For quite some time TomTom devices have been shipped with no software disk, the only copy of the map is the one loaded to your device.

Should things go wrong, or through modifying/customising your device you accidentally delete some files you must have a backup of the data to recover the situation.

The backup should be done before you do anything to the device, this way you can always recover the unit to the exact same standard it was when purchased.

You can either use your TomTom unit as a card reader or remove the memory card from the device and insert it to a card reader (this method can offer a higher speed).

In the case of the 700 or 910 device you have no option but to connect the device to the computer.

You can use the TomTom Home application to perform the back-up it is a simple as clicking the “Make Backup” button. Or you can use Windows Explorer to achieve the same data backup.

If using Windows Explorer please go to Tools/ Folder Options, select the “View” tab and make sure:

• Show hidden files and folders IS selected
• Hide extensions for known file types IS NOT selected

Highlight all the files and folders on the TomTom card then right click and select “Copy” from the pop-up box.

Now go to your new folder created above open it, right click and from the pop-up box select “Paste” this will copy all the data from the card to the PC.

Once you have the data on the PC you can copy the backup data to CD of DVD – just in case (PC’s do go wrong from time to time, at least with a removable disk you have independent data storage).

Users of the 910 device can use either method, but if using the TomTom Home method make an additional copy of the LoquendoTTS folder using Windows Explorer.

This is required due to the Home application messing up the capital letters in the folder names which results in an unusable part of the backup, basically if you only use TomTom Home and have to install the all important backup your Text To Speech won’t work without messing around re-naming folders etc.

The easy way is to take a copy of the LoquendoTTS folder using Windows Explorer.

How to re-install a backup from Windows Explorer to your TomTom

To re-install from a backup should the worst case scenario happen, simply copy all the files from your recent backup and overwrite those on your device using Explorer.