Only 8MB Memory instead of 16MB?

Former Member over 6 years ago

Hi

I recently noted that after some months of use my watch's memory was full. While copying files from the watch on a PC I noticed that Windows Explorer reports my Instinct's memory to be ~8MB. After a factory reset the watch is still shown as having ~8MB memory with ~3.5MB being used by system files (see attached screenshot).
While I did not expect to be able to use the full advertised 16MB, I'm surprised the "real" storage is only half of the advertised.

Is this the case with all Instincts or a problem with mine?

Maybe I'm also missing some sort of "internal" memory not visible trough USB, but I could not find any indication on the watch or in Garmin Connect that would show the storage areas or storage utilization of the watch. :confused:

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0 DGeorgiev over 5 years ago in reply to 9520687

APAC comes from Asia-Pacific region. The only difference between the two versions, that I'm aware of is that for the APAC models, the firmware version is somehow different and becomes available at a later time than for the "Normal" one.

The partition is FAT.

0 JizzKhalifa over 5 years ago

I have the same issue. After upgrading to latest software 4.0 and resetting and clearing the device, this is what is shown.

Thoughts?

0 9520687 over 5 years ago in reply to JizzKhalifa

did you check your storage before you updated to 4.0?

0 JizzKhalifa over 5 years ago in reply to 9520687

It's been the same ever since getting the device, regardless of software version.

0 crabonfever over 5 years ago

Same issue here. I had to clear data before upgrade to firmware v4.0 but did not check capacity numbers at that point, it just seemed rather small.

0 mad_hungarian over 5 years ago

WOW, thanks for sharing this. That's pretty bad. I was on the fence due to 16MB being on the light side, and now you guys are saying it's really only 8MB. LOL, that's horrible.

0 pprimoz over 5 years ago in reply to mad_hungarian

I do not understand why you are complaining so much: Instinct really has 16MB of space, of which 8GB is apparently reserved for the system (GUPDATE.GCD takes 3MB), 2.8MB for system files, and the other 5.2GB for activities. 1 hour of cycling with GPS, external HR sensor and a cadence sensor occupy 58kB, so Instinct has space for 90 hours of activity. Deleting unnecessary LN3 (languages) files increase the available space to 6.7 MB or 115 hours of activity.

The only (small) problem is that at least 3 MB of free space must be available on Instinct before each upgrade, but Instinct can be easily connected to the PC at any time and you could archive/backup all the activities which are saved as .FIT files in the Garmin/Activity directory. If necessary, latter you can upload all, or just selected ones, back to Instinct.

0 JizzKhalifa over 5 years ago in reply to pprimoz

No it doesn't. As per screen shots above, only one person has 16MB. Rest of us have total 8MB disk space (both full and available).

0 6630887 over 5 years ago in reply to DGeorgiev

APAC seems to have a different font but with a larger memory. The downside for APAC is that its software update is sort of lagging behind in comparison to a normal version.

0 mad_hungarian over 5 years ago in reply to pprimoz

You don't understand because you use it for 1 hour of cycling at a time and then download whatever on to your computer. If someone is going to be in the field for days on end, tracking multiple dogs, hrm, stride rate, temperature, etc with ant+ modules, then yeah, the small memory becomes a concern.