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Dashcam Unavailable Check USB

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flstcgranucci

flstcgranucci

Member
Dec 7, 2021
254
217
San Clemente, CA
#1
Just wondering if anyone else is having issues with a message being thrown stating that the Dashcam Is unavailable, check USB.
This just started happening. So I formatted the USB drive and enabled/disabled the Dashcam and the red X disappeared but came back again with the same message. Pulled the drive and viewed it on my pc and recent files have been written to it.
Anyone?
 
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#221
Bikeman said:
^ The sentry issue is only FSD Beta connected? Really? Have all those that have had/have non-working or hardly-working sentry recording issues been FSD's or is the issue across all users?
Click to expand...
AFAIK it was fixed in 2022.16.x for most people except those with FSD beta. Before it was fixed, almost everyone had the problem. Now it's mostly just the FSD beta folks. Sandman1330 posted above that they still have/had the issue in an 2018 Model S even though they aren't in the beta program.

I have not had a single usb issue since I got 2022.16.2 back in May 2022. BTW: a large 65 GiB collection also worked fine although the crappy UI is not ideal for such a large collection.
 
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#222
BitJam said:
AFAIK it was fixed in 2022.16.x for most people except those with FSD beta. Before it was fixed, almost everyone had the problem. Now it's mostly just the FSD beta folks. Sandman1330 posted above that they still have/had the issue in an 2018 Model S even though they aren't in the beta program.

I have not had a single usb issue since I got 2022.16.2 back in May 2022. BTW: a large 65 GiB collection also worked fine although the crappy UI is not ideal for such a large collection.
Click to expand...
I think I had an issue with the formatting of my stick as well. Since I reformatted my stick, it's been much much more reliable.

I did have this issue come up again yesterday, but I swapped in the stock Tesla one then went back to my usual SD card and it worked again.

I suspect there's some incompatibility issues with my USB SD adapter.
 
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#223
sandman1330 said:
I did have this issue come up again yesterday, but I swapped in the stock Tesla one then went back to my usual SD card and it worked again.
Click to expand...
Thank you for letting us know!

I have a lot of experience with usb flash drives. I spent 10 years developing a system for fast booting Linux (an operating system) from usb. I recommend using gpt (instead of msdos) partitioning. Gpt is much more robust. I also recommend using an exfat file system instead of fat for the same reason.

TL;DR: Samsung good, Sandisk and sdcards bad.

I don't think using sdcard adapters is a good idea. The most common failure point in electronics is connections. Adding more connections will not increase reliability. When I worked in a physics lab many years ago we would routinely clean connections with a red pencil eraser. But you have to be diligent about cleaning up (blowing away) all the bits of eraser that come off or you will cause more problems than you solve.

I do not recommend Sandisk flash drives, especially their UltraFit USB 3.1 drive. It runs very hot. They have reliability issues working with Linux (which is what runs on a Tesla). The system can sometimes not see them when it boots up. The motherboard on a $2K laptop melted near the usb connector while one of these was plugged in. For many years when a user reported strange problems with their "live-usb" I would ask if they were using one of these devices. More often than not the answer was "yes". One of the few times I've had a usb flash drive die was when I tried to fill a Sandisk Fit (or Ultrafit?) with zeros. Maybe all of the issues have been fixed in their more recent devices but I steer clear.

Even though I am currently getting totally screwed over by their customer service department I recommend using Samsung usb flash drives. I have a dozen of them. I've been using them for years, writing thousands of Gigabytes to them (in total) and have not had a single failure or issue. I use a 500 GB Samsung T5 in my glovebox for Dashcam and Sentry Mode using gpt and exfat. I have not had any issues with it even when the bug this thread is about was wreaking havoc with music usbs plugged into my central console (via a hub). It's possible there were issues but I didn't know about them because Dashcam and Sentry mode events are very rare for me.

BTW: I live in the desert with my car parked outside. The temperature in the cabin can routinely reach 140F and above.
 
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#224
I have the FSD beta and am still having the Dashcam Unavailable issue. Normally unplugging my Jeda HUB with the Jeda SSD fixes the problem but today it didn't and I unplugged it 5 times and then gave up because I had errands to do. Afterwards my car showed I had one Sentry alert but of course I couldn't view it, so when I got home I tried unplugging the drive again a few more times and it still didn't work. It's ridiculous that Tesla isn't giving FSD beta users a fix for this yet! Not even sure if the new beta update, that only few cars got, fixes it and it will be weeks before more of us get the update. You'd think a fix would have been pushed very quickly, for everyone. Guess they are too busy adding more games to our cars.
 
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#229
Bikeman said:
Sorry to hear that, and unfortunate. Hope you came out of the accident unhurt. Does your car have FSD?
Click to expand...
Thanks. I'm ok but wife had worse whiplash and had to go to the hospital day later for neck pain. Now the father of the teenager who rear ended us is getting a lawyer... Yes, I have FSD. Today I received a new Samsung T7 1 TB drive. I had it formatted with a PC as exFAT and I inserted in Y and reformatted. It failed first time but when I tried again, it was successful. However, the X on the dashcam icon still remained. I brought the SSD back in the house and saw the drive was renamed as TESLADRIVE but had not created subdirectories. it used to format USB flash drive and create its subdirectories on its own but it's not working. I created the directories manually and tried it in the Y. Now, it works with no X on the dashcam icon. I even honk the horn and drove around the block. It saved the dashcam video and I was able to see it. Now the hard test of letting the Y go to sleep and see if it will still work in the morning.
 
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#231
Kichoi said:
Thanks. I'm ok but wife had worse whiplash and had to go to the hospital day later for neck pain. Now the father of the teenager who rear ended us is getting a lawyer... Yes, I have FSD. Today I received a new Samsung T7 1 TB drive. I had it formatted with a PC as exFAT and I inserted in Y and reformatted. It failed first time but when I tried again, it was successful. However, the X on the dashcam icon still remained. I brought the SSD back in the house and saw the drive was renamed as TESLADRIVE but had not created subdirectories. it used to format USB flash drive and create its subdirectories on its own but it's not working. I created the directories manually and tried it in the Y. Now, it works with no X on the dashcam icon. I even honk the horn and drove around the block. It saved the dashcam video and I was able to see it. Now the hard test of letting the Y go to sleep and see if it will still work in the morning.
Click to expand...
What manual directories did you install? I have the red x on dash am and yet the drive shows up as USB with 0 files on it for media play.

I’m stumped.
 
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#233
Brayden.Wall said:
Same issue for me after hard reset, soft reset, and multiple software updates. Doesn’t seem to matter how many times I re format the drive. Even using a really nice SSD. Might have to make a service appointment.
Click to expand...
In case anyone else is dealing with the dreaded red x on your Dashcam, I think I solved the hard drive unavailable with Sentry Mode (I have a Mac and 2018 MX 100D).

  • Format Drive on Mac as MS-DOS (FAT)
  • Plug drive into Tesla, TURN ON SENTRY MODE and
  • Format from there again. (It will likely still show the red
  • X).
  • Plug drive back into Mac, open it and add a directory/ folder call "TESLACAM."
  • Plug back into Tesla and that did the trick.
Hope that helps someone else that's been pulling out their hair like me :)
 
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#234
jackrabbitpun said:
In case anyone else is dealing with the dreaded red x on your Dashcam, I think I solved the hard drive unavailable with Sentry Mode (I have a Mac and 2018 MX 100D).

  • Format Drive on Mac as MS-DOS (FAT)
  • Plug drive into Tesla, TURN ON SENTRY MODE and
  • Format from there again. (It will likely still show the red
  • X).
  • Plug drive back into Mac, open it and add a directory/ folder call "TESLACAM."
  • Plug back into Tesla and that did the trick.
Hope that helps someone else that's been pulling out their hair like me :)
Click to expand...
Surprisingly that technique worked. I tried everything else to no avail, until I went through this circuitous route with my Mac. Thanks @jackrabbitpun!
 
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#235
jackrabbitpun said:
In case anyone else is dealing with the dreaded red x on your Dashcam, I think I solved the hard drive unavailable with Sentry Mode (I have a Mac and 2018 MX 100D).

  • Format Drive on Mac as MS-DOS (FAT)
  • Plug drive into Tesla, TURN ON SENTRY MODE and
  • Format from there again. (It will likely still show the red
  • X).
  • Plug drive back into Mac, open it and add a directory/ folder call "TESLACAM."
  • Plug back into Tesla and that did the trick.
Hope that helps someone else that's been pulling out their hair like me :)
Click to expand...
Look at you. Saving the day with one usb at a time eh?

High five lol
 
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#236
jackrabbitpun said:
In case anyone else is dealing with the dreaded red x on your Dashcam, I think I solved the hard drive unavailable with Sentry Mode (I have a Mac and 2018 MX 100D).

  • Format Drive on Mac as MS-DOS (FAT)
  • Plug drive into Tesla, TURN ON SENTRY MODE and
  • Format from there again. (It will likely still show the red
  • X).
  • Plug drive back into Mac, open it and add a directory/ folder call "TESLACAM."
  • Plug back into Tesla and that did the trick.
Hope that helps someone else that's been pulling out their hair like me :)
Click to expand...
I’m experiencing the dreaded red x, has the above solution stood the test of time?
 
Upvote 0
#239
jackrabbitpun said:
In case anyone else is dealing with the dreaded red x on your Dashcam, I think I solved the hard drive unavailable with Sentry Mode (I have a Mac and 2018 MX 100D).

  • Format Drive on Mac as MS-DOS (FAT)
  • Plug drive into Tesla, TURN ON SENTRY MODE and
  • Format from there again. (It will likely still show the red
  • X).
  • Plug drive back into Mac, open it and add a directory/ folder call "TESLACAM."
  • Plug back into Tesla and that did the trick.
Hope that helps someone else that's been pulling out their hair like me :)
Click to expand...
Annoyingly this doesn't work for me. No matter what I do, I cannot get the car to offer up the ability to format the USB drive. I have opened a Service Request with Tesla at this point.

Thanks for the steps though!
 
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#240
jsargevt said:
Annoyingly this doesn't work for me. No matter what I do, I cannot get the car to offer up the ability to format the USB drive. I have opened a Service Request with Tesla at this point.

Thanks for the steps though!
Click to expand...
Sadly this hasn’t worked for me either, I’ve tried other solutions that haven’t worked for me & tried different USB flash drives, seems little point in having nine cameras and no way to record footage.
Please post the outcome of your service appointment.
 
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