Recovering a Corrupted USB Flash Drive

[laxdad]

I've had 2 USB flash drives corrupted in my Model 3 running TeslaCam and Sentry Mode. Both were name brand (Samsung and SanDisk) 128GB FIT drives. The drives were formatted in FAT32 and had the TeslaCam folder. The drives worked for a few weeks, then the camera icon completely disappeared (no icon at all, not just a gray "x"). I mostly use TeslaCam and very rarely use Sentry Mode.

When I plug the drives into my PC, I can see the drives but I cannot open or reformat them. I've tried opening the drives on a Windows 10 PC, a Mac, and a Chromebook using their standard disk utilities without success. I checked with my local service center. The technician there believes that the drives are still "alive" because they are recognized by the computers, but does not know how to recover them.

Has anyone successfully recovered a drive that has been corrupted like mine?

 

[DWdrum]

I've had 2 USB flash drives corrupted in my Model 3 running TeslaCam and Sentry Mode. Both were name brand (Samsung and SanDisk) 128GB FIT drives. The drives were formatted in FAT32 and had the TeslaCam folder. The drives worked for a few weeks, then the camera icon completely disappeared (no icon at all, not just a gray "x"). I mostly use TeslaCam and very rarely use Sentry Mode.

When I plug the drives into my PC, I can see the drives but I cannot open or reformat them. I've tried opening the drives on a Windows 10 PC, a Mac, and a Chromebook using their standard disk utilities without success. I checked with my local service center. The technician there believes that the drives are still "alive" because they are recognized by the computers, but does not know how to recover them.

Has anyone successfully recovered a drive that has been corrupted like mine?

Same thing happens to me. I have tried 6 techniques to get my drives to "Un protect" and simply can't do it It really is mind boggling.

 

[srs5694]

When I plug the drives into my PC, I can see the drives but I cannot open or reformat them. I've tried opening the drives on a Windows 10 PC, a Mac, and a Chromebook using their standard disk utilities without success.

What sort of error messages are you seeing? It sounds like the drives may have flipped to a read-only state, but that's far from certain. If they have gone read-only, first check to see if there's a physical switch of some sort; a few devices (mostly SD cards, not USB flash drives) have a switch you can flip to put them in read-only mode. It's conceivable this switch has been accidentally set. If there's no such switch, then the drive is failing. A drive turning into a read-only device is a common failure mode for flash media. Unfortunately, I know of no solution; the drive is basically toast at that point. The same thing happened to the first USB drive (a SanDisk, IIRC) that I used in my Model 3; it worked for only about a month before failing. Unfortunately, the frequent writes and high temperatures (especially in the summer) put a strain on the media, and if it's not designed for that sort of abuse, it'll have a short life. If this is what's happened, your best bet is to find media that are rated for lots of writes and for use at higher temperatures. You'll need to dig into specification sheets to find something suitable, and manufacturers of many cheaper media may not provide the data at all.

 

[jdw]

Check out this thread.

TeslaCam: DON’T USE USB FLASH DRIVE

 

[laxdad]

What sort of error messages are you seeing? It sounds like the drives may have flipped to a read-only state, but that's far from certain.

Sorry for the delayed response. Haven't logged in for a while.

Both failed USB drives were "FIT" drives. Those are the small form factor USB drives without any sort of mechanical read-only lock. The error message I get when I double-click on the drive is "please insert a disk into USB drive (E". Using the PC's disk management tools, I found that the drive is unallocated (whatever that means - not a CS person). My daughter's boyfriend, who is a CS geek, tried to recover the drives for about half an hour. No success.

Took the car into the local Tesla Service Center. They suggested using drives of 32GB or smaller. No particular reason given other than Windows can't format drives larger than 32GB to FAT32 unless you use a 3rd party app. I've been using a couple of these smaller drives for the past few weeks without issues.

I noticed something unusual yesterday. I removed the USB flash drive from the car after it had been parked for about 2.5 hours. The videos on the flash drive were from the last hour when the car was parked and asleep in the garage. It seems that TeslaCam continues to record video when the car is parked. Sentry Mode was not on. There was exactly 1 hour of video files in the TeslaCam folder. Plenty of room left on the flash drive (5GB used out of 32GB).

Is it normal for TeslaCam to keep recording when the car is parked? Did a bit of Googling and noticed a few similar reports on Reddit and some of the other Tesla forums.

 

[japhule]

TeslaCam records whenever the car is on and not asleep. You can be parked but the car may still be awake for some reason or another, and it will record during this time.

 

[android04]

Not worth the effort to try to recover those USB drives. Get a "high endurance" microUSB card with a USB reader and use that. I'm using this Samsung 128gb card that cost me $35 MicroSDXC PRO Endurance Memory Card w Adapter 128GB Memory & Storage - MB-MJ128GA/AM | Samsung US

What most people don't realize is that if they buy flash drives or cards from Amazon or eBay, they are more likely to be counterfeit. Counterfeit memory is lower quality or smaller than advertised and will fail earlier. I only buy flash memory directly from the manufacturer (i.e. Samsung.com) or from a brick-and-mortar store (i.e. Best Buy).