Sentry Sucks USB Space
- Thread starter astrowunder
- Start date
jkoya
NA2 NSX
My car will be gone for a week at the ppf shop starting tomorrow, getting full ppf, tint and chrome delete installed. I haven't decided yet on whether to turn sentry mode on or off. I know there will be a lot of movement around the car during all the installs.
and if there is AT&T coverage.... but worst is that it will hit the 20% software stop right? Anyone actually tested out this 20% thing I wonder?
Darmie
Supporting Member
How much are you willing spend? LOL. Some people said they could using SSD drive.. so it could be a few TB in size if you want to spend the money?
I guess the easy way for this to work is to get a huge drive and never look at any of the event unless you have a cause to do so. I guess this Peeping Tom mode.. I mean Sentry Mode is still new to me.. so I can't really stop myself from watching the clips to see what triggered it LOL. If I am watching them, I might as well delete them after watching.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
Sentry mode never overwrites old files- it's not intended to.
If you're using it someplace with a lot of things coming near your car often to trigger it and using a small USB drive it can easily fill in a day
BluestarE3
Active Member
Dashcam (TeslaCam) videos are automatically overwritten unless explicitly saved. Sentry Mode videos are not automatically overwritten and must be manually deleted in order to recover storage space.
Mac user here and no, the flashdrive will format in Fat32 on your Mac so no problems there using Apple's Disk Utility.
I started out with a 128GB USB flashdrive. I have a newer MacBookPro with the USB-C connectors and picked up a USB-A/USB-C card reader to make accessing it on my computer easier (no adapter needed although I have one; it's easier to just plug in the reader directly from the car and skipping that step). Decided to go with a 128GB microSD card to use with it and am using ones that are rated for constant dashcam use with overwrites--I have a Blackvue card and just ordered a Samsung Pro Endurance U1 as a backup to switch out with. This type card will also handle heat issues better. I find this size more than sufficient for my driving/parking use presently. How often Sentry Mode gets triggered depends on where and how you park and if you use it all the time. Also this could change if Tesla enables more cameras down the road like adding the rear camera. I feel there is still a lot of experimenting going on with TeslaCam/Sentry mode. Our Blackvue dashcam is on 24/7 including parking and the camera itself only accomodates up to 128GB cards (that may change down the road now that they are using 4K), but I don't see a need to have more capacity at this point.
Eth3r
Member
I personally use a M.2. with USB adapter
https://www.amazon.com/External-Con...r&qid=1554319912&s=gateway&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P22RK1G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Of course you can get any size, just be sure to convert it to FAT32 using a program like Rufus. This solution is excellent for high read and write, you can also partition the drive for music.
https://www.amazon.com/External-Con...r&qid=1554319912&s=gateway&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P22RK1G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Of course you can get any size, just be sure to convert it to FAT32 using a program like Rufus. This solution is excellent for high read and write, you can also partition the drive for music.
Darmie
Supporting Member
I have 32GB stick. Been using sentry plenty recently because why not. Didn't know it doesn't overwrite like normal dashcam.
So yesterday I parked next to car that was already pretty banged up. For a moment I thought to move my car, but then decided I'm too paranoid. Still left plenty room that side. Make sure to turn on sentry.
Come back, and there's clear ding/dent on my door. Goddammit! Why people, why?!?!
Go in the car, and I noticed the dashcam icon was greyed out, not the red dot like usual. Had my laptop so check the contents. All looked good until the previous night, nothing from the day of. No driving video and no sentry. Darn!
I deleted good amount of videos and plugged the stick back. Started recording like normal. Drove somewhere and activated sentry. When I came back, it was again grayed out. Darn! Tried unplugging etc but no help. Formatted the stick again and now it's been working since yesterday.
I guess I should buy bigger stick, but I thought >32GB didn't work well even if you manage to format them to fat32. Has that been fixed now? I really wish to have sentry video from yesterday at least to know if it was intentional or accident. I also found couple scratches but those I'm not sure if they are from yesterday or earlier.
So yesterday I parked next to car that was already pretty banged up. For a moment I thought to move my car, but then decided I'm too paranoid. Still left plenty room that side. Make sure to turn on sentry.
Come back, and there's clear ding/dent on my door. Goddammit! Why people, why?!?!
Go in the car, and I noticed the dashcam icon was greyed out, not the red dot like usual. Had my laptop so check the contents. All looked good until the previous night, nothing from the day of. No driving video and no sentry. Darn!
I deleted good amount of videos and plugged the stick back. Started recording like normal. Drove somewhere and activated sentry. When I came back, it was again grayed out. Darn! Tried unplugging etc but no help. Formatted the stick again and now it's been working since yesterday.
I guess I should buy bigger stick, but I thought >32GB didn't work well even if you manage to format them to fat32. Has that been fixed now? I really wish to have sentry video from yesterday at least to know if it was intentional or accident. I also found couple scratches but those I'm not sure if they are from yesterday or earlier.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
Any size works fine, the only thing special about larger than 32GB is you need a 3rd party tool to format it FAT32 if running Windows
Ok, thanks. When the feature was introduced, I bought 128GB stick and was able to format it FAT32 with 3rd party tool. But after couple days it stopped working so I went with the safe option of using 32GB. But good to know it works, I should buy something bigger.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
The feature isn't entirely stable yet- folks are having corrupt storage issues with every size and type of storage- USB keys, SD cards, even SSDs.
This same thing happened when the original dashcam feature came out- but it seemed to have been fixed eventually... now that they've moved to 3 cameras plus sentry mode it seems to be unstable again.
srs5694
Active Member
Actually, probably not. FAT32, which is the only filesystem I know works with TeslaCam, has a 2TiB filesystem size limit. Thus, anything bigger than that will be wasted money. That said, perhaps it will work with some other filesystem. Personally, I tried it with ext4fs and it did not work, so that's out of the question, unless I erred in some way. Others have confirmed it does not work with exFAT. I doubt if it would work with NTFS or HFS+. Those are all the most likely filesystems, but maybe it'll work with something more obscure.
I've discovered that Tesla's computer does not unmount the filesystem when you stop recording. Thus, when you stop recording and pull the USB drive out, you're leaving the filesystem in an unsafe state, which is likely to cause filesystem corruption. You should always perform a filesystem check/repair on the filesystem when it's in such a state. Chances are that such an operation would have fixed the problem and gotten it working again for you, although I can't be 100% sure of that. (It could be it was so badly damaged in your case that a filesystem repair wouldn't have worked; or it could be that your drive is physically failing and creating a fresh filesystem just "plastered over" that problem.) I've found that the same is true of music media, even though those should probably be mounted read-only to avoid this problem (unless Tesla is storing file-playback position data or something on the music media).
Tesla really should provide a "safe eject" type option. Used properly, that would most likely eliminate these problems, or at least greatly reduce their frequency.
Darmie
Supporting Member
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
srs5694
Active Member
According to WikiPedia, FAT32 has a 2TiB filesystem-size limit on media with 512-byte sectors. To get the 16TiB (note: TiB, not TB) limit, you need a medium with 4KiB sectors. Thus, we're both right, although I grant that USB devices bigger than 2TiB do usually have 4KiB sectors, so you might be more correct than I was. That's not true of all USB adapters for SATA devices, though. When you plug an over-2TiB disk into some adapters, it ends up looking like a sub-2TiB device, which is obviously not helpful.
