UPDATE: Read post #4. Seems all this time I've been battling known bugs that are not fixed when trying to organize many GPX tracks. My recommendation is to not buy this product until Garmin fixes the many issues associated with the required Explore app along with very wonky Collection Manager issues.
New Montana 700i user as I recently upgraded from a Montana 610t. I will be using the 700i for CO, UT, SD and other backcountry OHV, MTB, Nordic skiing and hiking. In my years of owning MANY Garmin devices, I have accumulated over 500 GPX track files where I also purchased many of those from a company called FunTreks. If you are not familiar with FunTreks, each guide book they produce has available tracks for purchase that correspond with the guide books. Short is I have a lot more GPX files than Garmin supports for Active tracks on the 700i and each guide book has its own microSD card. Obviously I can, and have, copied all the tracks to 1 card but since the limitation is 250 Active tracks, not all of the tracks show up on the 700i. Thus, my observations and questions. I have done a lot of searching on this and just don't seem to find a similar situation.
I believe my solution is going to be a combination of Saved and Archive tracks. I am also aware and have implemented Collections but have only worked with a total of ~ 200 tracks so far. I would like to have all 500 of my tracks on a single microSD card but that doesn't seem possible since the 700i only recognizes microSD Garmin/GPX/ gpx files as Active tracks.
- Is there a folder path on a microSD card for Archive tracks?
- If no microSD Archive path, can I copy GPX files direct into the onboard Garmin/GPX/Archive/ path?
- This one is strange. When I archived a gpx file that was on my microSD card, I see that file get created in the onboard Garmin/GPX/Archive/ path. When I listed that archived file as a favorite again, it was moved to the onboard Garmin/GPX/ path but the file size greatly increased. The gpx file size on the microSD card was 8 kb, when archived and then changed to Favorite, the exact same file increased to 271 kb. I have concerns that the way Garmin archives and unarchives files, I may at some point overrun storage and/or files stop showing up without my knowledge.
- Having multiple microSD cards and swapping them to accomodate how Garmin codes their storage seems a poor work-around. The microSD cards have plenty of storage to handle way more that 500 gpx files (250 saved tracks, 2000 GPX files, 2000 archive tracks limit per 700i specs) but because of the way one can have "Saved" tracks, storage along with gpx saved/archive track manipulation seems highly clunky at best.
- With Collections, I'm assuming that is more a db style of organization of the waypoints/tracks etc. that are available to organize once the GPX files are recognized on the 700I? If so, that brings me back to the issue of how to properly manage storage by way of questions 1-3.
If you've gotten this far in my post, thank you. I know there is a lot of detail and it is because I have spent a lot of time recently trying to get a handle on a good way to display all of my 500 GPX files, mainly for the tracks. I do thank anyone ahead of time for your responses and please let me know where the information I have provided might be confusing.
