Sentry Mode USB flash drive failure costing me thousands

[BlueBlazes]

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??

 

[ChrisH]

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

 

[TMThree]

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.

 

[woodisgood]

Sorry for your bad luck.

I can only offer what works for me, which is a Kingston SSD and a SATA to USB adapter. Never had an issue with write speeds or corruption since Sentry was released. I know some folks out there argue against SSD but it has worked fine for me.

Welcome to the forum; thanks for joining to post your experience.

 

[jkdman123]

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.

It’s a software bug. It has nothing to do with the actual hardware being used.

 

[tvad]

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??

I was receiving the "too slow" warning. I erased and re-formatted the USB. It's working correctly now. You might give this a try.

 

[jfboudreau]

I have used a 65$ USB drive ( 1 TB / Seagate) for a few weeks without problem b ut just ordered, to play it safe, and follow recommendation I read on saites, a SandDisk SD Card (High endurance ) https://www.amazon.ca/-/fr/gp/product/B07P4HBRMV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 with this adapter. https://www.amazon.ca/-/fr/gp/product/B07G5JV2B5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I hears that those card, specialized for video recording are better....

I live in Montreal, Canada (cold, Warm weather) and hope and guess, that this card will be more robust than my USB drive that worked well but I only had it for a few weeks

JF

 

[BlueBlazes]

I was receiving the "too slow" warning. I erased and re-formatted the USB. It's working correctly now. You might give this a try.

Thanks. Yeah, I've done that twice and this keeps happening.

 

[tvad]

Thanks. Yeah, I've done that twice and this keeps happening.

Well...maybe it's only a matter of time until I get the "too slow" message!

 

[BlueBlazes]

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

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.

 

[whatthe2]

Contact Tesla. They said they are now saving a couple days of recordings.

 

[BlueBlazes]

Contact Tesla. They said they are now saving a couple days of recordings.

Thanks for this. Do you mean they're saving it on the car's computer? Do you have any more information on it? I've sent a message to Tesla.

 

[whatthe2]

Thanks for this. Do you mean they're saving it on the car's computer? Do you have any more information on it? I've sent a message to Tesla.

Tesla offers 72-hour backup of Sentry Mode videos in data-collecting effort - Electrek

 

[boriszima]

It’s a software bug. It has nothing to do with the actual hardware being used.

Really? I must have missed that info here.

OP - yep try Tesla maybe you get lucky.

 

[boaterva]

As was said this is a bug. It should be fixed soon. I can’t see how using faster storage will ‘fix’ it when the USBs are already faster than the minimum. I remove it and put it back and it runs for a couple of weeks. Then do it again. Just going to repeat until they fix the bug.

 

[SMAlset]

Thanks for this. Do you mean they're saving it on the car's computer? Do you have any more information on it? I've sent a message to Tesla.

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.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

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.

 

[Kiwiadventure]

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.

 

[ranova]

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

 

[TMThree]

It’s a software bug. It has nothing to do with the actual hardware being used.

And yet I've had my car 6 months without ever seeing the error.