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The MacBook Pro :

As the owner of a MacBook Pro (which is an amazing bit of kit) I fall victim to the same downfall as most owners – the small internal SSD. My MBP holds a mere 128Gb of internal built in storage.

Now that 128Gb storage is almost instant access – being a quick SSD. When paired up with 8Gb of RAM and the 2.7GHz i5 machine it really is a very capable bit of kit – in fact most of this blog, associated photos and media all stem from this very machine.

But let’s be honest 128Gb is not enough.

But let’s be even more honest. It isn’t a huge deal either. With portable options now readily available, you can easily get 4TB in your pocket, 400Gb SD Cards are becoming more affordable £ / $ per Gb and you can even get super fast tiny and portable SSD drives which are amazing for rending video and other demanding tasks.

Personally I have always opted for a connected portable hard drive. My drive of choice at the moment being a USB 3.0 2TB Seagate drive. It is quick (as you will soon see), it is small, and it is plug and play. I have the majority of my apps on it, all my games and store images on it that I won’t be using immediately.

I keep it pretty clutter free and it means my storage issues – aren’t issues.

As far as SD cards go I always (from habit more than anything else) use a USB 3.0 card reader. (The one I use is from Anker). It means I can just pop the card out of my camera / GoPro / drone… whatever and have the media transferred quickly and hassle free on my terms. I don’t like plugging in a device and having it tell me what image importer to use, or what editor, so with the Card Reader I import and use as I please.

If I am editing photos / video on the go I import them onto the Mac’s SSD, do what I need to do, then upload them or store them on the portable drive. It is no doubt easier and quicker to run on the SSD, and it means if I am mobile I don’t need to worry about the portable drive and where to set it. But then you reach the limiting factor of the maximum available space.

Last year I purchased a Garmin Dakota 20 GPS System to use on my Motorcycle and also for GeoCaching. I never really used it. However I have now set up setting it up properly and getting it ready for use this year.

One good point about the Dakota 20 is the fact that it has a expandable memory by the addition of a MicroSD card, which sits neatly behind the batteries. This is a bit of a no brainer really as SD Cards are so affordable now. You don’t even have to go that big as the Custom maps from Garmin are a maximum size of 4GB, an 8GB should easily do most users. One other option is that if you have a lot of custom maps you could buy bigger, store all your maps on the device then move them around into the proper directories as required as your journey progresses. (Pretty much the whole of Western Europe on a Custom Map is squeezed into 4GB).

To utilise this all you have to do is prepare the card.

(One quick tip for when you get set up, make sure you leave the WW BaseMaps Enabled, this will give you at the very least a base map whilst your detailed maps load, removing any white screens that you get as loading occurs, it is purely cosmetic, just nicer to work with!).

To do this follow these simple steps.

1. Format your MicroSD card as FAT32 (FAT MS-DOS on a Mac)
2. Rename the Card – ‘GARMIN.’
3. Create a folder named ‘Garmin’ in the root directory.
4. Any Map files with the extension ‘.img’ are placed in this directory.
5. Copy the File Structure from your Actual Garmin GPS to that of your Freshly Formatted SD Card. The folders named below are all within the ‘Garmin’ Root directory.
6. The ‘CustomMaps’ folder will contain any ‘.kmz’ files.
7. The ‘BirdsEye’ folder will house any ‘.jnx’ files.
8. The ‘GPX’ folder will be the home of waypoints and so on just as the Garmin was itself.

BaseQi SD Card Adapter Speed Test for MacBook Pro

The MacBook Pro :

Preparing MicroSD Card for Use in Garmin Dakota 20 (& Other GPS Systems)

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