Mike Racine]

1 hour ago, LABravo said:

Had the same thing happen to me with the latest GNS 430W update using Garmin Software and card reader.

After contacting Garmin Tech Support four times and waiting on hold over an hour, they sent me a new card at no cost.

Thank you Garmin!

 

 

 

They did the same thing for me. I gave them the old “the problem is all over the pilot forum boards” and the garmin tech admitted I was his third call that day for the same issue. I’ve already received my card and updated it and installed it without issue. You will notice that the Gns430 will verify the integrity of the new card, so it takes a bit longer to boot up the first time…

[DCarlton]

On 7/14/2022 at 9:46 AM, kortopates said:

memory cards are fragile, removing them from GNS, (perhaps transporting them home), inserting into Card reader to program, is about the ONLY way they fail. Ever hear of one stop working while in the GNS? Very rare if ever.

These are proprietary memory cards that where bleeding edge when they were designed and first produced. They don't benefit from the commercial mass production of modern compact cards available today. Sadly, by the time the new GNS navigators finished product certification and went into production, the newer more reliable memory cards where just coming out. But Garmin had to freeze their design before that. They did manage to double their memory size when they went to WAAS units - would of been nice if they could have switched to a modern memory card then, but they promised us only $1500 to upgrade to WAAS and held up to their promise (amazingly a number of owners that probably bought their units second hand didn't take advantage of the $1500 upgrade when they could, leaving future owners to pay double that).

They've always been $200 to $250 each as far back as I can remember and good to hear that their price hasn't gone up with inflation.

I suffered several failures over the years but every failure was corrected by a new card. Many owners, myself included, took to carrying a spare card because we didn't want to be on trip when the data expired and risk loosing the card during the update process. I have never heard of a new card not working.

So I just can't buy the apparent belief that the card should not be failing when it does and it must be their software that's bricking the card. Of course Garmin get calls every month on these, their is huge number of them out them out there. Given how expensive they are, we all call to confirm with them before spending the couple hundred for a new one.

The thing that has changed though is folks updating their terrain and obstruction data. Before the GTN came out, with all the different databases all we ever updated on the GNS's was the Nav data. I don't really get the point of updating obstruction data or terrain. Burnt earth terrain data doesn't change, although obstructions data does, most find the MAP display on the GNS to be lacking to use it for that purpose - I never used the map page. I had a better MFD display for that purpose (GMX200). 

One of the big benefits of the newer technology is the bluetooth database concierge (flight stream) service that allows database updates (except for massive terrain updates) without removing or touching the card. And of course the new cards are dirt cheap and more reliable.

 

 

If its damage from handling and insertion/removal, Garmin would likely ask for the bad cards and perform some sort of failure analysis proving this as a frequent cause of failure.  If this were the likely cause, I would think Garmin would mention this during the two days of tiered calls to troubleshoot my card failure.  They also reviewed my logs.  If it's a memory size issue with the older cards, it might make sense that the newer OS are writing something to the older cards that's causing the problem.  That's one of the suggested failures modes.  I need to try my new card.  Right now I'm using an older card that was given to me when my original card became corrupted.  My gut says it's a hardware, software, OS, interface issue.  A systems of systems problem.