I've never posted on any Tesla forum before and only a few times on any social media. I wrote it right after the accident and when I discovered Sentry Mode had failed. I was very upset about the accident and couldn't believe Sentry Mode had failed TEN MINUTES before that. It expressed my feelings exactly. I know what you mean, though, and didn't intend to be part of that stuff.
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Sentry Mode USB flash drive failure costing me thousands
- Thread starter BlueBlazes
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- sentry mode error usb
I've never posted on any Tesla forum before and only a few times on any social media. I wrote it right after the accident and when I discovered Sentry Mode had failed. I was very upset about the accident and couldn't believe Sentry Mode had failed TEN MINUTES before that. It expressed my feelings exactly. I know what you mean, though, and didn't intend to be part of that stuff.
Guess I'll have to go this way. Thanks to everyone who suggested it. I've read about this option before but didn't realize it is apparently working so much better than the USB drive.
⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️
Village Idiot
Or just park in really good Tesla spots and enjoy the extra steps. Yeah I’m sure I couldn’t get my wife to do that either, that’s why she doesn’t drive my car.
It’s seems like the side cameras have shot a lot of critical evidence in the videos I’ve seen. You can’t do that with Blackvue unless you get four cameras. Even then it wouldn’t be as good as the Tesla side cameras. Especially for catching some of the keying incidences I’ve seen on video.
Part of the problem with flash media is that it slows down as it gets full and/or reused. The reason is that when you write a page of data, unless the drive knows that the entire block containing that page is clear, it has to read the block to cache, erase the block,modify the page you're changing in cache, then write the block to flash. That's one of the reasons that dedicated dash cams periodically prompt you to reformat the drive. Even deleting files doesn't mark them free as far as the drive is concerned, unless it supports TRIM, which USB devices don't.
The bigger the device, the longer you can go before the drive starts reusing blocks, which is part of the reason the SSDs work better. The second of course is the speed of the device, with most SSDs being much faster than USB flash drives. Cheap USB drives, even if they claim to be USB 3.0 (Tesla only has USB 2.0 ports anyway) is worthless if it can't actually handle sustained USB 2.0 read/write speeds.
Tesla Dash Cam was a nice addition for free and if you use the right hardware it can be useful, but the low camera resolution and USB connection make it pretty much inferior to a purpose built dash cam solution.
The bigger the device, the longer you can go before the drive starts reusing blocks, which is part of the reason the SSDs work better. The second of course is the speed of the device, with most SSDs being much faster than USB flash drives. Cheap USB drives, even if they claim to be USB 3.0 (Tesla only has USB 2.0 ports anyway) is worthless if it can't actually handle sustained USB 2.0 read/write speeds.
Tesla Dash Cam was a nice addition for free and if you use the right hardware it can be useful, but the low camera resolution and USB connection make it pretty much inferior to a purpose built dash cam solution.
Atari2600
Active Member
Anyone notice how hot their flash drive or SSD gets when using dash cam/sentry mode? I had a metal Samsung flash drive and used it only one week after noticing it was so hot I could barely touch it. I replaced it with a ssd in a metal enclosure that gets rather warm as well but it has never failed me. I assume a flash drive either throttles writes or dies from the heat.
Dashcam writes to the SSD all the time. I have sentry mode turned off at home but any time the car is active it is recording dash cam footage of my garage.
My SSD setup has 28 weeks of use with no failures or warnings - initially for dashcam and then dashcam/sentry mode when sentry mode was released. I use sentry mode at least 40 hours per week.
Dashcam writes to the SSD all the time. I have sentry mode turned off at home but any time the car is active it is recording dash cam footage of my garage.
My SSD setup has 28 weeks of use with no failures or warnings - initially for dashcam and then dashcam/sentry mode when sentry mode was released. I use sentry mode at least 40 hours per week.
Another vote for SD. Been using this setup for over 6-months parking at at the airport almost every week and have had no issues.
Samsung 256GB 100MB/s (U3)... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072HRDM55?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
suntrsi TF/SD Card Reader... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D72L4Q7?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
Samsung 256GB 100MB/s (U3)... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072HRDM55?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
suntrsi TF/SD Card Reader... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D72L4Q7?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
I have this Samsung, never had issues. Before this I had sandisk and did have issues.
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-MUF-...+usb+64gb&qid=1570978139&s=electronics&sr=1-4
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-MUF-...+usb+64gb&qid=1570978139&s=electronics&sr=1-4
I sent a message to Tesla via their Support page, asking if they have a copy of the Sentry video. Haven't heard back yet but no surprise since it's a weekend. I was wondering if there's a better way to get Tesla's attention. I've heard you can report bugs somehow by voice when you're in the car but this isn't a bug.
Set your Tesla on fire and call the local TV news station?
I’ve seen this advice given several times since that electrek article came out, but haven’t seen a single person actually report back that they were able to get video from Tesla. Op, please update us if it actual works.
Thanks for replying, and its understandable you felt that way and posted as such if you posted right after the accident. This is one of the reasons I never press "SEND" on any digital communication when I am very angry. Email, text, Chat, etc. One of the anvantages of those mediums over direct contact (voice, video call, in person) is the fact they give us time to craft the message so that it says what we intend.
Anyway, thats not intended to be a lecture, just a discussion. My comment was more around the fact that, not just here but pretty much every forum I now visit, people in general post thread titles with sensationalist titles. Shortly before I read this thread, there was another one posted with the title:
TESLA GLASS: Corners were cut
Where content of this posters post was that they were upset that they have picked up some windshield chips in their tesla and didnt in other cars, so of course Tesla glass must be inferior. Nevermind the fact that the front windshield on a tesla is larger than most other cars... even SUVs. Also nevermind the fact that teslas are very good and pulling air up and around the car, so things that may have hit the hood on their other car likely are getting slipstreamed up to the windshield... or.. coincidence.
Anyway, I am fully aware that things like this suck, and are frustrating. What I tend to not understand so much is when people (in general OP, not directed at you), take what were FREE ADDITIONAL FEATURES that were not present when they bought the car, and then complain about them.
I certainly hope that if I ever need to use the dashcam footage (or sentry footage) it would be there if I needed it, but what I wouldnt do is blame tesla if for some reason it wasnt... maybe thats just me. If it was that important to me, I would buy and install a purpose built solution to the problem, and if that solution failed, I would then feel free to blame that solution.
I think Electrek completely misrepresented Tesla's intention with that declaration. Personally, I believe it's a privacy statement with Tesla informing you that for 72 hours, clips uploaded to them are not anonymized. Meaning they can associate the clip to your car and presumably use that information to access additional clips, pull other telemetry data or potentially contact you for more information.
I don't think there is any intention on Tesla's part to make those clips available to owners on request.
That makes sense. I'll post Tesla's reply, assuming I get one.
Glamisduner
Active Member
Are you running multiple drives? I had constant issues with that error when using multiple drives on the same port.
Currently running Samsung T5 and haven't had any issues since removing the other drives. It's also possible you need to have it serviced by tesla. Unfortunately all blame goes to the truck, but it sure is a huge bummer it failed to record. These features need to work 100%. If you haven't done so already, unplug everything except the thumb drive and see if the issue resolves.
We just have one in each of the two forward ports - one for music, one for dashcam
Glamisduner
Active Member
Put them both on the same drive, that is exactly what caused a problem for me. Now that I have a dual partition drive with music and teslacam partitions I have not experienced the problem again. I'm using the JEDA USB hub, so it could be that both drives were on the same actual USB port, but there is a good chance that using multiple drives in general can cause this issue. I know it sounds counter intuitive to the message displayed, I have not had an error since going back to a single drive.
Or just remove the music drive for testing purposes. If it solves the issue, then create a dual partition drive.
I use EaseUSPartition manager (it's free). Works great if your on windows.
I got the 256GB version of this USB key and still getting slow write speed malfunction. Yesterday I plugged the key into my computer and found that over 240GB had been used, but the files on the key were only about 1.5GB! What else is taking up the memory? I reformatted and we'll see how it goes. A few days ago when this happened I just erased the files without reformatting. Something not visible in the folder system is being written to the USB drives. I wonder if there is a similar mystery of excessive data other than video files seen of SD or SSD.
Atari2600
Active Member
I had the bigger version, the Samsung BAR Plus and it got hotter than hell in use and was unreliable so I switched to a trouble free SSD.
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