SD cards

[wheeler4]

I have lost one of my lakemaster chips. Is there a way that I can make back-ups of my other and older chips so I do not have to buy another one? I know $100 is a good lesson learned, but I have 3 other chips. If anything were to happen to these, it would get very expensive to replace them. I know some piracy laws may not permit this. But I know you can legally make back-up copys of CD's and DVD's that you currently own.

Any info would be great or suggestions also. I am not out to cheat anyone!

[PerchJerker]

You can make a copy of the LM chips, but those copies will only work on the original chip. If your original chip is lost, stolen or fried you are out of luck. The only thing the backup copy protects against is data corruption on the original chip.

I'm not sure how Nav works.

[wheeler4]

Not to sound stupid, but how do they only work on the original chip? Would I have been able to back-up my new chip and had I had the info put it back on an older LM chip?

Aren't these cards the same as what is used in digital cameras?

[Whoaru99]

Purely speculation, but the SD card may have protected sectors, or something like, which contains some type of code that enables the software to work.

A generic card would not have this protected sector information so the copied software wouldn't work.

If the original card was completely formatted and the software copied back, it may not work either if the format process also wipes out the protected sector information.

Yes, the cards themselves are essentially the same as what's used in a camera, but it's what's on the card and security measures that makes it different.

Like I said, it's probably not exactly as I described, but something essentially to that effect.

[uglystick007]

The S in SD is for secured. The security is an encryption key that belongs to each individual card. So you can't copy the data onto another card because the built in key does not work with the previously protected data.

[PierBridge]

I'm not even sure you can rewrite the backed up data to the original card.

whoaru99 and others are right the MapCards have encryption to protect their product from theft.

[Spork]

Ok, well I started typing out an opinion about how you should be able to copy them, but then I started reading an article on another web forum stating that if you try to copy the card, it is programmed from the manufacturer to self-erase. Although I did read on another site that someone was successful at copying them, none of the information on how to do it was disclosed nor could I find anything on the web.

[PierBridge]

They are not set to self destruct but many people have ruined their Cards trying to copy them mainly the Navionics Cards I have not heard of a Lakemaster chip being ruined.

I have both the Nav and LM chips backed up on my Computer which IMO is worthless and of no benifit to me.

[PerchJerker]

I'm with PierBridge

- I know guys that lost their Nav chips by putting them in card readers, been a couple year since I've heard of that happening though

- I have my LM chip backed up on my PC but consider the backup pretty worthless