Tesla formats it in exfat and in the process names the drive "Tesladrive".
So, over this past week (I'm retired), I've tried various combinations and various thumb drives and even one SanDisk drive. A few of my attempts are noted below.
I was able to get the Tesla formatted thumb drives to work, but not entirely. For instance, when I format a drive in the Tesla it takes the whole drive for the teslacam. I then tried to create two folders on the tesla formatted drive. While I successfully created "Teslacam" and "Music" folders, the Teslacam folder was not recognized by the Tesla sentry and thus would not store any sentry vids. Also, when I went into the media player and then the USB option, I found two folders listed there, one was music and the other was a folder called Teslacam. The music was accessible but the teslacam folder was not, meaning when I opened the sentry (little camera on the touchscreen) there were no vids saved/stored. I then took another thumb drive and let Tesla format it. I took it into the house and plugged it into my desktop. There was one folder called “Tesladrive” and it took all the diskspace. So, using disk mgmt., I repartitioned the drive into two distinct drives, in my case F and G. I left the F drive as “Tesladrive” and I named the other “Music” and dumped a few mp3’s into it. As for the Tesladrive, I created three folders in it, one called RecentClips, another as SavedClips, and the last as Sentryclips, the same way Tesla sentry would name them. I then copied a few clips from a saved drive I had (discussed later) to see if I could view them via the touchscreen.
I then ejected the thumb drive and plugged it into the Tesla’s sentry port. It should be noted that at this point, I had only gotten into the Tesla and not started it. I then put my foot on the brake pedal and effectively started the Tesla. No camera on the screen, BUT, accessing the thumb drive via the media player, I was able to see and play mp3’s that I had saved to the thumb drive. I then left the Tesla, went back into the house and via the phone app, turned on the sentry and locked the doors. Leaving the phone in the house, I went into the garage and walked around the Tesla, the lights flashed and the display showed that it was recording. Thinking I had solved the issue, I went back into the house and grabbed my phone, entered the Tesla to see if there were any sentry clips… NOPE! There was still no camera lit up or even greyed out, it just wasn’t there.
My next dubious attempt was to take another virgin thumb drive and using windows format it to exfat, then using disk mgmt., I created two drives on the thumb drive, both exfat and named them just like Tesla would have. Again, for the music drive “G”, I saved a few mp3’s and this time, I left the teslacam alone to see if the Tesla would recognize the drive and create the sentry folders within it. Back to the Tesla and inserted the drive into the sentry port and hit the brake again. Now I had the sentry camera lit up, but no music. At this point, I removed the drive, went back in the house and grabbed a glass of merlot.
Finally, out of desperation, I took my old SanDisk drive and went back to the garage. This drive was created quite some time ago using windows to create two partitions, teslacam and music. I plugged it into the sentry port and hit the brake pedal. The camera lit up and I had music. So, for kicks, I exited the car, back into the house, and activated the sentry and locked the Tesla. Then back out to the garage without my phone. As before, I walked around the car, the lights flashed and the screen lit up with the “recording” message. So, back in the house and grabbed my phone. Sat in the Tesla and without putting my foot on the brake, I could see the camera was lit up and the red light was present. Touched it and then opened the sentryclip folder. There was a new clip of me walking around the car from a few moments earlier (and a bunch of clips from several months ago).
I can’t explain it, but I left the old SanDisk in the Tesla and tossed the 3 thumb drives (all Samsung) into a drawer in my home office. So, for now my sentry and music both work, though I still don’t have any album art, but I’m OK with that.
FWIW, I should note that during this process 2021.24.5 was installed.