-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Clearing/deleting Sentry mode videos in bulk?
- Thread starter aburrows
- Start date
If you want to erase everything at once without removing the drive, you could use the format option on the sentry page and just start over. Otherwise, I think you would need to plug it into your phone or computer to do deletes of multiple files at a time.
jf64k
Member
I once came back to “124 Sentry Events”, so I simply reformatted the drive, as @DerbyDave suggested.
TomServo
Active Member
You need to stop and remove any other USB connected storage devices in the front two USB ports. Turn off Senty Mode and Dash Cam if they are on by holding down the icon for each until the red indicator goes out. Go in to Security and Select to Reformat the drive. It will confirm that you want to erase all data on the drive, and tell you that it is formatting it to EXFAT. If you approve, it will erase everything on the drive and recreate the needed folder called Dashcam. You then can re-enable Dashcam and Sentry as needed. If you have any other folders besides Dashcam on the drive, including music, photos, videos, or anything else, all data will be erased by the format. These generally are all on the same partition. They are usually just folders. TomServo, did you put them in a separate partition? If so, I do not know how the car can determine which partition to reformat.
I recommend having a dedicated Dashcam / Sentry drive. I have posted instructions on moving the USB that the new wireless phone charger is connected to so that you can have another free DATA USB port in the front area of the car. One Data USB is not enough. See: Moving Wireless Phone Charger USB Port Having the extra data USB port enables you to put all your multimedia files on a separate drive, and dedicate the other drive to Dashcam / Sentry.
I recommend having a dedicated Dashcam / Sentry drive. I have posted instructions on moving the USB that the new wireless phone charger is connected to so that you can have another free DATA USB port in the front area of the car. One Data USB is not enough. See: Moving Wireless Phone Charger USB Port Having the extra data USB port enables you to put all your multimedia files on a separate drive, and dedicate the other drive to Dashcam / Sentry.
Last edited:
TomServo
Active Member
I have a Samsung T7 SSD so I formatted it on my iMac and created TWO partitions. 350 GB for the DashCam and 150 GB for Music. I goofed when I copied all my CD's unto my iMac a few years ago, I coded them as Apples Lossless aka MP4's. Turns out after I copied all 450 of my CD's onto that partition my Tesla doesn't read them, I get an error message. So I need to dumb them down to MP3's and then re export them to my T7. So for now I'll just keep things as they are until I'm ready to load the MP3's.
But I do agree that using one of the USB data ports for the phone charging pad is a waste of connections and I will employ your suggested solution. Cheers and thanks for all you have done to help out fellow Tesla owners.
TomServo, I tested formatting a multi-partition USB with TeslaCam on one partition and media on the other using the Tesla Format. Tesla recognizes the multiple partitions and will not reformat the USB drive. It instructs you to use a computer to format the drive. Good to know it won't erase all those media files on the other partition!
Flybuddy
Member
The dashcam overwrites.
Within the "TeslaCam" folder, there are three sub-folders: Recent Clips, Saved Clips, and Sentry Clips. The footage in Recent Clips constantly loops in a 60-minute cycle when the cameras are activated. Therefore, the footage is constantly being overwritten every hour unless the footage is saved.
As your USB flash drive runs out of available space, the oldest footage in Sentry Clips are deleted to make room for new footage. Once the old footage is deleted, you will be unable to retrieve them. When the flash drive is full, Sentry Mode and dashcam can no longer save video footage.
To prevent the flash drive from getting full, move saved videos to another device as soon as possible.
Last edited:
TomServo
Active Member
Awesome news, and thanks for taking the time to look into this, too bad all my music files are unusable, so I’ll need to fix that, but it’s good to know going forward that the second partition is “safe”. Cheers.
But isn't that contradicting to itself, or I've missed something here? If the sentry newest video is to replace the oldest clips in order to clear spaces, the USB should not have ever got into the 'disk full' situation, isn't it?
There are three storage areas. One is on all the time Sentry or Dashcam is engaged and is called recent Clips. It records one hour and then starts writing over itself. Storage that does not automatically erase are Dashcam clips you save, and Sentry events that are saved. As of the newest software release, there is a fourth internally saved clip from the last event. This is not on the USB, but is on Tesla storage. The Sentry and Dashcam events accumulate until you delete them, except the oldest Sentry events will be overwritten if the USB runs out of space. Dashcam events must always be manually deleted. They can fill up the usb drive and make it so the continuous storage fails.
Last edited:
