# 2018 Nissan SD card question



## ron1 (Dec 15, 2018)

Can someone elaborate about the *SD CARD* that is used in the radio / nav system?
Where is it located?
What function does it serve? (all i care about is radio, don't care about nav system to be honest)
Why does it seem to be a Nissan controlled part?
Is it the same across all Nissan models... maxima, altima, sentra, suv's ?
Pinging the internet I see a lot of: "I bought a used [nissan] and it didn't have an SD card... and cannot take SD card out of one car and plug into another"
Who takes the SD card out of the car, honestly?

Backstory:
Bought a 2018 Maxima SV few months ago, have 5,000 miles on it now,
more and more often I would start the car and the radio/nav system would not work.

By not work I mean: 
start car, hot or cold, 
radio screen would display NISSAN on power up for couple seconds, then go blank but be backlit,
nothing would work no radio no buttons,
also the proximity beep when backing into my garage would not work,
and sometimes but not always backup camera would not work.
Shut car off and restart within an hour (or < 1 min) problem persists.
Next day in morning leaving to work it everything would work again.
Has happened > 10 times over last 3-4 months.
First time I got a complete blue screen with white lettering with error codes, shut car off & restarted problem gone.
Most recently got a "NAV SYSTEM ERROR check owners' manual in detail"
Most times get no error, just doesn't work where screen stays blank but backlit.
finally brought to dealer, they said bad SD card and replaced, only had car for a day so far ok.


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## ron1 (Dec 15, 2018)

also i am finding,

with the SD card installed that everything works as one would expect, and basically... start the car and either radio comes on within a second, or if a CDis in there it immediately starts playing almost before engine is fully running after pressing start button and on the track where it left off.

When car off, if I take out the SD card, then start car
- displays shows Nissan Connect and then I think Nissan (which is normal) but then takes another ~5 seconds before working
- loses the time, did it at 2pm and time reverted to 10am. Turn off car, put the SD card back in, start, time correct again.
- if a CD is in, it takes about 5-10 seconds after starting car before starts playing; i don't remember if it continued where it left off playing
- all saved FM radio presets lost. and with SD card out if I program one then turn car off it's lost. Put SD card in and all presets restored.


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## ron1 (Dec 15, 2018)

it is an SDHC card, 16gb.
It is formatted having a MBR with one FAT32 partition.
In fact however or whoever is doing it seems to not know what they are doing because it has 455MB free unallocated space followed by the 15GB partition followed by 717MB of free unallocated space. It should be easy to copy and backup the contents of an SD card since it is MBR and FAT32, windows XP or later can do everything needed one does not need linux.

And one should be able to simply copy the contents to a new SDHC 16gb or 32gb card; since it is FAT32 it would not surprise me if the head unit does not read or recognize a SDXC or larger type card. I have no spares of that size handy so i don't know otherwise i would try. But if one saves the contents of their existing SDHC card, all that is needed is format a new 16gb or 32gb SDHC card using MBR (not GPT) and make one FAT32 partition of max size then just copy everything back to it.

I was able to easily mount it using linux and copy off and browse the contents, however I am not sure what is what in there (other than map data obviously).
Unless there's some hidden key linking the data contents on the SD card to some hardware ID of the head unit I can't easily identify a unique file or text on the SD card linking it to my car... since I've read on the web that the SD card from one nissan will not work in another I'm speculating there must be some file or bit of data on the SD card making it specific to my head unit- I cannot easily find that nor can i find where it's storing my radio station presets. Only thing I readily see is *VER_INFO/DB_INFO.TXT* and the contents of that text file is

```
GNAMK-20-106-100
0100
17-14
485306609-014
201700000
reserve02
reserve03
reserve04
reserve05
reserve06
reserve07
reserve08
reserve09
reserve10
```
And here is the main listing of what is on the card, a "d" indicates that is a directory/folder, the name of which is on the far right


```
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 BICON001
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  8287 Aug  8  2016 CMP.LST
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 DFRMR001
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 89048 Feb 17  2017 DRSTR001.DAT
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 HOUSE001
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 MAPAL001
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  4096 Dec  9  2016 MMAIN001.DAT
drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 OBJCT001
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 OPNG
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 RDSTM001
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 REFER001
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 REFER002
drwxr-xr-x. 5 root root 65536 Apr  5  2017 SPEECH
drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 SXM
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 65536 Feb 14  2017 TFTBL001
drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root 65536 Jun 27  2017 UPDATE
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 65536 Jun 27  2017 VER_INFO

size     folder
--------------------------
128K	BICON001
64K	CMP.LST
3.2M	DFRMR001
128K	DRSTR001.DAT
201M	HOUSE001
3.7G	MAPAL001
64K	MMAIN001.DAT
146M	OBJCT001
9.9M	OPNG
42M	RDSTM001
6.7G	REFER001
6.2M	REFER002
2.2G	SPEECH
4.0M	SXM
607M	TFTBL001
236M	UPDATE
128K	VER_INFO

the card is formatted having a MBR with only one 14GB partition as FAT32 that has 156MB of free space left in that partition, it is 99% full.
```
and the location of the SD card is on front of unit to the right of the CD slot, I'd post some pics but "You *may not* post attachments"


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## RehianaSpencer (Mar 25, 2019)

I really like the information shared. . .


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