Recent Accident- Sentry/Dashcam did not record the Accident!!

[israndy]

You tap the camera icon if you want it to save the footage, otherwise your footage will be recorded over in an hour. If you eject the disk as you say before it finishes saving (they are 10 minute clips) you may also lose the footage. To confirm it saved you can watch it in the car before removing the USB stick.

 

[stopcrazypp]

**** me! I lost my accident video. Didn't know how to save or "eject disk" WTF? the video saves all the worthless sentry BS but loses accident footage!!?

Read the manual. During normal dashcam usage, it only records in an hour loop. If you don't press the horn or press the camera icon to save the footage (what it actually does is only move it to a different folder), it will get deleted after an hour passes. However, don't press the horn or button immediately after the event you want to save. This is because there are cases where the most important files are deleted (it records in one minute increments) perhaps because it gets corrupted by the request to save them.
Model 3 Owner's Manual | Tesla

That said, not all is lost, I document how to recover footage that was deleted from the one hour loop:
Dashcam in Auto
Note footage can only be recovered if it was recorded in the first place. If your dashcam is chronically showing the "x" error, that may not be the case.

 

[ICE5891]

Read the manual. During normal dashcam usage, it only records in an hour loop. If you don't press the horn or press the camera icon to save the footage (what it actually does is only move it to a different folder), it will get deleted after an hour passes. However, don't press the horn or button immediately after the event you want to save. This is because there are cases where the most important files are deleted (it records in one minute increments) perhaps because it gets corrupted by the request to save them.
Model 3 Owner's Manual | Tesla

That said, not all is lost, I document how to recover footage that was deleted from the one hour loop:
Dashcam in Auto
Note footage can only be recovered if it was recorded in the first place. If your dashcam is chronically showing the "x" error, that may not be the case.

I turned off the record on honk. In in the situation I have to endup honking few times, maybe trying to alert other drivers of the denger I am not sure how reliable it will be. Will it save 3 times if I honk 3 times? Will it corrupt the files?

I found that more reliable accident procedure is to save from the screen and remove memory stick. Then even if it is screen save don't work I should still have the last 1h reordered and with no risk of overwrite. I also keep the original tesla memory stick on the car in case I want to remove one to save the footage and keep recording with that other memory stick.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I turned off the record on honk. In in the situation I have to endup honking few times, maybe trying to alert other drivers of the denger I am not sure how reliable it will be. Will it save 3 times if I honk 3 times? Will it corrupt the files?

The honk moves 10 minutes of footage. If you honk 3 times I presume it will continue trying to move the remaining new clips, but older clips won't be repeated, although I have not tried myself. There is a possibility of the last one minute file being corrupted, I have seen cases reported of this, at least when pressing the save button. That is why I recommend waiting at least a few minutes after the event before doing any save action. This ensures even if the last 1 minute clip is corrupted, it is a worthless clip.

I found that more reliable accident procedure is to save from the screen and remove memory stick. Then even if it is screen save don't work I should still have the last 1h reordered and with no risk of overwrite. I also keep the original tesla memory stick on the car in case I want to remove one to save the footage and keep recording with that other memory stick.

I do the same. I have my own microSD reader, but I keep the original Tesla stick in the car, in case I remove mine.

 

[husklylord]

Weird, so my wife just had an accident where someone rear ended our Model Y.
The bumper is damaged but the airbags did not deploy. There is footage before and after the accident saved to the SSD, but the actual files associated with the accident came out as corrupt. I can see the files created, the time stamp and association with each of the cameras, but they are empty and have no space associated with them. Arghhhh

 

[stopcrazypp]

Weird, so my wife just had an accident where someone rear ended our Model Y.
The bumper is damaged but the airbags did not deploy. There is footage before and after the accident saved to the SSD, but the actual files associated with the accident came out as corrupt. I can see the files created, the time stamp and association with each of the cameras, but they are empty and have no space associated with them. Arghhhh

Did you honk, press a button to save, or enabled the Auto setting? Are the files in the Recent Clips or in Saved Clips folder? Yes this had been reported in many cases where it is exactly the critical moment that is gone. Not sure what is the cause. In some cases it might be the "save" action doing this. In some cases maybe the crash interrupted the connection.

 

[TLLMRRJ]

Did you honk, press a button to save, or enabled the Auto setting? Are the files in the Recent Clips or in Saved Clips folder? Yes this had been reported in many cases where it is exactly the critical moment that is gone. Not sure what is the cause. In some cases it might be the "save" action doing this. In some cases maybe the crash interrupted the connection.

So many cases that it's crazy!

 

[atlchamp]

I had an incident the other day where the gate hit my car and it didn’t record any of it! What’s the point of all those cameras if it’s not recording when youre driving smfh

 

[israndy]

Weird, so my wife just had an accident where someone rear ended our Model Y.
The bumper is damaged but the airbags did not deploy. There is footage before and after the accident saved to the SSD, but the actual files associated with the accident came out as corrupt. I can see the files created, the time stamp and association with each of the cameras, but they are empty and have no space associated with them. Arghhhh

If it's an accident won't Tesla have a copy of the video that you can request with a police report?