Dash Cam Too Slow after update

[davewill]

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.

Yeah, but that's an average throughput. If the drive is malfunctioning that badly, it could easily fail to stream properly even at low speeds.

 

[Knightshade]

Yeah, but that's an average throughput. If the drive is malfunctioning that badly, it could easily fail to stream properly even at low speeds.

Sure- for one given drive maybe the actual drive went bad

But what we've seen here is tons of people whose drives all were working perfectly for months, then ever since a specific SW update they're randomly getting the "too slow" message- even on drives that test as being plenty fast.

So clearly there's a SW issue introduced by Tesla at work.

 

[davewill]

Sure- for one given drive maybe the actual drive went bad

But what we've seen here is tons of people whose drives all were working perfectly for months, then ever since a specific SW update they're randomly getting the "too slow" message- even on drives that test as being plenty fast.

So clearly there's a SW issue introduced by Tesla at work.

But you were replying to a guy with a particular drive that SanDisk replaced because it was defective...and apparently they have had to replace a number of them. It may be that at least some of the people with the error are in the same boat. It's possible that the old software either had better streaming performance despite this bug, or they added a speed check and these bad drives are now failing it.

 

[kwest2]

Tesla Support told me in 24.x they added functionality to the car to better test whether a USB drive is fast enough. Told me I needed 4 MB/s, which is well below the USB 3.0 drive. That said, the drive I have has a lot of Amazon reviews that it's peak capacity is much faster, but that it periodically and unexplicitely drops to basically 0 before resuming a faster speed. I wonder if the Tesla is now doing a more intense test of the drives and it detected this.

I'll try my Samsung Bar Plus 128GB soon. Surely that wouldn't have this issue.

 

[dantuvayu]

SOLUTION: I spoke with Tesla support and had a service appointment for this issue (overkill I know, but curious to see what they said). The Tesla rep reported that they had some information to suggest that the issue occurs with USB drives LARGER than 32GB. Seemed hard to believe that this was the issue, as I was using a very high write speed USB 3.1 solution previously. However, I bought the $9 Samsung MUF-32AB/AM FIT Plus 32GB drive on Amazon and is is working perfectly several days in (whereas I always got the alert within an hour previously). I'm holding on to my 128 GB USB drive in hopes that the next update solves the problem, but for $9 this was a good work around. Only problem is that the drive obviously fills up very quickly if using Sentry Mode. Hope this is helpful.

Hi,
I have the same issue with the same Samsung USB drive except that its a 256GB (formatted into two 128GB partitions). It worked flawlessly for 8 months until this V10 upgrade came by. Tesla support suggested on 09/24 that a mobile unit will take a look into it and if required, for free of cost, will replace the USB hub (internal behind the USB ports) if the issue leads to it being incompatible with USB drives. I still don't believe what I heard but I am trying other options such as using this drive in the other USB Port and using a USB to SDD drive adapter as well.
Thanks,
Dantu, NJ.

 

[kwest2]

Tesla Support told me in 24.x they added functionality to the car to better test whether a USB drive is fast enough. Told me I needed 4 MB/s, which is well below the USB 3.0 drive. That said, the drive I have has a lot of Amazon reviews that it's peak capacity is much faster, but that it periodically and unexplicitely drops to basically 0 before resuming a faster speed. I wonder if the Tesla is now doing a more intense test of the drives and it detected this.

I'll try my Samsung Bar Plus 128GB soon. Surely that wouldn't have this issue.

Just confirming the Samsung Bar Plus 128GB has been working flawlessly.

 

[cknolla]

Just confirming the Samsung Bar Plus 128GB has been working flawlessly.

For some counter-evidence, I have this exact drive as well, and this issue is happening regularly after getting V10. Worked fine before.

 

[Warbird]

Its not the drive speed, nor the size. Any drive in the last decade is faster than the required 4mb/s minimum. I had the slow drive message on all sticks that previously worked fine when 2019.32.11.1 got installed. 2019.32.12.1 was installed a few days ago and all sticks work fine now. The issue was the MCU was incorrectly flagging most drives as too slow. FYI: They just pushed 2019.32.12.2 to me. I have a 2017 S75 MCU1/AP2.5.

 

[tvad]

I had been receiving the "too slow" warning for a week or so, and had bad video files beginning on 10/5.

Today, I erased and re-formatted the Samsung 128gb USB drive. Plugged it into the Model 3, and no longer received the "too slow" warning. Ejected the drive and plugged it into my MacBook Pro. Video files played correctly.

The Model 3 has software version 2019.32.12.2

 

[KingBozo]

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??

Hey I'm with you, I've collect a plethora of thumb drives and now I'm using a 250G ssd and I still get corrupt files and yes I always disconnect the camera before removing. What I don't understand is if the camera rewrites every hour, why is there a need for bigger drives?

 

[AltLogic]

I received the too slow message for the first time ever. I’ve been on 32.11.1 for a few days without a problem. I keep two spare drives that are identical to the one that was in use in the console. I swapped in a spare 32GB usb drive and all is well. I’ve had problems before when TeslaCam first released but I realized something was wrong either by noticing a gray dot on the camera icon or being unable to retrieve a file due to a corrupt drive.

 

[Knightshade]

Hey I'm with you, I've collect a plethora of thumb drives and now I'm using a 250G ssd and I still get corrupt files and yes I always disconnect the camera before removing. What I don't understand is if the camera rewrites every hour, why is there a need for bigger drives?

flash memory (all flash memory, USB stick, SDcard, SSD, all of it) has a limited number of write cycles.

The larger the drive the longer it takes to use them up.

I've posted the math a number of times before, but rough ballpark based on 1000 cycles (the rating on "cheap" flash memory) you'd get something like 5-10 years on a 128GB storage device, double that on 256... but likewise half that on a 64, and 1/4 that on a 32.

With a 4th camera added all those estimates of time drop by roughly 25% so a 128GB is likely still good enough for as long as folks typically own a car, and a 256 certainly should be- but you might burn through a 32 in under a year on the low end.


This is also why spending more on "endurance" isn't really needed... the Tesla cams write a LOT less data than the high end 4k dashcams do- so even the cheap memory in large size is good for years and years... sure an endurance 256 SDcard will be rated for 3-5 times more writes than a cheap one, but is there really much difference between your dashcam memory card lasting 15 years or lasting 45 years? Both are longer than should matter to 99% of folks.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I keep two spare drives that are identical to the one that was in use in the console. I swapped in a spare 32GB usb drive and all is well. I’ve had problems before when TeslaCam first released but I realized something was wrong either by noticing a gray dot on the camera icon or being unable to retrieve a file due to a corrupt drive.

I have a 128GB USB 3.1 and a 32GB USB 3.0. After the software update, after some significant delay of a few days, it started complaining about the 128GB USB 3.1 drive being too slow (slower than 4MB/s). Swapped to the 32GB USB 3.0 and it was fine.

Tried a few things (emptying drive, etc), but could not get it to work. Finally repartitioned from scratch, and it now seems to be working (we'll see if it lasts).

Transferred a bunch of music to one of the partitions after redoing it, and it looked like the average write speed with this bunch of relatively smaller files & folders was about 8-10MB/s. (It does seem to be difficult to find this information on the web pages that sell these devices...as it is not their strong point...but seems plenty fast for this application so far.)


The two drives I have are:

Samsung 32GB USB 3.0 (MUF-32BB/AM)

Samsung 128GB USB 3.1 (MUF-128AB/AM)

 

[RC2785]

I decided to run a little test on my flash drive to see it's write speed, I was using a Cheap Sandisk Flash drive I got at Walmart, apparently during the test the write speed would be around 3.5 mb/s (sometimes going above 4), which is below the 4 mb/s Tesla requires. I guess my flash drive was actually too slow. Ordered a micro SD card from Amazon than has a write speed of 30 mb/s, and a USB adapter. Hopefully this fixes the problem. Also keep in mind that the write speed on a flash drive slows down as it gets more full. I believe in V10 Tesla changed the dash cam so that it would automatically delete old footage if the flash drive gets full, so at this point your flash drives write speed is going to drop. I guess you could try emptying out the drive more frequently.

 

[irev210]

So this is odd and complex problem just generally speaking.

• Performance changes depending on how much of the drive is full
• Performance changes as your drive ages (flash drives generally have very limited write capability)
• Performance changes depending on block size
• Performance changes depending on temp
• Tons of other variables (how drive handles writes coming in from multiple streams)

Here is a combo that works well for me:

MicroSD Reader
+
Samsung Pro Endurance
OR
SanDisk High Endurance

All in price of $30 or less.

I recommend formatting the 64GB card to 32GB so you leave plenty of space for wear leveling. Since the latest update just loops, you don't need to worry about running out of space.