Dash Cam Too Slow after update

[davewill]

Would be nice if you could make it only save video when you press a button. Most of the recording is pointless, nothing happens. You can just manually trigger it when there is an accident, or if the car detects one.

That's the way it already works. It saves the last ten minutes when you push the camera icon or if it detects an accident. Do you mean you wish it wouldn't start recording until you push the icon? It it wasn't already recording, what would it save when you press the button?

 

[Jzoo]

After reading a couple other posts I swapped out my 32GB Kingston USB 2.0 that was having the “USB too slow” warning for a PNY 16 GB USB 2.0. Worked fine for the day today and no issues with the videos that I could find. I’ll update if any issues show up. I wonder if it’s a bug that won’t allow the car to write to larger USB drives? The Kingston worked fine before the update. I’m running 2019.28.2 FWIW

 

[Knightshade]

@Ebinezer thanks for the info! I just upgraded to a 256G USB a couple months ago because my drive was filling up so ridiculously quickly in sentry mode. I'll try dusting off my 32G drive and see if that fixes the problem.

btw I wish Tesla would just implement an option to automatically delete old files when the drive fills up. Then 32G would be plenty.

But the car has no idea what footage on sentry is important- so how can it automatically overrwrite anything without risking losing the actual video you want to keep?

Regular dashcam can overwrite because you're physically there to save off any 10 minute clip that matters. With Sentry you're not.

I just did some USB tests, and I'm eve more convinced this "USB too slow" error is a Tesla software bug. Which makes sense given what you heard from Tesla support; if drive size matters it's obviously not simply a write speed problem.

The dashcam files I get (Model 3) are 4.1 Mb/s per stream. So x3 camera views = 12.3 Mb/s total write bandwidth required.

I just tested my 256G USB 2.0 drive on Windows and it writes at 29 Mb/s, so more than twice the required bandwidth. And as simpler proof, before Tesla updated their software, it worked perfectly fine for dashcam at this exact same bitrate.

Finally, in my experience you can't really get USB 2.0 drives that write much faster than 30 Mb/s anyway. Most USB drives that claim higher speeds are quoting their USB 3.0 spec (the Model 3 ports are only USB 2.0 so that's irrelevant). So if dashcam is going to work at all, it kind of needs to fit in the real world USB 2.0 range, which I usually see described as < 20 Mb/s sustained write.

I think you're mixing up MB and Mb in the above.

The cameras only write ~0.5MB/sec each, so about 1.5MB per second total for all 3 (roughly comparable to your 12.3 Mb/s) but USB drive specs are typically MB/s... so a 29MB/s drive would be almost 20x faster than needed.

 

[moshee]

Some more anecdata:

Samsung Bar Plus 256GB

• 200GB FAT32 partition for music, balance FAT32 for TeslaCam: too slow
• 32GB FAT32 for TeslaCam, balance ext4 for music: too slow
• 16GB FAT32 for TeslaCam, balance ext4 for music: too slow
• Single partition ext4 for TeslaCam: seems to work

Kingston DataTraveler 16GB (probably USB 2)

• Single partition FAT32 for TeslaCam: seems to work but most videos contain static (duration is correct, but garbled contents)

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that USB flash controllers have a hard time dealing with multiple partitions. I benched around 10-20% of sequential write speed with 2 partitions vs. a single one on CrystalDiskMark (< 3 MB/s vs. 15-20 MB/s), even on a drive that should be pretty fast like the Samsung Bar.

That said, something must have changed, because it seemed to work just fine before. Never had an issue with corrupted or missing video before the 24.4 update, so seems like it was fast enough, maybe just barely. On 24.4, it would run for anywhere from seconds to hours before complaining that the drive is too slow.

 

[OneOhEd]

Some more anecdata:

Samsung Bar Plus 256GB

• 200GB FAT32 partition for music, balance FAT32 for TeslaCam: too slow
• 32GB FAT32 for TeslaCam, balance ext4 for music: too slow
• 16GB FAT32 for TeslaCam, balance ext4 for music: too slow
• Single partition ext4 for TeslaCam: seems to work

Kingston DataTraveler 16GB (probably USB 2)

• Single partition FAT32 for TeslaCam: seems to work but most videos contain static (duration is correct, but garbled contents)

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that USB flash controllers have a hard time dealing with multiple partitions. I benched around 10-20% of sequential write speed with 2 partitions vs. a single one on CrystalDiskMark (< 3 MB/s vs. 15-20 MB/s), even on a drive that should be pretty fast like the Samsung Bar.

That said, something must have changed, because it seemed to work just fine before. Never had an issue with corrupted or missing video before the 24.4 update, so seems like it was fast enough, maybe just barely. On 24.4, it would run for anywhere from seconds to hours before complaining that the drive is too slow.

Are you saying we can now use ext4 instead of fat32 for formatting? That would be great!

Anybody else able to confirm that ext4 is working for them?

 

[mwk888]

But the car has no idea what footage on sentry is important- so how can it automatically overrwrite anything without risking losing the actual video you want to keep?

Regular dashcam can overwrite because you're physically there to save off any 10 minute clip that matters. With Sentry you're not.

I think you're mixing up MB and Mb in the above.

Speaking for myself, I'd much rather have my Tesla start overwriting old files than stop recording new ones. As it is now, if I don't notice the tiny icon saying your disk is full, my sentry mode just stops working. 32G is more than a month of history for me, so it's very unlikely I'll suddenly realize I want something from a month ago. However, it's completely likely I'll walk into the parking lot one day and find my car scratched, then pull my USB and discover it stopped recording because it's full

I'm sure some people would rather have it not auto-delete, which is why I'd like it to be an option.

And no, I didn't mix up MB and Mb (I'm a hardware engineer No USB 2.0 stick can write 29 MB/s.

 

[moshee]

Are you saying we can now use ext4 instead of fat32 for formatting? That would be great!

Anybody else able to confirm that ext4 is working for them?

I read in a couple of threads on here that ext4 was supported for dashcam since a recent update, so I tried it and it worked. Seems like there's still some issues though.

Mac: divide USB into 2 partitions (for dashcam and music)
USB no longer works for Dahcam

 

[Knightshade]

Speaking for myself, I'd much rather have my Tesla start overwriting old files than stop recording new ones.

Ok, but that kind defeats the point of sentry mode.

As it is now, if I don't notice the tiny icon saying your disk is full, my sentry mode just stops working. 32G is more than a month of history for me, so it's very unlikely I'll suddenly realize I want something from a month ago.

There's folks on here who fill a 32GB key in a single 8 hour shift at work (and have generally moved to larger keys as a result)

So again if it overwrote files without knowing if they're needed they'd potentially lose video they actually need. The car is incapable of knowing which files those are, so it can't overwrite by default or it defeats the basic purpose of the feature.

However, it's completely likely I'll walk into the parking lot one day and find my car scratched, then pull my USB and discover it stopped recording because it's full

I'm sure some people would rather have it not auto-delete, which is why I'd like it to be an option.

And no, I didn't mix up MB and Mb (I'm a hardware engineer No USB 2.0 stick can write 29 MB/s.

Ok, but they should be writing a lot faster than 29 Mb/s

That's only ~3.625 MB/s.

Which is still more than twice as fast as the car needs to write for all 3 cameras, but it's still unusually slow for a 2.0 drive.


Just to cite a fairly random sample of 2.0 drives from 5 different MFGs-


UserBenchmark: Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 64GB

Avg. Sustained Write Speed 6.77MB/s


UserBenchmark: Adata Classic C008 USB 2.0 16GB AC008-16G-RKD

Avg. Sustained Write Speed 8.16MB/s


UserBenchmark: PNY USB 2.0 FD 4GB

Avg. Sustained Write Speed 9.76MB/s

UserBenchmark: UFD 2.0 Silicon-Power64G 64GB

Avg. Sustained Write Speed 6.07MB/s


UserBenchmark: SanDisk Ultra USB 2.0 64GB

Avg. Sustained Write Speed 7.27MB/s



So your original claim of "you can't really get USB 2.0 drives that write much faster than 30 Mb/s anyway" doesn't appear to match most real world data where drives are routinely doing sustained average writes ~2-3 times faster than that.


Bottom line being given the cameras only need to write 1.5MB/s virtually any USB stick will be at least several times faster than needed, and the recent "your stick is too slow" message is a software problem not a hardware one.

 

[mwk888]

Update: I replaced my 256G USB drive with a 32G two days ago, and since then dashcam/sentry have worked flawlessly with the smaller drive. So that confirms Tesla support's advice that the bug occurs with bigger drives.

Nice to have a work-around, but I hope they get big drives working again soon.

What a weird bug though. The two USB drives I'm using have identical performance numbers. It makes me wonder what Tesla did to break it with larger drives. It's not due to having many files on the drive, because I can empty my 256G drive and it will start failing after recording only about 15 minutes of dashcam.

 

[Bzzzzt]

It's been nearly a month now and I still have no solution to the "USB Too Slow...etc." issue. It's amazing how dependent I became when I knew things were being recorded. Now, I'm driving around HOPING nothing happens! crazy.

@javadanno Are you saying your 16GB Lexar USB has, and still does, work fine even after upgrading to 2019.24.4? If so can you send a link over so I can buy one? Thanks!

 

[Jzoo]

After reading a couple other posts I swapped out my 32GB Kingston USB 2.0 that was having the “USB too slow” warning for a PNY 16 GB USB 2.0. Worked fine for the day today and no issues with the videos that I could find. I’ll update if any issues show up. I wonder if it’s a bug that won’t allow the car to write to larger USB drives? The Kingston worked fine before the update. I’m running 2019.28.2 FWIW

OK, so a few days and another update later (2019.28.3.1), and after a day the 16GB stopped working with the "too slow" warning. Arrgh! Now trying a reformat to ext4, we'll see if that works.

 

[mwk888]

OK, so a few days and another update later (2019.28.3.1), and after a day the 16GB stopped working with the "too slow" warning. Arrgh! Now trying a reformat to ext4, we'll see if that works.

I'm still on 2019.24.4; so far my 32G (which has only mid-range performance) still works.

I'm about to park my car at the airport for a couple of days, and I really want Sentry mode to work. So I think I'll defer any system updates until after that!

 

[NickDeRoo]

OK, so a few days and another update later (2019.28.3.1), and after a day the 16GB stopped working with the "too slow" warning. Arrgh! Now trying a reformat to ext4, we'll see if that works.

I experienced the same after the update.

 

[Bzzzzt]

It's been nearly a month now and I still have no solution to the "USB Too Slow...etc." issue. It's amazing how dependent I became when I knew things were being recorded. Now, I'm driving around HOPING nothing happens! crazy.

@javadanno Are you saying your 16GB Lexar USB has, and still does, work fine even after upgrading to 2019.24.4? If so can you send a link over so I can buy one? Thanks!

Actually a week ago I purchased a Lexar JumpDrive S57 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive (Teal): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K1JUWVG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and has been working fine since I purchased it! I actually wasn't expecting it to, but to my surprise it works great. no issues to report.

 

[souperdave816]

I have a 64GB Sandisk Extreme Go USB 3.1 Flash Drive from Amazon (Amazon DCZ800-064G-G46). It's rated at up to 150MB/s. It's very fast. I've been using it January for the dashcam and when sentry mode recording came out for that too. Not one error about the drive being too slow.

But within one day of updating to 24.4 on a Model 3 I started getting the Dashcam too slow message and the dashcam stopped recording. Sentry mode also stopped recording to the flash drive.

I'm convinced it's a bug in the update software. This flash drive should be able to handle anything they want to throw at it for recording.
Now just hoping for a quick next update with a fix.....

Same exact experience for me. I have a 128G Sandisk USB 3.1 and it worked fine until the 24.4 update. I've tried reformatting it to FAT32 again. And after a short while, I get the USB is too slow error. I've submitted a ticket to Tesla asking exactly what they will guarantee to work. No response. Kinda frustrating you buy a $45K car with all these cool cameras, but can't find a way to provide a recording solution? WTF?

 

[mwk888]

Sharing my latest info: I'm now running 2019.28.3.1 and nothing changed. My 32G stick works fine; my 256G stick still does not work, even after trying yet another single partition FAT32 reformatting.

@souperdave816 Yup, this is frustrating.

 

[HarmOtten]

I just updated to 2019.24.4 and noticed that the dash cam was not working. The error message stated that the usb drive was too slow. I have been using the same usb drive for 3 months without any issues. SanDisk Extreme GO USB 3.1, 128gb. Any ideas??

I had the exact same issue.
Tesla adviced me to try a USB-stick max 32MB. I did, and a 16GB stick works, even when the max writing speed of it is lower! But in the users manual they advice to use a stick as big as possible.
Then I contacted SanDisk. They adviced me to test the stick with this tool: CrystalDiskMark
It seems my SanDisk Extreme GO 128GB had a writing speed of only 10MB/s. They offered to replace it for free with a Extreme PRO 128GB.
This new stick has a measured writing speed of about 250MB/s, and it works fine in the Model 3 now.
I think there are a lot of Extreme GO sticks that have the same issue. So better test yours too.

 

[Knightshade]

It seems my SanDisk Extreme GO 128GB had a writing speed of only 10MB/s.

That is about 7 times faster than the car is actually writing to it.

The car only writes 1.5MB/s of data, total, from the cameras.

 

[HarmOtten]

I agree, 10MB/s should be fast enough, but maybe the controller in the stick has also something to do with it.

Furthermore, this is what the Tesla Service Center communicated to me:
"the USB drive must have a minimum sequential write speed of 4MB/s to fully support the Dashcam feature."

 

[Knightshade]

I agree, 10MB/s should be fast enough, but maybe the controller in the stick has also something to do with it.

Furthermore, this is what the Tesla Service Center communicated to me:
"the USB drive must have a minimum sequential write speed of 4MB/s to fully support the Dashcam feature."

Which the 10MB/s key is still 2.5 times faster than.... (and is also 2.5 times faster than the key is actually writing... even once they add the rear-view it'll only be writing at 2MB/s)

Remember, Tesla support was also telling people nothing bigger than 32GB would work for a while (which has never been true- but doubtless somebody in the support center misunderstood the windows formatting thing and just told everyone to repeat that)

Level 1 support folks usually have no idea WTF they're talking about, nor any understanding of why they're even telling you what they're telling you.