Why does my Etrex 30 'lose' breadcrumb trails?

[Tortoise]

Confessions of a technophobe...

I know that i may be accidentally pressing something I shouldn't, but I've been reeeeeally careful not to do that. Sometimes my outward breadcrumb trail, or sections thereof, disappears from the screen, which is a big nuisance. E.g. Mersey Crag area - above the tree line, no reason I can think of to lose reception. Most (but not all) of the outward trail disappeared. Glad I flagged the tent site for the dusk return! Breadcrumb trail reappeared on the screen the next day (when I didn't need it), and iirc it usually/always turns up when I transfer data to the computer, so it's recording ok, just not displaying. This is happening more often. Any ideas?

[icefest]

Depends on how it is setup.

The etrex units only have so much room on their breadcrumb file. Out of the box, they are set to archive the breadcrumb trail when it fills up. The archived trail is saved on the device but not visible by default. This is why you can see it when you download the data to the computer. You can chose to display past breadcrumb trails in the settings, similarly to displaying a route.

You can change the archive behavior of the etrex. Either make it archive every night at midnight, or make it overwrite the old data.
The other option is to decrease the resolution of the trail (spread the crumbs further out) which allows you to display more until it does archive.

[Tortoise]

Depends on how it is setup.

The etrex units only have so much room on their breadcrumb file. Out of the box, they are set to archive the breadcrumb trail when it fills up. The archived trail is saved on the device but not visible by default. This is why you can see it when you download the data to the computer. You can chose to display past breadcrumb trails in the settings, similarly to displaying a route.

You can change the archive behavior of the etrex. Either make it archive every night at midnight, or make it overwrite the old data.
The other option is to decrease the resolution of the trail (spread the crumbs further out) which allows you to display more until it does archive.

Thanks icefest, I'll see what I can do with that. Some of it still doesn't make sense, though - why would it sometimes randomly reappear while the unit is still on? ie un-archive, to reappear on the display? It does that from time to time too.

[keithy]

What version of the firmware are you running? To check Go to Setup/About. The latest is 4.30 from July 2015.

Your saved GPX track logs shouldn't disappear then reappear. I recall having some bad GPX files that caused similar behaviour but if I recall correctly, it was back during older firmware (below 2.80).

The issue I had with some tracks I had checked the tracks had saved as a GPX file on the device. But the option to click Show on Map was not there.

Garmin had suggested back then that I master reset the device and update the firmware.

If you do a master reset, make sure you back your files up from the unit first. Your profiles are saved in the profile folder - copy this to a PC somewhere. Then your tracks are saved in the GPX folder (bear in mind that you may have one or more corrupted GPX files like I did). After a master reset, if you are not already on the latest firmware, do a firmware update on your unit.

I haven't seen had this issue occur since my issue back in I think 2013. However, I have been using my Oregon 600 more often than the eTrex 30.

It is a pity Garmin don't seem to think it is fit to have a forum for their hiking GPS devices. There used to be a good wiki on the etrex 20/30 with common issues and firmware issues that various users had, but the wiki was lost when wikispaces change their free subscription for non educational wikis and the eTrex wiki was considered non educational. The very good Oregon 6xx wiki has also gone recently due to the wiki subscription expiring, together with the wealth of information from users about common issues experienced.

[Tortoise]

Thanks, keithy. Not sure what firmware it is but guaranteed not to be the latest. Will follow that up too. Bummer about the demise of the forum.

[keithy]

I had a quick search to find which firmwares had the issue as I remember it was mentioned on one of the geocaching forums I visited when I had the similar issue of tracks not showing up.

Here's one confirming the issue was present in V2.90 http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index. ... &p=5222711

And it was apparently in other Garmin models if you search "Fixed issue with saving a track's 'show on map' status across a power cycle. " in the firmware update changes of their various models.

If you update your firmware and the issue still presents, you might have a faulty GPX file on the unit causing issues.