MASTER THREAD: USB drives that work with Sentry and TeslaCam

[sduck]

That's cool that mouser even has 128 gb industrial cards - SDSDQAF3-128G-XI SanDisk | Mouser - but at 136$ you have to REALLY want it. I buy stuff from them all the time, didn't know they had these.
FWIW I'm still running the sandisk extreme 250 gb ssd I bought a year ago - it's worked through a winter and a hot southern summer without any problems.

 

[linux-works]

CSB: I was an early mp3 adopter and I remember the neo25 and neo35 (car player) that used 40 pin IDE 3.5" drives in the car. there were no mainstream ssd's; even sata was not around, yet. I think it was 2001 or so. anyway, I had a notebook drive in my car, 80gb IDE. spinning rust drive, in the rear corner of my VW passat. for 16 years, the life of the car (as long as I owned it), I had one drive in the back and that was my music drive. I never had any disk errors that I'm aware of and the drive certainly never crashed. when I sold the car, I removed the drive. I might bronze it it was just incredible reliable for all those years, and even in an automotive harsh environment. /csb

parts quality has gone down hill quite a lot over just those years. I don't think I could take a spinning rust drive in the car for that many years again. you wont even get 2 years from most modern usb thumbdrives, babied and kept indoors all the time.

for the teslacam stuff, I consider that important. its an 'original recording' just as a studio recording would be with top end musicians. you can't capture that moment again.

constrast that to music that I already have at home on my NAS, and the usb stick in the car that has my music is just one of many copies of that non-original recording. if I lost the playback music thumbdrive, no big deal. I'll plug in another, the next day, after I recopy the music to it.

the teslacam stuff is not like that, so it gets better treatment. its own drive (slot) and it will get that higher priced industrial stuff.

its great that we have 2 usb slots. I'll use one for the cam drive and one for my usb music. the usb music will be an ssd, likely, just so I can keep all my music in the car and stuffed away in the dash via a usb extender cable. the teslacam 'drive' will be the one stuck in the center front console. the music ssd won't be 'car temperature range rated' but I'm just not as concerned with that drive always working. it likely will always work, but I'm not going to throw excess money at non-critical playback-only type drives.

tl;dr: music is QM and teslacam is ASIL-D (lol)

 

[CertLive]

Not to mention, the USB ports in the Model 3 are USB 2.0. So any speed of NVMe is totally wasted.

True I didn't add an nvme to max out its write speed I added it because of its extreme low power requirements, write buffer architecture and the fact it will not lose its format due to a car update or some unexpected dismount like microsd is very prone to no matter how endurance rated. Its just way more efficient and even more so because you are not driving it near its max. So temperature is not an issue, it never gets hot. Superior than any other current solution IMO.

Added bonus when you go to copy the files to the PC it is ultra fast, in fact why copy just play it right off the drive.

 

[linux-works]

again, please explain this business about 'not losing its format'.

I have no idea what you are going on, about.

please elaborate. where have you heard this? reference??

 

[CertLive]

again, please explain this business about 'not losing its format'.

I have no idea what you are going on, about.

please elaborate. where have you heard this? reference??

A very rudimentary term for partition table corruption, an over simplification. As the vibrations transmitted to an nvme mounted in a usb connected enclosure in a tesla are an over complication as well as underutilisation on its thermal dynamic profile.

 

[linux-works]

"vibrations?"

I think you've been smoking the bob marley, my friend.

 

[CertLive]

100% disagree.

why?

I tried a usb/nvme adapter a few months ago (not for car, but for home. btw, those adapters are the farthest thing from automotive temperature and vibration rated). even for data center or home use, they are not ready for prime time, as they say. errors happen, HUGE amount of heat is wasted by the chipset and nvme buys you nothing for usb video i/o. not when you go thru a low speed usb interface.

sorry, but this is a very bad idea. the chipset is just not reliable (yet) and the heat - wow - such a battery drain.

now, direct nvme on a true pci bus -that rocks! I have only nvme systems at work and home for my build servers. they are typically at 3000MB/sec speed where normal ssd in sata is closer to 500MB/sec. internally, its not even close.

but for our car, its a total 100% waste and actually less reliable (due to the crappy usb/nvme bridge chips).

Might want to check what you type then.

 

[linux-works]

nvme is more fragile than any other storage media (in a car environment) simply due to the pci-e connector NOT being anything close to automotive rated.

I don't understand why you believe that nvme devices in cars are more reliable. I've asked for citations many times from you and have gotton nothing.

as for the partition table being fragile, its no more fragile than any other disk block on the system.

nvme uses partition tables just the same, no better and no worse.

you use the same command to create partitions (fdisk or parted) and use the same commands to make a filesystem (mkfs). you can corrupt the partition table just the same with nvme as with any other storage media. the partition table has no special protections with nvme; I'm not sure where you heard that. a random incorrect/mistaken write could do damage to nvme just as with any other media.

what you MAY be thinking of, is enterprise grade ssd that has enough electrical storage (supercaps, usually) so that when a loss of power happens (brownout) the drive will 'sync' whatever is in ITS ram to ITS nvram (flash). it has a short window to do that and enterprise ssd's (not usually sata but sas) will be able to do that (based on model and vendor).

nvme has no such built-in ability. you can ADD that, as a layer, but nvme by itself is no more or less reliable than any other flash based ssd, in terms of 'protecting' crititcal data structures.

in short, nvme really just skips the sata instruction set and uses a 'thinner' instruction set that maps directly to the pci-e bus. its faster because the command have less overhead and less i/o is needed to get the same work done.

but its NOT any more protected, by virtual of being nvme.


I'd really like to know who told you such things.

 

[jordanair45]

So after many failed attempts I went the SD card route and so far so good. Below is what my setup is.

We have concluded in this thread, imo, that a high performance SD/Micro SD is the way to go with DashCam/Sentry.

 

[sduck]

We have concluded in this thread, imo, that a high performance SD/Micro SD is the way to go with DashCam/Sentry.

Well, not exactly. People have been reporting what works for them mostly. SSDs are considered to be a better choice for reliability by many.

 

[Fresnel]

We have concluded in this thread, imo, that a high performance SD/Micro SD is the way to go with DashCam/Sentry.

There's little reason you should need a high performance one. Unless you like copying videos to your desktop faster. If anything you would want an "endurance micro sd" so it can do more writes to the drive before failing. I personally like higher capacity SSDs.

 

[XLR82XS]

After consistent issues with 2 flash drives I ordered the PureTesla SD package.

 

[whocares037]

Can anyone tell if this SSD would be comaptible with Tesla ?

https://www.amazon.com/Transcend-512GB-560MB-System-Software/dp/B007ILF1LM

Is a 512 GB SSD, SATA that I saved it from an old server. It needs an SATA to USB adapter that I found also on amazon:

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B011M8YACM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?smid=A3OPWMF9XBYSSI&psc=1

 

[sduck]

Sure, it will most likely work, but as long as you're not buying a new one - that price is ridiculous. But recycling a ssd that's been beat up in a server probably isn't the greatest idea for longevity, but if it's free, might as well try it. I'm not sure what the power draw is on those larger drives - probably not much more than is available, but that might also be a factor. FWIW I run 2 ssd's and a nomad wireless charger with no problems from the front usb ports.

 

[whocares037]

Sduck, do you get any alarm on the screen if the SSD fails ?
Can you use a USB splitter on the 2 front USB ports so you can run 2 x wireless chargers in the same time with SSD ?

 

[sduck]

Sduck, do you get any alarm on the screen if the SSD fails ?
Can you use a USB splitter on the 2 front USB ports so you can run 2 x wireless chargers in the same time with SSD ?

Question #1 - No. Yes. Maybe, sometimes. Some people have reported getting a warning pop up, and some people haven't gotten anything and it just stopped working. I don't really know, my ssd's have always worked.
Question #2 - Depends on your charger. I have several here. If I plug my taptes into 2 (or even just1) of the plugs of a hub, it draws too much power and the ssd that's plugged into the hub stops working. But, I actually use an old Nomad charger, which has a built in battery, so the usb ports are only trickle charging, so everything works and I can plug in one of the ssds.

 

[whocares037]

That is a great idea, interfacing a power bank between Tesla's USB port and USB splitter.

 

[Kevy Baby]

That is a great idea, interfacing a power bank between Tesla's USB port and USB splitter.

It has been discussed earlier in this thread. Go back and read all previous 636 posts to find it.



Seriously though, I'm not even sure it was in this thread, but from what I recall, you have to get the right power bank with certain pass-through capabilities and a couple of other limitations.

 

[FastGTR]

Having worked 12 years for a storage vendor. I feel that based on the plummeting cost of storage devices these days most manufacturers are going to make warranty claims difficult, it costs them too much.
I can tell you that Transcend sucks, but I have had good luck with SanDisk warranty. Most of my cards have been for computer or camera use and warranty has been honored. Those cards had videos on them too along with pictures. When SD cards die they either go into Read-only mode to lets you get data off (no write, no delete, no format) or are completely unreadable (but the manufacturers can still read data off a dead card if they want). Professional photographers that run through cards like toilet paper don't even care about the warranty, basically cost of doing business. That is why I took the approach of a $20 card which I will return if it breaks in 90 days or throw away if/when it breaks. Think of it as a cost of Sentry Mode

 

[whocares037]

Having worked 12 years for a storage vendor. I feel that based on the plummeting cost of storage devices these days most manufacturers are going to make warranty claims difficult, it costs them too much.
I can tell you that Transcend sucks, but I have had good luck with SanDisk warranty. Most of my cards have been for computer or camera use and warranty has been honored. Those cards had videos on them too along with pictures. When SD cards die they either go into Read-only mode to lets you get data off (no write, no delete, no format) or are completely unreadable (but the manufacturers can still read data off a dead card if they want). Professional photographers that run through cards like toilet paper don't even care about the warranty, basically cost of doing business. That is why I took the approach of a $20 card which I will return if it breaks in 90 days or throw away if/when it breaks. Think of it as a cost of Sentry Mode

@FastGTR, I appreciate your Tesla DYI blog!