Knightshade
Well-Known Member
Or a Samsung USB key for a lot less than either, and it's literally recommended in the owners manual
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Or a Samsung USB key for a lot less than either, and it's literally recommended in the owners manual
Overkill is in the eyes of the beholder. I got a 1TB Samsung T5 so I could keep my footage for a longer time frame before it "rolls off".
If someone wants a device that's slower and has lower capacity and they want to pay less, that's always an option. That's why we have a free market.
Best,
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
How often to do save footage, and for how long?
The 1 hour buffer is only 7.2 GB.
Each 10 minute saved section you "keep" via sentry or manually, is 1.2 GB.
Meaning even a 128GB key could run the buffer, and hold roughly a hundred ten minute videos before you were out of space.
The speed thing of course is entirely irrelevant.... anything doing 4MB/s or higher (which is basically anything that isn't complete garbage) is all you need.
"Faster" gets you 0 since the car isn't writing any faster (it's not even writing THAT fast- it's writing at about half that, the 4 recommended int he manual is for overhead)
I suppose faster does help if you pull it out of the car and transfer files to a computer with a USB3.x interface (the car only being USB2)...though again unless you're wanting to archive hundreds of clips it's not going to make a substantive difference.
And with the ability to view, and delete, footage built into the car- I don't see myself ever pulling the key out and transferring to a PC again unless there's an actual incident requiring an insurance claim or police report... which would only be 1 or 2 clip sets and the speed difference would be too tiny to notice.
I certainly appreciate you watching out for us to make sure that nobody pays extra for capacity. 
Eno Deb
Active Member
The Samsung 128GB Endurance Micro SD card is currently on sale for $28 on Amazon. I think that's the lowest price it's ever been.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B984HJ5/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B984HJ5/
Just cant help myself to post this link... maybe it help explain things and assist making better recommendations/decisions
Explains the standard now used to measure "speed" of a card outside of using sustained read/write MB/s. This is the SD cards standard but the same applies to all flash drives as well.
Application Performance Class - SD Association
For those going the route of SD card for Sentry/TeslaCam and have been frustrated that nomatter what they try they get the slow error.
Fastest SD Card Speed Tests for Video & Photo Cameras
Happen to have the Transcend SD card mentioned in the article (not purchased for use in the Teslas) and have plugged it with a Lexar UHS-II SD-to-USB converter (there is difference in speed of adapters as they are difference in SD cards / Flash drives) in the car just to see if I can catch it incorrectly give the drive too slow message and know it is bogus as that combination is about as fast as you can go without going for computer storage. Anyway, on a daily basis i have a $15 USB mini flash drive in the car and Sentry is active 24/7 in a busy garage. Just need to know what to buy, more money don't always get you something better when you talk about a commodity like flash storage.
When buying any SD card / USB flash based storage, be very careful as there are many counterfeits on the market. I have had better results buying from NewEgg (not a third party selling on NewEgg) and they usually have same price with Amazon. Always a good idea to run some tests and compare with published results.
Samsung Pro Endurance microSDXC Memory Card Review - Legit Reviews
lUtriaNt
Member
amazon are also a good source if you BUY FROM AMAZON direct and not a 3rd party. ive bought countless flash storage cards and SSd's with zero issue over nearly 15 years, again buying direct from amazon. counterfeits exist for sure and amazon is a bigger target than most online retailers, but again buying direct from amazon over those years ive never seen a fake.
Pardon me if this has been posted in this thread, but the card tester H2testw "h2tesw" developed by harald bögeholz is a simple way to test EACH SECTOR on the card. the bigger the card,. the longer it takes to test (days on large drives).
At the end of the day, a fake may slip into even the best secure online store. make sure the store you purchase from have a good solid returns policy to protect your investment.
Pardon me if this has been posted in this thread, but the card tester H2testw "h2tesw" developed by harald bögeholz is a simple way to test EACH SECTOR on the card. the bigger the card,. the longer it takes to test (days on large drives).
At the end of the day, a fake may slip into even the best secure online store. make sure the store you purchase from have a good solid returns policy to protect your investment.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
The slowest class of card in your first link is 5 times faster than the speed the Teslacam feature writes at.
The slowest tested sequential write (the type the car is doing) in your second link is 17 times faster than the car is actually writing.
Agreed... though I also suspect there's folks who never bother to clean out their storage, and flash storage (all types) can slow down significantly if you let it get too full (some suggestions this starts at 70-80% full, it definitely can happen significantly at 90%+)
I clean mine out every few months so it's never more than 1/3-2/rd full and 0 issues in 18 months using a USB key.
Ideally the cleaning out the storage issue will bite less people now that you can view/delete right on the car itself.
100% agreed- I can absolutely see fake/knockoff cards with garbage parts causing problems and ending up with the "real" versions getting the blame
Eno Deb
Active Member
This is true, but the current offer that I mentioned above is sold by Amazon.com itself, not some 3rd party. Highly unlikely that they would sell counterfeits.
Warning: got two counterfeit 128GB cards off of Amazon : NintendoSwitch
Fake SD cards on Amazon.com!! Buyer beware.
If you have the time read the posts and notice sold by Amazon not on Amazon by third party. Still very much a possibility to this day, IMHO.
If you spend time on photography forums you know to avoid Amazon for any photo gear. To me it is only an extra bonus to fight the monopoly.
Not sure what numbers you looked at. See the attached screenshot from the website. These are all very fast (relatively) cards and 4 of them don't get past 4MB/s. We have argued before that we are not sure how Tesla writes to the flash drive to be sure we should be looking at sequential speeds only.
Further, as others have mentioned, most tests are done on empty or near empty drives/cards so that's the highest numbers you can get. Once a drive is getting full it needs to do extra work which can cause severe slowdown.
Good part is toward the bottom. Forget this is old article, it is actually somewhat worse nowadays wit TLC and higher density cells.
The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ
Attachments
This is a nice card, will last a while. High temperature tolerance and good warranty. And can be easily used in your phone and such unlike USB drives. Glad to see you giving B&H business. Adorama is another solid place to get stuff.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
The ones in your link.
Specifically the sequential write numbers- because that's what the cameras would be doing in a Tesla.
Yeah- that's RANDOM writes.
Which isn't, at all, what the car does.
When people talk about sequential vs random writes to a file, they're generally drawing a distinction between writing without intermediate seeks ("sequential"), vs. a pattern of seek-write-seek-write-seek-write, etc. ("random").
Random writes are things where a program (or more likely many running-at-same-time programs) have to seek random files and update them regularly.... existing game data, database contents, etc...
Part of the reason THAT gets
Not, in any way, relevant to this application....The car writes static 30MB files per minute per camera.
It's NEVER "updating" an existing file... so it's NEVER doing a random write that takes that kind of performance hit.
I'm pretty sure...because nothing the software does requires random writes.
You'll also note that the "bad" random write results are usually found when writing TINY files... like 4k size files...not 30MB sized files.
This makes things look far worse than they are because of how page size works on flash...it's essentially an absolute worst-case-scenario benchmark....and again it's not something that'd be at all relevant on the Tesla where it's never updating an existing file, and it's never writing TINY bits of data.
Man- if only I'd mentioned the exact issue of flash slowing down when near full.... oh, wait... I did.
But even then you don't see impact until it's like 70-80% full at least and it's not usually a major issue till ~90% or more.
But yes at that point it's an issue for ALL flash media... so just clean your storage out every few months- problem solved.
Amusingly, this confirms exactly what I JUST told you...
Your source said:
That's why -4k- random writes are slow.
It has to ERASE 512kb at a chunk to update/write that tiny 4k
But in this case the files being written are always MUCH larger than 4k OR 512k...it can easily write in full blocks so you're not taking that huge penalty over and over even if it WERE doing random writes (which again it's not)
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Eno Deb
Active Member
Well, your second link also has someone claiming to have received a fake SD card from Newegg, so if you believe these anecdotes that isn't safe either.
But I agree that it is a good idea to run a quick check after receiving the product. When bought from Amazon.com directly, you won't have a problem returning or exchanging it if necessary. I'm sure the same is true for Newegg.
FWIW, I bought an Endurance card from Amazon.com last year and it is genuine.
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I've never gotten fake stuff from newegg, but I have from AMZN. Chinese suppliers polluting the marketplace. If you complain to Amazon, you get a form letter back and they don't appear to take any (visible) action against the seller.
I lived in China for a few years and it was always an adventure trying to find genuine products without having to go to a mall that catered to 4 and 5 star hotel guests. The fake to genuine ratio is orders of magnitude worse there.
Best,
I lived in China for a few years and it was always an adventure trying to find genuine products without having to go to a mall that catered to 4 and 5 star hotel guests. The fake to genuine ratio is orders of magnitude worse there.
Best,
- Is there any way to test the authenticity of a drive (be it SD or Flash)? I know there are tests such as the aforementioned H2testw, as well as FakeFlashTest, Quick Disk Test, and others, but these all seem to just test capacity. Is there a way to verify the manufacturer?
- It seems (for authenticity at least), the best you can truly do is pick a vendor that you trust and even then, it is just a roll of the dice?
Lakeshow24
Member
I just bought an Samsung T5 SSD and I can’t seem to format it to Fat32. Can I just use it as exfat or ntfs?
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