Palm has released several devices using a new memory management model called NVFS, or Non-Volatile File System. This page is here to point out specific issues that may arise when using 3rd party software on these devices.

Tungsten T5, Treo 650

The first devices to ship with the NVFS system were the Tungsten T5 and Treo 650. Like many other "first of their kind" devices, these devices shipped with many serious bugs in their system software that were not exposed until after they were released. As of the writing of this article Palm has released software updates for these devices which eliminate about 90% of the issues that our customers experienced when these devices were first released. You can download these updates for free from Palm's website at www.palm.com. You should check back with Palm's support website from time to time, Palm has made great progress in fixing these devices and there is no reason to assume they will not release further updates to increase stability even more.

Current updates for these devices bring them up to the same compatibility level as the Tungsten E2 and LifeDrive, so please read on.

Tungsten E2, LifeDrive

The second generation of NVFS devices were the Tungsten E2 and LiveDrive Mobile Manager. While these devices are generally more stable, there are updates available for them as well.

Even fully patched, there are a few issues you need to be aware of when using our BackupMan product.

• You must turn the phone OFF on the Treo 650 prior to performing a restore operation.
• You may see an "Out of memory" error message that has the code 0x0201. This is one of the system bugs left in the NVFS system. Many users have reported that a Zero-Out reset will solve this problem. Information on Zero-Out Reset.

TX

The third generation of NVFS devices so far includes the Palm TX and Z22. Since the Z22 has no expansion slot our applications do not support that device. At the time of this writing the TX is quite new, but it seems to be very stable and we have had no reports of 0x0201 issues or random crashes.

Treo 700p

The Treo 700p is the most recent NVFS-based device, as expected most if not all issues appear to have been resolved. You should still make note of the issues below, as they are not bugs in the handheld but may still impact your on a Treo 700.

All NVFS Devices

The following items effect all NVFS devices.

• If you experience a system reset at the end of a backup, you have a program loaded on your device that either "patches" or intercepts certain system function calls. Any program that adds functionality to the device when it is not the active application falls into this category. Here are some examples:
  • Butler
  • ClipPro
  • CrashPro
  • Fonts4OS5
  • pToolSet
  • TextPlus
  Removal of those (or any similar) programs and the problem will go away. Please note that the programs themselves are most likely not at fault, they are simply exposing a defect in the Palm NVFS system design. Some of the developers of this type of program have already released updates that work around the problem; you should contact them directly for details. If you would like to know a more technical explanation of why this happens click here.
• Photos and Videos will not be backed up on the NVFS devices. We suggest setting the Media application to save these items directly to the expansion card. They take up a great deal of space, and including them in a backup set over and over is generally not a desirable option.