Directions for creating a USB drive

[ngogas]

There are front USB ports besides the two for the phones?

 

[SMAlset]

There are front USB ports besides the two for the phones?

No those are the two.

 

[Drewsky84]

No those are the two.

follow

 

[SMAlset]

Does the thumb drive goes into one of the phone charging ports under the middle console? Haven’t used the cam yet and getting my thumb drive this week.

Like this although I’m using a microSD card reader and microSD card instead of a USB stick.

 

[bruce3]

Something maybe worth mentioning is that flash memory can be a bit of a problem when used for loop recording of video where lots of small files are written then over-written and/or deleted by the device.

Flash has a limited number of read/write cycles and deleting or erasing the files either by the recording device or by you trying to free up space or deleting old recordings can cause the USB drive to become corrupt or fail completely. I think a lot of people think that memory chips are completely reliable and can handle unlimited reads/writes, but it's just not true.

So, it is much better to clear a USB card by formatting it and it needs to be a full format not a quick format.
If you want to use a USB drive for recording your Model 3 cameras and you've used that drive before, make sure you do a full format of it first.
I would also recommend using the quality brands and not some cheap giveaway memory stick you got in a goody bag somewhere. There's a lot of really bad quality memory out there which turns up as either fake brand names or in cheap promotional merch. It's often several generations out of date and is slow and/or will look like it has more space available then it actually has.

Probably worth re-formatting your drive every month or so to clear it out completely and get all the space back, especially if you're regularly deleting files on it yourself.

Hope that helps.

You are certainly correct about Flash storage technology having a limited number of *write* cycles. While re-formatting can correct corruption, it actually exacerbates that issue as it *writes* to the drive as part of the formatting. Full format does extra verification that every bit on the drive can be read (and is considered irrelevant for flash storage) but is no less (and maybe more as it may do some extra write/read cycles to verify things) a contributor to overall write cycles and earlier failure of the device. But if it makes you feel better, it is doing some extra checking and is probably not significantly more harmful so have at it...

As another stated, purchasing the fastest flash storage (high end microSD cards seem to have more consistently marked specifications than USB sticks as they are often used in video cameras while USB sticks are not but as someone else pointed out the core technology in USB and microSD is usually the same) will likely yield longer life.

Tesla clearly has bugs (and design limitations) in the first few versions of it's dash cam recording software that seem to be the cause of most of these issues, and reformatting seems to temporarily get people past those. It would be great if we could correlate corruption issues with speed/size/brand of flash storage, better yet if Tesla improved their software to warn if media wasn't performing up to par.

For now I am using a separate Ultra high speed 64GB USB drive (FAT32) for TeslaCam than for my mp3s. I suspect I will bump into problems, as Tesla's ability to see files on my mp3 USB drive is also far from consistent (at least it doesn't corrupt it; it just sometimes doesn't see any music there).

 

[Knightshade]

As another stated, purchasing the fastest flash storage (high end microSD cards seem to have more consistently marked specifications than USB sticks as they are often used in video cameras while USB sticks are not but as someone else pointed out the core technology in USB and microSD is usually the same) will likely yield longer life.

No, it really won't.

The USB ports in the car are 2.0. The cameras are writing at a whole 1.5 MB/sec.

Literally ANY USB storage you can buy new today is massively faster than needed for this application, and speed has no relation to endurance here anyway.

It would be great if we could correlate corruption issues with speed/size/brand of flash storage, better yet if Tesla improved their software to warn if media wasn't performing up to par.

Except the media has nothing to do with any of the problems.

Even folks running super high end cards or SSDs have the same types of issues.

Because again literally ANY flash storage is tons faster than needed for this use.

The problems are software issues, not hardware issues.

For now I am using a separate Ultra high speed 64GB USB drive (FAT32) for TeslaCam than for my mp3s. I suspect I will bump into problems, as Tesla's ability to see files on my mp3 USB drive is also far from consistent (at least it doesn't corrupt it; it just sometimes doesn't see any music there).

Well, again, the speed makes 0 difference for the camera stuff. You'd be better off with a slower, larger, drive if concerned about life of the device.

A 128GB USB key will take twice as long to go through its # of rated write cycles than a 64GB one... at the amounts of data the tesla stuff writes you'd need probably 5-10 years to use up the # of rated writes on even a cheap 128GB drive in typical usage. (I've run the exact math in previous posts if you care to look for it)

 

[bruce3]

No, it really won't.

The USB ports in the car are 2.0. The cameras are writing at a whole 1.5 MB/sec.

Literally ANY USB storage you can buy new today is massively faster than needed for this application, and speed has no relation to endurance here anyway.




Except the media has nothing to do with any of the problems.

Even folks running super high end cards or SSDs have the same types of issues.

Because again literally ANY flash storage is tons faster than needed for this use.

The problems are software issues, not hardware issues.





Well, again, the speed makes 0 difference for the camera stuff. You'd be better off with a slower, larger, drive if concerned about life of the device.

A 128GB USB key will take twice as long to go through its # of rated write cycles than a 64GB one... at the amounts of data the tesla stuff writes you'd need probably 5-10 years to use up the # of rated writes on even a cheap 128GB drive in typical usage. (I've run the exact math in previous posts if you care to look for it)

I did not know that Tesla camera streams were that low quality and the ports USB 2.0... Given that, though the fundamental premise that flash technology has limited write cycles is again confirmed (and I presume you'd agree with my premise that full format would do no more than quick format to stabilize a flash device), it does seem speed of devices is probably irrelevant. Why, oh, why, couldn't Tesla have just provided us a microSD card slot and do their own formatting to massively reduce the variables we are all dealing with here.

I certainly agree with you most if not all of these problems seem to be software issues, and I agree with your larger device => longer life premise due to flash write cycle limitation, though as you've said all this is most likely orders of magnitudes out of scope for the problems people are having with their Tesla.

All that said, I am happier I spent $8 on a 64GB SanDisk Ultra High Speed USB 3.0 capable thumbdrive (Prime Day) rather than spending $5 on a 16GB generic device that might cause additional problems itself. Hopefully current or near-future updates get us all to better stability here!

 

[bruce3]

Just another question from a newbie on TeslaCam fascinated by the myriad stories of failure and remediation here ....

Has anyone experienced TeslaCam state changing from working to not working *without* having ever removed the USB flash device from their car?

If Tesla enables the write cache to improve performance, then removal of the device without flushing the cache could certainly cause corruption. I would hope Tesla disables the write cache hence allows for "quick removal" as windows defaults to but lots of things TSLA are not exactly exquisitely documented...

 

[Knightshade]

Just another question from a newbie on TeslaCam fascinated by the myriad stories of failure and remediation here ....

Has anyone experienced TeslaCam state changing from working to not working *without* having ever removed the USB flash device from their car?

Tons of folks have- most commonly when the drive fills up.

This happens a lot more on smaller drives obviously- especially since Sentry recordings are never overwritten. Some folks with 16 or 32GB drives have found their drive full after a single day parked in a busy lot for example, which is why since Tesla moved to recording 3 cameras and including Sentry mode most suggest a minimum of 64GB, with 128 or 256 being better unless you either don't use sentry much or plan to clean out the drive often.

 

[Razorback]

I didn't notice anyone mention this before, but I was struggling to get my model 3 to recognize my FAT32 formatted USB. It kept complaining about the TeslaCam folder. Sometimes it worked very briefly then said it couldn't read the directory. I read through the manual and noticed it said ext4 was a supported format. Re-partitioned to ext4 with my linux box and it's been working perfectly for a week now with the same USB. For my windows machine I downloaded DiskInternals Linux Reader and that's able to pull the files off back to my machine. A Ubuntu virtual machine could probably do the same. Hopefully this helps someone stuck with their USB not working.

 

[Fresnel]

No, it really won't.

The USB ports in the car are 2.0. The cameras are writing at a whole 1.5 MB/sec.

Literally ANY USB storage you can buy new today is massively faster than needed for this application, and speed has no relation to endurance here anyway.

For saving the files sure.. but when viewing them back if you're reading them from the drive you want a fast read speed and for that the faster the better so there isn't much lag.

 

[Knightshade]

For saving the files sure.. but when viewing them back if you're reading them from the drive you want a fast read speed and for that the faster the better so there isn't much lag.

What lag?

The file itself is made up of video that uses 0.5MB of data for each second of video. So 2 MB/sec if you're using a program that reads all 4 videos at once.

The crappiest USB keys can read several times faster than that....so unless you're watching at 10x speed there won't be any lag when viewing even on slow keys.

So for viewing a "faster" drive gets you nothing at all.


The only time it'd matter is if you had a large amount of videos you want to copy from the key to a PC for archive purposes.

Even then you're usually talking about a few minutes total difference for anything but massive amounts of data

 

[Fresnel]

What lag?

The file itself is made up of video that uses 0.5MB of data for each second of video. So 2 MB/sec if you're using a program that reads all 4 videos at once.

The crappiest USB keys can read several times faster than that....so unless you're watching at 10x speed there won't be any lag when viewing even on slow keys.

So for viewing a "faster" drive gets you nothing at all.


The only time it'd matter is if you had a large amount of videos you want to copy from the key to a PC for archive purposes.

Even then you're usually talking about a few minutes total difference for anything but massive amounts of data

That's interesting. I have a pretty fast ssd and sometimes when I move the playhead later in the video in the ios app that I use to view them. It takes a few seconds to refresh the frame. I assumed that was a lag caused by reading from the ssd but I suppose it could be other things.

 

[MinchDOG]

I've tried formatting 2 different 256G USB jump drives to FAT32 and adding the "TeslaCam" folder. No luck. I get an error message after inserting saying, "USB drive is not accessible by Dashcam. Reformat the drive to a supported format". 2020 Model 3 Performance. Anyone having/had this issue?

 

[Knightshade]

I've tried formatting 2 different 256G USB jump drives to FAT32 and adding the "TeslaCam" folder. No luck. I get an error message after inserting saying, "USB drive is not accessible by Dashcam. Reformat the drive to a supported format". 2020 Model 3 Performance. Anyone having/had this issue?

Have you confirmed they're actually formatted FAT32? Windows, for example, can't actually do that on a 256GB drive without 3rd party software.

 

[linux-works]

That's interesting. I have a pretty fast ssd and sometimes when I move the playhead later in the video in the ios app that I use to view them. It takes a few seconds to refresh the frame. I assumed that was a lag caused by reading from the ssd but I suppose it could be other things.

if you are playing a compressed file (mpeg, mp4, etc) then it has to find the nearest 'full frame' and then add the deltas to that. the old formats like .wav and .avi (so to speak) were less compressed (or non compressed) and so random access needed much less 'rebuild' to get a frame computed.

it will be related to buffering in the drive and in your host, as well as the app. lots of places for latency. but the I-frame stuff could be the biggest part of it.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-“I-frame”-in-MPEG-and-how-is-it-used

 

[MinchDOG]

Have you confirmed they're actually formatted FAT32? Windows, for example, can't actually do that on a 256GB drive without 3rd party software.

I used a 3rd party (Can't remember the name) and properties confirmed. I used a 1G I had and it worked for a half day.

 

[jrweiss98020]

If you did a "Quick Format" from EXFAT to FAT32, you might try a full format. I would even go so far as to delete the partition and recreate it. It may take a half hour, but might fix the problem.

 

[someToast]

1. Google "FAT32 formatter" for the OS you are using. Download and install it.
2. Format the flash drive as FAT32.
3. Create a folder called "TelsaCam" on the drive.

I replaced my year-old micro SD card with an SSD and came back to this thread to make sure I was formatting everything correctly.

I copy/pasted the directory name because I'm lazy and it wasn't until the drive failed to be recognized in the car and I mounted it on a computer that I saw the "TelsaCam" typo.