MASTER THREAD: USB drives that work with Sentry and TeslaCam

[V__2]

I think to actually have some real answers it is important that everyone provides more detailed info:

1. Exact model of the drive you use not just manufacturer and model name. Manufacturers would reuse the model name but can have multiple revisions with slightly different characteristics. Look for the full model number by the bar code on the packaging or on the drive itself. Serial number could also be useful to determine early vs later made variants.

2. Specify the size of the disk.

3. Is drive partitioned for music and Sentry? If so, what partition is first and what size are the partitions.

4. How long have you had the drive? Older drives would be more likely to be slow as they could have exhausted their spare/buffer cells and need to erase to write.

5. Use of "splitter", adapters, other remarks.

 

[tbwnm]

The Samsung T5 SSD installed last week seems to be working fine (no error messages) and I’m using the “Cam Viewer”’ app on my iPhone to view the videos but I’m confused about what actually gets recorded by the Tesla Cam. I left for an appointment today at 10:15am and the record light was on but when I checked the drive no video files were recorded until 11:38am (ref. attached). My understanding was that when the Tesla Cam record light is on it should be recording everything while driving. Am I missing something?

 

[qwertzy]

I have the Samsung 128gb fit that I sometimes I get the “too slow” error after flickering on YouTube videos along with a white screen when it plays the next video in the playlist. I powered off the car and then did the hard reset which brought everything back to normal. Hard resets alone didn’t fix it without the power down.

 

[CharleyBC]

Well, earlier in this thread, I sang the praises of this guy:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D7PDLXC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It was working flawlessly, even on V10 with four cameras. Notice “was.” It has started giving the infamous “too slow” error message. But then it’ll work a while. Kinda back and forth. I need to try reformatting before declaring it dead. But I’m also thinking about a high-temperature SSD.

 

[Knightshade]

Well, earlier in this thread, I sang the praises of this guy:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D7PDLXC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It was working flawlessly, even on V10 with four cameras. Notice “was.” It has started giving the infamous “too slow” error message. But then it’ll work a while. Kinda back and forth. I need to try reformatting before declaring it dead. But I’m also thinking about a high-temperature SSD.

Been using that exact thing since last year- still 0 issues even on v10

 

[jasazick]

I was having Raspberry Pi Zero W issues post v10. I switched to two cheapy 32gb USB 3.0 sticks that I rotate in and out - no issues so far. (Though obviously they may not last as long as higher quality drives). I wrote up some messy powershell and stuck a spare laptop in my garage. So now all I do is pop out drive 1 from the car, plug it into the laptop (on a shelf next to the car) and put drive 2 into the car. The script senses the usb drive and does a basic robocopy to my NAS. Works well for now.

 

[Solmors]

Comparing the endurance of the Samsung SD Card Endurance Pro 128GB vs the Samsung 970 Pro M.2 SSD

Endurance Pro will last "43,800 hours... based on Full HD (1920x1080) video content recorded at 26 Mbps Video support".
26 Mbps = 3.25 MBps
3.25 MBps * 60 = 195 MB / minute
195 MB / minute * 1440 = 280,800 MB / day
280,800 MB / day / 1,000 = 280.8 GB / day
280.8 GB / 128 GB = 2.19 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day)
2.19 DWPD * 365 days = 800.7 DW / Year
800.7 DW / Year * 5 years = 4,003.6 DW over 5 years
4,003.6 DW over 5 years * 128 GB = 512,460 GB written
512,460 GB written / 1,000 = 512.46 TBW (Terabytes Written)
MicroSDXC PRO Endurance Memory Card w Adapter 128GB Memory & Storage - MB-MJ128GA/AM | Samsung US

The Samsung 970 Pro comes in 2 sizes, 512GB and 1TB. The 512GB is rated for 600TBW, the 1TB is rates for 1,200TBW.
SSD 970 PRO NVMe M.2 512GB Memory & Storage - MZ-V7P512BW | Samsung US

Conclusion: The Endurance Pro has an amazing DWPD, however because the largest size you can get is only 128GB, the total terabytes written over its 5 year life is 512TB. If they made an Endurance Pro with 256GB or 512GB with the same DWPD rating as the 128GB they would have 1,024 TBW and 2,048 TBW.

 

[tvad]

A reader of this thread who discerns the wide range off effective and ineffective USB and SSD drives, irrespective of their memory storage size, manufacturer, or other specifications will realize that hardware will not solve the Tesla software problem.

 

[doghousePVD]

View attachment 467943

I’m pretty sure most USB sticks are faster than 4 MB/s. I’ve been using the same USB stick since I bought the car and I’m getting this problem after the version 10 upgrade.

Also, curious as to why they have a service appointment option.

I tested my new Samsung 256 GB usb 3.1 It reads at 100s of Mb, but writes 4 -/+ 1

Many USB have very asymmetrical read/write speeds.

 

[Knightshade]

I tested my new Samsung 256 GB usb 3.1 It reads at 100s of Mb, but writes 4 -/+ 1

Many USB have very asymmetrical read/write speeds.

Writes how though?

Typically tiny random writes (which is not what the dashcam is doing) are much slower, while sequential ones (which IS what the dashcam is doing) are much faster.

 

[doghousePVD]

Writes how though?

Typically tiny random writes (which is not what the dashcam is doing) are much slower, while sequential ones (which IS what the dashcam is doing) are much faster.

with wear leveling it doesn’t make a big difference, unlike spinning disks.

 

[HappyWino]

Been using that exact thing since last year- still 0 issues even on v10

That exact device gave me the error today, I've had it ~six weeks and it hasn't had an issue once in that time. I use Sentry and Dashcam. Wondering if it's the high number of writes wearing the drive out prematurely.

 

[Knightshade]

That exact device gave me the error today, I've had it ~six weeks and it hasn't had an issue once in that time. I use Sentry and Dashcam. Wondering if it's the high number of writes wearing the drive out prematurely.

it's not.

Teslacam writes very little compared to some of the higher end dashcam systems out there.

It'd take many years to reach the expected life of a 128GB flash key at the rate the car is writing to the key... (~5-10 years roughly depending how long a day you run dashcam/sentry for)


This isn't a hardware problem- it's a software problem.

 

[Knightshade]

with wear leveling it doesn’t make a big difference, unlike spinning disks.

It makes a huge difference.

As one example- the 64GB version of the Samsung FIT-

UserBenchmark: Samsung FIT USB 3.0 64GB MUF-64BB/US

sequential writes average a little over 30MB/s

random 4k writes are just over 6 MB/s

sequential writes are much faster.

(though either is more than fast enough for the job being done with dashcam/sentry)

See also literally every benchmark ever on flash storage where small random writes are massively slower than sequential writes... (which was the actual topic)

 

[CharleyBC]

This isn't a hardware problem- it's a software problem.

I genuinely want to understand your reasoning. I don’t profess to know one way or the other. But I look at my own experience with the Samsung I and others mentioned above. In my case, it worked without a hiccup for about half a year. Then it started misbehaving. How does software do that?

 

[HappyWino]

I genuinely want to understand your reasoning. I don’t profess to know one way or the other. But I look at my own experience with the Samsung I and others mentioned above. In my case, it worked without a hiccup for about half a year. Then it started misbehaving. How does software do that?

I can answer that. Somebody changed the software and introduced a bug is how Probably some "sub-optimal" error handling, e.g. something unexpected happened but the only error handler that has been coded is one that tells the user the USB stick is too slow. Can't delete a file because it's in use? - "USB is too slow". Can't create a file because you've exceeded the number of files that FAT32 supports in a single folder? - "USB is too slow".

 

[Knightshade]

I genuinely want to understand your reasoning. I don’t profess to know one way or the other. But I look at my own experience with the Samsung I and others mentioned above. In my case, it worked without a hiccup for about half a year. Then it started misbehaving. How does software do that?

Given you're not running the same software you were 6 months ago- pretty easily.

Not sure how that's at all confusing.

The hardware didn't change at all- only the software did.

It's also why you have even folks with SSDs who get corrupted video files (while others with SSDs work fine), and folks with "random cheap crap USB key" having no issues while others do. And how you get many folks using exactly the same hardware getting different results.

The code around dashcam is poor.

If you recall (or if you don't you can search and find the discussions about it) there were widespread video corruption issues that were much worse when it first came out- and even then folks were insisting "Oh, must be hardware!"

Then they updated the SW and some of those issues improved for everyone. Other issues got better but remained to varying degrees

Even today some stick around, across all types of storage HW, but happen much less often- with nothing changing but the Software.


The "too slow" message is fairly new, and comes from software

Some folks whose keys objectively test massively faster than required get it. Some don't. Even on the same HW as each other.

Again the only thing that keeps changing is the software.

 

[MrABRanch]

I have a samsung bar plus 128 (I think it's basically the same as the Samsung Fit plus) - I also use my SentryMode 24/7 so it's writing constantly (live in a condo, and have Sentry on all the time)
Before v10 no issues, after update started getting the write speed error dialogue. It doesn't affect SentryMode, which works and records fine, it's the DashCam that comes up greyed out with the error message, to fix it I just unplug and plug it back in, which usually corrects the problem temporarily. This is a fast USB, high/low temp, waterproof etc - I do think this is a Tesla software bug but I'm thinking it's getting written to a lot and maybe the error correction part is triggering too much.
I'm going to try to return the USB drive and opt for the High Endurance Micro SD card option. Hopefully that will solve the issue.

 

[tbwnm]

I'm wondering if the inclusion of the rear camera in V10 had something to do with the "too slow" error people are experiencing? It's curious that Tesla didn't include the rear camera in the past software version and maybe this is why? Perhaps the increase in drive performance necessary is causing the issue with certain flash drives? I installed the Samsung T5 SSD once V10 came out and have not experienced any errors, although for some unknown reason the tesla cam does not appear to be recording everything while driving (reference earlier post). However, it seems to be recording some clips while driving as well as all Sentry events.

 

[Knightshade]

I have a samsung bar plus 128 (I think it's basically the same as the Samsung Fit plus) - I also use my SentryMode 24/7 so it's writing constantly (live in a condo, and have Sentry on all the time)
Before v10 no issues, after update started getting the write speed error dialogue. It doesn't affect SentryMode, which works and records fine

Sentry doesn't record anything.

It just moves the last 10 minutes of dashcam files from recent to saved when it goes to alert mode.

Sentry will work just fine with NO usb storage-still turn on, still go to alert mode with flashing lights and HAL 9000 message- it just won't move over anything since there's nothing to move.


Anyway, mathwise, 4 cameras are writing 7.2 GB per hour to the recent folder, that's 172.8 gigs per day... or 1.35 full write cycles on a 128GB drive.

The cheapest flash memory out there is rated for 1000 write cycles, the decent cheap stuff (which is what I believe Samsung uses), is rated for 3000... so that's just over 2 years to reach 1000 write cycles, or just over 6 years to hit 3000.

For most folks who are only running the cameras/sentry about 1/2 to 1/3rd of their day on decent cheap stuff you're talking 12-18 years to use up a 128GB stick.

Either way you shouldn't be anywhere near the limits of the HW today....and high endurance memory won't change that.