Sentry Mode USB flash drive failure costing me thousands

[Nuclear Fusion]

Lol it’s not costing you thousands. No other car has this. It’s a feature that just didn’t work correctly.

Yes they do - installing a 4 channel dashcam gives 360dg view

 

[Nuclear Fusion]

stop using Sandisk products imo, they are low quality and I've had nothing but issues with their flash drives and other storage drives in the past.

Get the samsung endurance pro microSD, its made for constant writes and high temps - exactly what you need for a dash cam. I've had one since the rollout of teslacam and had zero issues

Also, this is why I still keep my blackvue 2ch dashcam running in parking mode, much more reliable and less fidgety than Sentry. I run both while parked in public, redundancy is always good for security

And the DR900S uploads events to the cloud - so you can view incidents or stream live on your phone remotely

 

[BigD0g]

Buy an “actual” dashcam. Blackvue 900s has been quite nice and very reliable.

 

[garu]

USBs are not meant for heavy read/write operations, most USBs will break in weeks/months. Please get a SD card or a SSD.

 

[MentalNomad]

Get a usb to ssd cable for $9 on amazon, and then buy a 240gb ssd for about $50. That will be much faster than the write requirements, and will last a lot longer than thumbdrives.

^^ This ^^

USBs are not meant for heavy read/write operations, most USBs will break in weeks/months. Please get a SD card or a SSD.

Yes, because ^^ this ^^.

 

[xasroma]

Same thing happened to me with slow write speed once they are full. You have to erase data/reformat and it will work again. I would recommend you purchase a larger drive and have a spare one as well. I bought a Sandisk 256 GB and works well. I have a 128 GB back up as well. If I get the exclamation mark I use the backup while I reformat/erase the data. Wash rinse repeat.

 

[tvad]

Same thing happened to me with slow write speed once they are full. You have to erase data/reformat and it will work again. I would recommend you purchase a larger drive and have a spare one as well. I bought a Sandisk 256 GB and works well. I have a 128 GB back up as well. If I get the exclamation mark I use the backup while I reformat/erase the data. Wash rinse repeat.

+1

 

[GeoX750]

This should not cost you thousands. Even if you have no evidence of the other vehicle, you can make a comprehensive (or possibly collision) claim against your insurance and only have to pay your deductible. Even with low-cost insurance, the deductible should be no more than $1000.

This is correct, it should not be collision if the damage happened to the car while it was parked. Should be comprehensive ?

 

[cybergates]

based on what I read I bought the following below - it's cheap and so far this is working well on the latest versions for me (since about sep-2019 to present) - I haven't seen any kind of error in some time.

Sandisk ultrafit: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07855LJ99/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Anker USB Hub: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XMD7KPU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Plug the ultrafit in the usb hub and one charging cable. Hub goes to one usb on the tesla and connect the charger directly to the other tesla usb port (this will be your faster cell phone charger). I have another ultrafit flash drive for the USB music. (I gave up on partitioning). Even if the thumbdrive runs hot, it's on the hub and not causing the car's USB port to run hot. I keep a spare formatted USB thumb drive in the glovebox all formatted with a Teslacam folder ready to go in case there's a failure.

 

[Julianpoy]

Yep, SSD is the way to go. Flash drives and SD cards are not intended for so many write cycles. Eventually all of them will fail. Reformatting helps because it resets the drives index.

I have had 0 problems with my SSD setup.

 

[eustachio]

I bought the setup recommended in link below, SD card in a USB reader. 2 months, zero issues.

Best USB Drive for Tesla DashCam and Sentry Mode - Pure Tesla

 

[Watts_Up]

Buy an “actual” dashcam. Blackvue 900s has been quite nice and very reliable.

I was going to say the same thing. Use a good quality SSD momory recording.

The Tesla Dashcam is not yet a real product and the video quality is not great, you cannot read a license plate from feww feet using it.

Why don't you instal a real commercial dashcam like the Blackvue 900s which provide HD quality recording.

It costs less than 1% of the price of the car!

 

[gilscales]

So I used 3 different usb sticks without the too slow warning but they did eventually stop working and needed to be reformatted, all 3 of them, I then switched to this
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-Portable-SSD-MU-PA500B/dp/B073GZBT36/ref=sr_1_3?crid=9BRM55YWD77G&keywords=samsung+ssd+500gb+external&qid=1570944360&sprefix=samsung+ssd+500gb,aps,185&sr=8-3
No problems since and it has been a few months.

 

[Jedi2155]

The USB drive is slow is NOT a software bug, rather its a defect related to the fact that USB drives are wearing out due to the continuous use and/or is full.

 

[jjrandorin]

I guess I could have said it "would have saved me thousands IF it had worked properly" but it amounts to the same thing. I've spent a lot of time and some money trying to get it work properly so it WOULD save me money if anything ever happened and it still didn't do any good.

I am not sure why we are in this place where people feel the need to make a "sensationalist" or "clickbait" type title just to get more eyeballs to their post, but thats where we are (and thats what your thread title is).

 

[Dan203]

I think a big SSD is your best bet here. Each sector of any solid state drive has a finite number of writes. With a real SSD there is a built in chipset that does load balancing so that no one section of the drive gets written to too frequently and wears out prematurely. SD cards and USB sticks don't have that, so your Tesla could end up writing to the same spot over and over until it's worn out and then the whole drive is useless. More expensive drives can probably handle this longer, but with constant writing every drive is going to wear out eventually. But with a large SSD with built in load balancing you should get at least a few years out of the deal.

 

[RScottyL]

My 5-month-old blue Model 3 was just scraped by a white pickup in the post office parking lot. My wife was inside at the time and I was home. When she came out 2 people shouted that a white pickup had scraped the side of my car and then took off. They didn't get the license # but she didn't despair. We have Sentry Mode! When she got in the car she saw the red exclamation mark in the upper right which, when you press it, says the USB speed is too slow so Sentry Mode had stopped working. When I checked the flash drive I found that it had recorded the first minute of her drive to the post office but nothing after that. The post office doesn't have video monitors in the parking lot so we're screwed. This is the third USB drive we've tried with Sentry Mode. The first was the 64 GB Sundisk, which is recommended in articles for this purpose. It worked fine for 2 months, then got the "too slow" message. I read all the forums about this problem and have since tried two others. The latest was a Sundisk USB 2 drive. It has worked for a month, has recorded many Sentry mode incidents with no problem (one from yesterday), and now failed 15 minutes before the accident. Both doors on the left side are dented and have a long white scrape mark. I have $2,500 collision deductible so that'll be out of pocket.

Don't get me wrong. I love my Tesla and expect to have "growing pain" problems from time to time but this is getting old. How do I fix this USB problem once and for all??

So, reading on here, I read that one of the recent updates added the rear camera recording, so flash drives that may have been fine previously are now slow because of a fourth video stream.

As mentioned above, get you an SSD drive to write to, as there is documentation on here somewhere that tells you how and which ones are recommended!

 

[BlueBlazes]

let us know how this goes. It sounds like your wife has a pretty good idea of the time frame this happened in which will be helpful at Tesla's end.

When I hear stories like this it really sickens me that people could do damage like that and then drive off. We essentially had a very similar situation happen to my husband's Model S last November. In his case he was in a bank parking lot and someone ran in and said someone's vehicle had been struck and the driver had tried to leave. The lady who came in was walking by with her son and as the commercial truck pulled out of a space next to him and turned the wheel too soon scraping the rear quarter panel and bumper. She actually chased after them and caught them at a stop sign, took photos of their vehicle and license plate and told them they better pull in the lot again while she got the owner. Thankfully for us she was a real bull dog with these guys. My husband's car is AP 2 so doesn't have TeslaCam ability and fortunately he had his Blackvue which captured the whole thing and them leaving. Gave it to insurance and they had no problem admitting fault and paying. I really hope Tesla is able to help out with this and your insurance can go after them. Hopefully you can get them arrested on leaving the scene of an accident as well.

Great story. I wish someone like that had at least got the license #. Two people shouted at my wife that a white pick-up had hit it and she could probably catch it so she took off in the car after it. Traffic was heavy and there are a LOT of white pick-ups!

 

[BlueBlazes]

What a shame having such low life but you took the cheap way out with insurance and took the risk and now you have to pay.
Sentry Mode is only a tool and may help just like every other Tesla components which works mostly but does fail. Every other vehicle manufacture is the same.

Fair enough about taking the cheap way out. But this will be the first insurance claim we've had in about 30 years so we've saved a lot over the years by having a high deductible. And now we pay for it.

 

[BlueBlazes]

This is correct, it should not be collision if the damage happened to the car while it was parked. Should be comprehensive ?

I hope you're right. So far we've gone through the on-line process with GEICO which asked a bunch of questions and then categorized it as a "collision". Maybe after we talk to a rep this will change. I'll post the final result.