Tesla SSD coming February 2023

[stopcrazypp]

But it costs more than $28 since you also need an adaptor as well

And again, I will not buy any storage off of Amazon - too much of a crap shoot. I have read a lot on the USB issues here and I see a strong correlation between drive failure and those who bought off of Amazon.

YMMV

Yes, Amazon has a lot of counterfeits (made worse by Amazon mixing their stock even if you buy shipped and sold by them and not from a third party). For all the cards I buy, I do a speed test using CrystalDiskMark. Fake cards wouldn't be able to meet the continuous write specs of a real one. If I suspect the capacity, there is also multiple capacity tests available. But the high endurance cards are also available at other retailers like B&H or BestBuy.

Yes, you do need an adapter (most people use the $11 Sandisk mobile mate), but for those that use it for music also, you can get one with dual card slots and that saves you the cost of a second adapter (and also a second usb connection). I got the Ugreen one below, mainly just to have a pigtail to reduce the heat to the unit from the USB connection (the second slot is just a bonus). One theory is the early failure of cards/drives is related to that heat.
https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-MobileMate-microSD-Card-Reader/dp/B07G5JV2B5?th=1

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Reader-Memory-Windows-Simultaneously/dp/B01EFPX9XA/

The cost isn't a whole lot different than a USB stick and much less than any SSD.

 

[Rmchrger]

$100 Samsung T5 SSD going strong for 3 yrs. 1 yr in 2019 and 2 in a 2020. Been flawless and have it partitioned with a bunch of music on the other half.

Just to add it's also going through a taptes usb hub. Hopefully it all continues to work well.

 

[Randy-12]

Tesla removed data from those ports due parts shortage for my 2022. I did replace it with aftermarket module to re-enable data successfully. However, whatever the reason, it doesn't play nice with having TeslaCam and Music on two different Drives. I have to have it on a single drive with two partitions.

I also had no data on the console ports. I changed out the ports with the Tparts data ports.

I have a usb key plugged into it that has my music on it and I have the original Tesla usb key in the glove box for sentry/dashcam.
Both work great, no issues.
The only hick up is that if you want to use the display to reformat and erase the tesla key you need to unplug the music key. The car will not format with 2 drives plugged into it.

 

[Kevy Baby]

$100 Samsung T5 SSD going strong for 3 yrs. 1 yr in 2019 and 2 in a 2020. Been flawless and have it partitioned with a bunch of music on the other half.

That's what I've been using, though I split 750 (music) / 250 (TeslaCam). Currently have about 450 GB on the Music side, so glad I split the way I did

 

[Rmchrger]

Samsung T7 1gb portable SSD on sale at bestb today for $89.

Goodcdeal of yout going that route.

Hey, anyone else having typing issues on the forum? Sentences getting spaced way apart, cursor jumping around when trying to fix typos. The more I try to fix it, the worse it gets. Had to type this is my messages and copy it over.

Sorry, back to the ssd drives.

 

[cappo3]

I bought a High Endurance 128gb microSD card and a USB adapter, both branded Kingston. The adapter has both USB-A and USB-C on board, which makes it very practical also for uses unrelated to the car (transferring photos from cameras/phones to a laptop, for example). I spent south of 50 bucks for both and they've worked flawlessly for the last three years. Only caveat, the adapter can get properly hot. It's usually warm when in the car, but it gets fire hot when downloading files to a computer as in my example. I'm not sure that's a good thing for the health of the card itself.
Maybe 128gb aren't much these days, but I don't use it for music. Probably more space would come in handy if I did.

Just one recommendation to all, keep an eye on the free space left on your cards/sticks/SSDs. My drive was full and stopped saving recordings just the day before I was touched by a truck changing lanes. No recordings, big nuisance with the insurance. Do format the drive now and then, so you're on top of things when needed.

 

[wornout]

I still don't get why people insist that one needs a high-end SD card? I used two 256 GB SanDisk Cruzer thumb drives (one for music and one for Sentry) for close to two years until I had to get more storage. Never once had a problem with either one. I firmly believe the supply chain you chose to get the drive from makes a huge difference: I got mine from Costco, whose supply chain I trust far more than ANYBODY on Amazon (even the manufacturers).

I killed two 256GB "Max Endurance" (designed for dashcam use) in my 2021 Tesla Model S. Just killed my 2nd one last week. And yes, I always buy from Amazon.com, shipped from Amazon.com; I never buy from unauthorized resellers or third party stores.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084CJJRBW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=

 

[Knightshade]

If you killed two max endurance drives in a 2021 car there's something wrong with your car or your supplier of drives (or your adapter I suppose)

 

[metroplex]

He does live in California... Maybe the extreme heat got to them? Vehicle interiors can get very hot in the summer.

 

[stopcrazypp]

He does live in California... Maybe the extreme heat got to them? Vehicle interiors can get very hot in the summer.

Max Endurance cards are rated for 85C (185F) operating temperature. I have measured my cars temperature extensively here in Northern CA, even baking in the sun, the max temp near the headliner is 150-160F in the summer. The temp near the glove box and center console is considerably cooler, about 30F lower in temp.

If the interior does get to 185F a lot of the adhesives in the car may fail.

I vote he may have gotten counterfeit cards or the reader may be defective.

 

[metroplex]

Max Endurance cards are rated for 85C (185F) operating temperature. I have measured my cars temperature extensively here in Northern CA, even baking in the sun, the max temp near the headliner is 150-160F in the summer. The temp near the glove box and center console is considerably cooler, about 30F lower in temp.

If the interior does get to 185F a lot of the adhesives in the car may fail.

I vote he may have gotten counterfeit cards or the reader may be defective.

Can't speak for Northern California, but in Death Valley / NTC the vehicle interiors can get to 180F+ just sitting under the sun in the summer. Add the increase in temperature of the card itself during normal operations and it's well above normal operating temperatures.

It's more likely the reader can't handle the temperature extremes.

 

[Knightshade]

If only the car offered some sort of protection for cabin overheating or something....

 

[stopcrazypp]

Can't speak for Northern California, but in Death Valley / NTC the vehicle interiors can get to 180F+ just sitting under the sun in the summer. Add the increase in temperature of the card itself during normal operations and it's well above normal operating temperatures.

I find it unlikely he would be parking regularly in death valley, but again, the highest temps are reached near the roof and higher up in the cabin (and surfaces that get sunlight directly). Glovebox and console area (where phone charging is) is 20-30F cooler, which would put the card at 150-160F. If even the max endurance cards can't survive in his application, then there is no other portable USB storage media that would survive either, given they are the highest rated available (USB sticks and SSDs have much lower max temperature ratings).

It's more likely the reader can't handle the temperature extremes.

Given it's killing the cards, I find it more likely the reader is overheating or shorting. Probably would be helpful for @wornout to mention what reader it is (if it is a mobilemate, probably would help to add a USB pigtail to reduce heat transfer from USB port or get a reader with its own pigtail).

I also suggest him try to reformat on a computer and also do a speed test on the card using CrystalDiskMark (also make it a habit to speed test every new card). All the max/high endurance cards are V30 rated or faster, so at minimum they must support 30MB/s sequential write speeds. Counterfeits are unlikely to sustain this.
SD Memory Card Formatter | SD Association
These cards are also warrantied for dashcam usage, so a warranty claim may be possible (although shipping costs might not make it worth it).

Buying from Amazon (even when shipped and sold by Amazon) does not eliminate the possibility of counterfeits, given Amazon is known to borrow the inventory of third party sellers if it is nearer to your location for shipping.

 

[wornout]

If you killed two max endurance drives in a 2021 car there's something wrong with your car or your supplier of drives (or your adapter I suppose)

I don't think anything is wrong with the car. From my work experience (former infrastructure SRE that worked closely with hyperscale datacenter hardware), I'm believe/speculating the Sandisk Max Endurance card just isn't up to the task of dashcam SD card. One of my work projects was dealing with thousands of failed "consumer-grade" SSDs because of daily code deployments. When I mean consumer-grade SSD, it wasn't bad quality SSDs; it was top tier consumer-grade SSDs. The solution ended up buying being enterprise-grade SSDs that were tailored to our specific read/write workloads at like 4x the cost of consumer-grade SSDs.

Adapter is the following. I have two of these so I know it's not a defective adapter (unless the particular model or firmware is defective).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G5JV2B5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

TLDR: I don't think anything is wrong with the car or adapter. IMHO, Sandisk Max Endurance isn't up good enough for Tesla dashcam.

 

[wornout]

Max Endurance cards are rated for 85C (185F) operating temperature. I have measured my cars temperature extensively here in Northern CA, even baking in the sun, the max temp near the headliner is 150-160F in the summer. The temp near the glove box and center console is considerably cooler, about 30F lower in temp.

If the interior does get to 185F a lot of the adhesives in the car may fail.

I vote he may have gotten counterfeit cards or the reader may be defective.

One of the failed cards was successfully warrantied by Sandisk (with legit serial number and Amazon receipt). I'm also super meticulous in shopping. It's unlikely that I purchased counterfeit cards. I also have two of the Sandisk readers. It's a possibility that the reader firmware is causing corruption. However, I think it's more likely that that the cards are just not good enough.

 

[wornout]

I find it unlikely he would be parking regularly in death valley, but again, the highest temps are reached near the roof and higher up in the cabin (and surfaces that get sunlight directly). Glovebox and console area (where phone charging is) is 20-30F cooler, which would put the card at 150-160F. If even the max endurance cards can't survive in his application, then there is no other portable USB storage media that would survive either, given they are the highest rated available (USB sticks and SSDs have much lower max temperature ratings).

Given it's killing the cards, I find it more likely the reader is overheating or shorting. Probably would be helpful for @wornout to mention what reader it is (if it is a mobilemate, probably would help to add a USB pigtail to reduce heat transfer from USB port or get a reader with its own pigtail).

I also suggest him try to reformat on a computer and also do a speed test on the card using CrystalDiskMark (also make it a habit to speed test every new card). All the max/high endurance cards are V30 rated or faster, so at minimum they must support 30MB/s sequential write speeds. Counterfeits are unlikely to sustain this.
SD Memory Card Formatter | SD Association
These cards are also warrantied for dashcam usage, so a warranty claim may be possible (although shipping costs might not make it worth it).

Buying from Amazon (even when shipped and sold by Amazon) does not eliminate the possibility of counterfeits, given Amazon is known to borrow the inventory of third party sellers if it is nearer to your location for shipping.

I did notice it was hot. However, when I purchased it, I checked the datasheet and operating temps. IMHO, my cabin temps in Bay Area are well within the operating temps.

Yep, Sandisk warrantied my first failed one without any questions. Presumably, Sandisk also validated the serial numbers for my warranty replacement. I plan to file another warranty claim this week for my second failed card.

I also have this exact same Sandisk Max Endurance cards running in two Raspberry Pi's with decent amount of logging. It's been 1-2 years and they have been perfectly fine. But writing logs to disk is significantly less reads/writes than writing multiple streams of dashcam video.

 

[wornout]

If it wasn’t for the upcoming Tesla SSD, I might have tried the biggest SLC SD card I can find.

Something like this.

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/delkin-devices-inc/SE32TRZFX-1B000-3/13882292

https://www.delkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/SD-Industrial-Spec-Sheet-Jan-2021.pdf

 

[RandyS]

Samsung T7 1gb portable SSD on sale at bestb today for $89.

Goodcdeal of yout going that route.

Hey, anyone else having typing issues on the forum? Sentences getting spaced way apart, cursor jumping around when trying to fix typos. The more I try to fix it, the worse it gets. Had to type this is my messages and copy it over.

Sorry, back to the ssd drives.

fyi Best Buy has refurbished T7 500GB Drives on their website for about $50...

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-geek-squad-certified-refurbished-t7-500gb-external-usb-3-2-gen-2-portable-ssd-with-hardware-encryption-indigo-blue/6415698.p?skuId=6415698

 

[stopcrazypp]

I don't think anything is wrong with the car. From my work experience (former infrastructure SRE that worked closely with hyperscale datacenter hardware), I'm believe/speculating the Sandisk Max Endurance card just isn't up to the task of dashcam SD card. One of my work projects was dealing with thousands of failed "consumer-grade" SSDs because of daily code deployments. When I mean consumer-grade SSD, it wasn't bad quality SSDs; it was top tier consumer-grade SSDs. The solution ended up buying being enterprise-grade SSDs that were tailored to our specific read/write workloads at like 4x the cost of consumer-grade SSDs.

Consumer portable SSDs are not warrantied or rated for writes (mentioned in post below), Max/High Endurance however is. For the High endurance, 128GB card is rated for the equivalent of 117 TBW (good for about 2 years 24/7 dashcam/sentry), 256GB would be 234 TBW (about 4 years). Max endurance is rated 6x the writes of high endurance, so would last even longer.
MASTER THREAD: USB drives that work with Sentry and TeslaCam

Your cards wearing from normal writes in such a short time simply does not make sense.

Adapter is the following. I have two of these so I know it's not a defective adapter (unless the particular model or firmware is defective).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G5JV2B5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

TLDR: I don't think anything is wrong with the car or adapter. IMHO, Sandisk Max Endurance isn't up good enough for Tesla dashcam.

One of the failed cards was successfully warrantied by Sandisk (with legit serial number and Amazon receipt). I'm also super meticulous in shopping. It's unlikely that I purchased counterfeit cards. I also have two of the Sandisk readers. It's a possibility that the reader firmware is causing corruption. However, I think it's more likely that that the cards are just not good enough.

I did notice it was hot. However, when I purchased it, I checked the datasheet and operating temps. IMHO, my cabin temps in Bay Area are well within the operating temps.

Yep, Sandisk warrantied my first failed one without any questions. Presumably, Sandisk also validated the serial numbers for my warranty replacement. I plan to file another warranty claim this week for my second failed card.

I also have this exact same Sandisk Max Endurance cards running in two Raspberry Pi's with decent amount of logging. It's been 1-2 years and they have been perfectly fine. But writing logs to disk is significantly less reads/writes than writing multiple streams of dashcam video.

Cabin temps plus a super hot reader may put it near borderline (especially if area is well insulated). I didn't buy the Mobilemate because I have read it gets very hot and as I mention upthread, one theory for premature failure is that reader getting hot. A short USB extension cable might help if the heat is coming from the port, but I personally got this dual slot reader that had its own pigtail:
https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Reader-Memory-Windows-Simultaneously/dp/B01EFPX9XA/
Been using it almost 2 years with my Model 3 with 128GB high endurance card with no problems (only had the unmount issue in one of the updates that affected lots of people, but flawless after Tesla shortly issued new update to fix it).

 

[wornout]

Consumer portable SSDs are not warrantied or rated for writes (mentioned in post below), Max/High Endurance however is. For the High endurance, 128GB card is rated for the equivalent of 117 TBW (good for about 2 years 24/7 dashcam/sentry), 256GB would be 234 TBW (about 4 years). Max endurance is rated 6x the writes of high endurance, so would last even longer.
MASTER THREAD: USB drives that work with Sentry and TeslaCam

Your cards wearing from normal writes in such a short time simply does not make sense.




Cabin temps plus a super hot reader may put it near borderline (especially if area is well insulated). I didn't buy the Mobilemate because I have read it gets very hot and as I mention upthread, one theory for premature failure is that reader getting hot. A short USB extension cable might help if the heat is coming from the port, but I personally got this dual slot reader that had its own pigtail:
https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Reader-Memory-Windows-Simultaneously/dp/B01EFPX9XA/
Been using it almost 2 years with my Model 3 with 128GB high endurance card with no problems (only had the unmount issue in one of the updates that affected lots of people, but flawless after Tesla shortly issued new update to fix it).

While I understand that it's "rated" for 234 TBW, it's still a $60 card with consumer-grade MLC/TLC that uses "tricks" to make it more reliable (i.e. overprovisioning, wear leveling). I'm speculating that Max Endurance is the same memory as your typical $20 Sandisk card, but "binned" for higher performance. It's why there's a massive price difference between enterprise/industrial grade memory (i.e. SLC) vs consumer grade (i.e. MLC/TLC). End of day, I just don't think MLC/TLC memory is reliable enough for left/right/front/rear/interior dashcam writes. I'm speculating it's probably designed for a front dashcam writes, not simultaneous left/right/front/rear/interior/24-7-sentry dashcam writes.

Tesla OEM isn't immune from using the incorrect memory type. It's not an unusual problem to encounter in solid state storage.

Tesla MCU1 eMMC Failure Explained

On the reader being too hot, I think that's a fair hypothesis. I didn't give it much thought as I still think Max Endurance card isn't good enough. But since it's $15, I bought the UGREEN adapter and try it out. It'll hold me over until Tesla releases it's SSD; I plan to order it and hopefully not have to deal with this problem again, lol.