Fenix 5 data completely wiped on it's own

Um... is there a backup of all the .fit files that get saved on the watch? I finished a ride tonight, plugged the watch into my computer, loaded Garmin Express, tried uploading my most current .fit file to Ride with GPS when I then found out the most current file was from like January 6th. I go back to the activity folder and there's nothing in there from Feb or March, including today. I disconnected the watch, it appeared to be frozen. Eventually it came back to life and my data was erased. I go to Garmin Connect online and my ride wasn't even uploaded. The activity folder is now COMPLETELY EMPTY, my custom watch face isn't even syncing back over from Garmin Connect, and all I want is tonight's ride. I do have Saturday and Sunday's ride recorded in both Ride with GPS and Garmin Connect, as well as everything else leading up to those rides but still...

What the hell happened?!?!?!?!

0 caryhorner over 6 years ago

In thinking about my ultimate question, I guess I know what happened (the watch data got erased), but the better question is "why did this happen?". Has anyone experienced this before? My totals are still there, my timer settings are still there, but all the third party data screens were also gone and there are absolutely no records of previous rides on the watch. I just don't get it.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

...the better question is "why did this happen?"

Based on personal experience, this bug was introduced with main watch FirmWare 12.00 from the 12:th of December 2018. On my Fenix 5X it meant that all the installed maps - and their associated unlock files etc - were wiped, along with everything in the directories Activity, Apps, Courses, Metrics and Workouts. The Text directory containing language files got totally erased, as was the GPX one (it had "Garmin Waypoints.gpx" in it). REMOTESW was wiped and recreated in a different form with both capital and lowercase letters.

Files in the Sleep and Monitor directories are still present, so it doesn't seem to be the whole file structure getting recreated.

It can happen a short time after plugging in the watch with the USB cable to a computer, before it gets mounted by the, in my case, linux OS. In that phase it manifests as a watch 'reboot' showing the Garmin triangle which ends at the normal watch face. No further computer connection is established. The other form of the crash is when having been successfully connected. Upon unmount the watch seems to be frozen, necessitating a hard disconnect from the USB cable.

The bug continued with main FirmWare 12.30 (Jan 21 -19), but seemed to have gone away with 12.40 (Feb 6 -19). Unfortunately it has come back with a vengeance in 12.50 (Mar 7 -19), and I didn't even bother to copy back the large Garmin maps. I'm satisfied with a small Swedish OSM one from frikart.no

But I _have_ left FW 12.50 behind now, and gone with Beta 12.82 (for the longest time I could not get at 12.83 - some kind of Gateway timeout or something with the Fenix 5X file).

And no, I have NOT sent any report to Garmin about this terrible bug. Frankly, I don't give a fig about the company anymore. They've burnt too many bridges with sloppy software over the years. Now let me get back to ignoring the Forum as well...

0 caryhorner over 6 years ago

Ah, so you're blaming the OS on the watch, not Garmin Express and not Windows 10. Interesting. I just might buy that, honestly. It didn't happen today though. I recorced a test "ride" while driving to work and nothing got wiped tonight when I connected my watch to my PC. That's promising at least. I still wish I could get back that last ride but my totals didn't get erased and that ride has been counted in the totals. Maybe there's a way I could extrapolate some of that data from the totals .fit file?