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Garmin Express saying Nuvi 1450 Doesn't Have Space (SD Card installed)

Hi all,

Trying to install updates on my Nuvi 1450.  I have installed an SD card into the unit and Garmin Express still says "there isn't enough space to install this update"

(I looked up on Garmin's support pages and the device won't support cards larger than 32 GB.  I installed a 16 GB formatted to FAT 32 as the device requires)

Is there no way to move the existing maps to the SD card, and then force the update onto the SD card itself?  There are also localization / misc updates that are queued for the device.  I just don't know why I can't update anything despite having an SD card inside the GPS Unit.

Any advice is welcome...

  • Is it referring to your GPS or your PC though?  Express requires up to 20Gb spare space on your PC, do you have that?  If yes does the card show in Explorer when your device is connected?  Does your card show in Express?

  • Hi Sussamb,

    It seems to be referring to the GPS itself.  

    There is more than 20 GB of space on the PC.

    Both the GPS and the card show up in Windows Explorer when the device is connected.

    I was reading somewhere that even some little bit of space would need to be cleared from the Garmin device.  I cleared the help files in the 20 languages that I'll never use lol.  That should free up a couple MB of space.  Maybe it doesn't start because it sees near zero space on the device, I don't know...

  • You certainly need a bit of space on your device, but if the card shows in Explorer it should also show in Express. Do you have the latest version of Express? Update if you haven't as that in itself can cause issues. Then look at Tools and Contents, Utilities. What does it say at the bottom in terms of storage for device and card?

  • Hi again. 

    I checked the tools + contents > Utilities and I saw the storage on the device and the card.

    The device shows 16 MB of empty space (of 2 GB total)

    The SD card itself shows the full 16 GB free.

    So it looks like it is seeing the card but refuses to install anything.

    I tried installing even a 900 kb update for localization or something and it just says "the update failed to install" without giving an error...

  • The issue is almost certainly the lack of free space on the device.  You need to delete some files, my suggestion would be the junction view file which ends in .jcv and is in the .system/JCV folder.  The .system folder is a hidden folder using the default Folder View Options in Windows. In order to see the .system folder on your device you need to make Folder View Option changes in Windows as follows:

    Windows 8 and 10:

    1) Open the Control Panel. (Right click on the Windows square in the bottom left of your computer screen. Select Control Panel and click on it.)
    2) Inside Control Panel, click on "Appearance and Personalization", then "Folder Options" or “File Explorer Options". This will open the File Explorer Options window.
    3) Inside the File Explorer Options window, click on the "view" tab.

    Select "Show hidden files, folders, and drives"
    Remove check mark for “Hide Empty Drives”
    Remove check mark for “Hide protected operating system files” (Recommended)”

    Windows 7:
    1) Open Windows Explorer and select Organise, Folder and Search Options
    2) Click the View tab.
    3) Uncheck ‘Hide protected operating system files.
    4) Check ‘Show hidden files, folders and drives’

  • Okay cleared the JCV files and also the GPX files as referred to on this post on Garmin's support pages:
    support.garmin.com/.../

    Made backups of both of the above folders before messing around with them.

    This gave me back about 100 MB. Device shows 150 MB free as of this post.

    I'm also deleting some help files in the 20 languages I don't need.

    How much space is needed to try any update to the device? (maps or otherwise?)

    Can we move the map image file to the SD card? (I assume it's the massive 1.5 GB img file in the .system folder)

    (as of this post didn't try to connect to Garmin Express again yet) 

  • 100mb should be ample. Don't move the map image, if you do Express won't delete it when it installs the new map.

  • Hi

    Clearing the space as per your post above (marked as answer) and then updating the device worked.

    100 MB is the amount of space it needed to see "free" in order to attempt any update.

    The update seemed to move the entire map image and some other files to the SD card.  The garmin device itself now has 1 GB of storage free while the SD card has 3 GB or so of space used (12 GB still free, more than enough for future updates should we need to go that route -- pun intended ;) ) 

    After updating successfully through Garmin Express, it restarted the device a few times and it looks to be in order.

    Thank you so much for your help!!!  Hope you stay safe during these covid times Smiley

  • Good to know it's sorted, I'll now close this thread.