USB corruption for dashcam recording

[x t2m x]

For me, I had issues when the Sentry release was loaded into the car. I switched sticks to a USB3 128GB and have had no problems since.
[Forgot to add that I had to reformat from exFAT to FAT32 first (with MiniTool Partition Wizard), then plugged it in to the car.

 

[MarkBrokeIt]

Maybe it's precisely this price war that's causing problems.

Nope. That sort of price war doesn't last for 10yrs. Maybe a price war on other components (like flash), but I think there are a finite # of suppliers for that, so not sure that's really the issue either.

And the constant push to more speed, USB 3.0, USB 3.1, Thunderbolt compatibility, variety of connectors and cables, licensing fees, more demand on drivers and OS.

No to basically all of those things, and not relevant to the issues being discussed.

What I meant was that if you're designing hardware and USB2 meets throughput requirements, it's a simpler, cheaper and more vanilla solution.

No, both are equally vanilla.

I worked in the USB industry for >10yrs, including the first 4 or 5 for USB 3.

 

[latimerluis]

I never received an "X", the camera icon just disappeared sometime in the last two days. And it looks like my USB stick no longer works. I took the stick out and plugged it into my Macbook and it's no longer recognizing it. Today marks a full week since I first formatted the drive and plugging it into the car. It was working before and after the firmware upgrade as well.

Kingston DTSE9 (USB 2.0) 16GB

Based on previous responses, it seems like USB 3.0 devices and/or SSD solutions seem to be the most robust. Is that a fair summary so far?

 

[Fernand]

Looks like it's random. If you used Sentry Mode on a 16GB stick you might have filled it, and then all bets are off, that's sort of the last condition that gets tested. ;-)

 

[Fernand]

Nope. That sort of price war doesn't last for 10yrs. Maybe a price war on other components (like flash), but I think there are a finite # of suppliers for that, so not sure that's really the issue either.

No to basically all of those things, and not relevant to the issues being discussed.

OK, no to everything.

 

[SMAlset]

I never received an "X", the camera icon just disappeared sometime in the last two days. And it looks like my USB stick no longer works. I took the stick out and plugged it into my Macbook and it's no longer recognizing it. Today marks a full week since I first formatted the drive and plugging it into the car. It was working before and after the firmware upgrade as well.

Kingston DTSE9 (USB 2.0) 16GB

Based on previous responses, it seems like USB 3.0 devices and/or SSD solutions seem to be the most robust. Is that a fair summary so far?

16GB is really small for 3 cameras, 1 hour buffering and now Sentry saved files when used over days. May have filled up and corrupted the drive over rewrites. Can you do disk repair on it through Disk Utilities? If you've used the drive before you just might have had a lot of cells that became unusable over time. Unlike magnetic storage, as I understand it nand flash actually destroys the layers each time it overwrites until it can't use any more.

As for media choice you should look for something that is rated for dashcam use, most USBs out there will not be (more for storage of songs, photos, documents, videos in general use). I'm using a microSD card in a card reader. Have a Blackvue specific card (we have a Blackvue dashcam) and have a Samsung Endurance Pro card coming this week as a back up. Both are 128GB FWIW. SSD uses flash as well. Be sure to check whatever device you are look at for operating temperatures, both high and low.

From kingston.com/flashdrive :
"Please Note: Most Kingston Flash memory is designed and tested for compatibility with consumer devices. For industrial applications or special use applications that are beyond the standard daily consumer usage, it is recommended that you contact Kingston directly. A special configuration may be required especially in applications that will greatly impact Flash cell endurance (see section 3.0)."

Security cameras for example would fall under their industrial use and dashcams are not listed under consumer or even industrial on their charts.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

I never received an "X", the camera icon just disappeared sometime in the last two days. And it looks like my USB stick no longer works. I took the stick out and plugged it into my Macbook and it's no longer recognizing it. Today marks a full week since I first formatted the drive and plugging it into the car. It was working before and after the firmware upgrade as well.

Kingston DTSE9 (USB 2.0) 16GB

Based on previous responses, it seems like USB 3.0 devices and/or SSD solutions seem to be the most robust. Is that a fair summary so far?

That Kingston device must have been some cheap garbage (not necessarily cheap to buy, but cheaply made), to have failed totally to the point of not even appearing as a readable device. I am surprised you burned through all the write cycles to the point it failed in a week. Perhaps it lacked proper wear leveling or just was a bad unit which underperformed in write cycles, but if it was new, I am really surprised. Looking at reviews it seems to have middling quality ... sometimes fine, sometimes literally falls apart, and looks like write performance is pretty low (though it would have likely been technically enough, it would have been closer to the limit than one would like, as devices slow the more they're written to).

I would suggest to stick to newer Samsung and Sandisk devices, others may work fine but those two brands you can more or less count on to have proper wear leveling and decent write cycle life, in addition to decent performance (at least, if it claims so on the package - look for the claimed write speeds, many deceive here with marketing but these two brands are more reliable here). Even with these name brands, keep in mind the all important write speed is rarely specified much less guaranteed. A "200MB/s" (read) device will likely sustain writes in the neighborhood of 25-50MB/s. However, that is more than plenty fast, assuming it is consistent, for our purposes.

Even a 64GB USB3 device can be reasonable priced : https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BAR-Plus-64GB-MUF-64BE4/dp/B07BPGF6N3/ - this is what I'm using currently. Eventually I plan to do the Raspberry Pi thing but I haven't bothered yet.

 

[Fernand]

Forgot to pull the USB stick when I rebooted my M3 last night.
THAT was a dumb move. It'll be better now after reformatting.

Ooh! Love that dark grey Samsung USB3 thingie. Now it will
be completely invisible in the console pit. Anybody figure out
a contrasting sticker to mark where to shove the stick in?

Oh, but judging by the tremendous response of police to being
handed a SentryMode recording of a douchebag breaking an M3
rear window, complete with license plate of "getaway vehicle",
spending money on eternal media to save your car's precious
memories is about as useful as bronzing your nail clippings.

A high power CO2 laser wired into the alarm might be money
better spent.

 

[latimerluis]

SSD uses flash as well. Be sure to check whatever device you are look at for operating temperatures, both high and low.

I decided on going down the SSD route, since it was reasonably cheap and because I can partition the drive for USB music playback as well.

A "200MB/s" (read) device will likely sustain writes in the neighborhood of 25-50MB/s. However, that is more than plenty fast, assuming it is consistent, for our purposes.

Specifically, I looked for a SSD using 3D Nand technology after your guidance. I dont know much about this stuff apart from it being better than 2D Nand, haha. Apparently, Its supposed to operate more efficienty and has quicker read/write speeds which you mentioned would be important.

Plugged it in this evening and will update on any failures. It was super easy to set up on a Mac following the directions found on YouTube.

DIERYA K1 120GB Professional SSD... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M5JSDW6?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Side note: I dumped ~35 GB’s of mp3’s on a separate partition and didn’t realize that Tesla would go through and actually index the music after plugging it in. I guess it makes complete sense to do. It took roughly 2 minutes to index my library, but accessing any of my music while the TeslaCam is recording doesn’t seem to be a problem. Loving the setup already. Thank you to this community for the ideas!

 

[SMAlset]

So for those of you trying out the SSD as storage, in addition to buying the cabling are you picking up an enclosure? Don't believe they are meant for just laying out in the open but for putting inside of computers or am I wrong. Thought they were subject to static shock. Do you know if these are rated for 24/7 dashcam use or does that void their warranty?

 

[BioSehnsucht]

I decided on going down the SSD route, since it was reasonably cheap and because I can partition the drive for USB music playback as well.


Specifically, I looked for a SSD using 3D Nand technology after your guidance. I dont know much about this stuff apart from it being better than 2D Nand, haha. Apparently, Its supposed to operate more efficienty and has quicker read/write speeds which you mentioned would be important.

Plugged it in this evening and will update on any failures. It was super easy to set up on a Mac following the directions found on YouTube.

DIERYA K1 120GB Professional SSD... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M5JSDW6?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Side note: I dumped ~35 GB’s of mp3’s on a separate partition and didn’t realize that Tesla would go through and actually index the music after plugging it in. I guess it makes complete sense to do. It took roughly 2 minutes to index my library, but accessing any of my music while the TeslaCam is recording doesn’t seem to be a problem. Loving the setup already. Thank you to this community for the ideas!

SSDs write performance is usually actually listed in the specifications (as it is on the one you linked, unlike USB thumb drives), and while still usually less than read performance, is generally much closer to read performance than for USB flash devices. There's a number of reasons for this, and you can buy USB SSD's that are almost as small as a normal USB thumb drive, but my comments about 200MB/s read devices only sustaining 25-50MB/s of writes is more about the normal USB thumb drives, not proper SSDs. I've never heard of the brand you linked, but chances are it'll be fine - it's not like if it fails in a few years you're going to lose important documents or anything, you'll just have to get a new one and put your music library on it again.

"3D" NAND vs "2D" NAND alone doesn't mean much, other than that it's using newer fabrication tech. For our purposes, either would be fine when talking about SSDs.

So for those of you trying out the SSD as storage, in addition to buying the cabling are you picking up an enclosure? Don't believe they are meant for just laying out in the open but for putting inside of computers or am I wrong. Thought they were subject to static shock. Do you know if these are rated for 24/7 dashcam use or does that void their warranty?

2.5" form factor SSDs will be fine naked as long as you're not subjecting them to extremely large shocks. They would survive most auto accidents without problems. It might still be a good idea to use double sided velcro or something to stick it into place just so you don't hear it sliding around or anything, but the device will be fine. It's HDDs that are senstive to vibration and generally a bad fit for automotive environments. If you were to get a m.2 form factor SSD, which is a bare PCB, you'd want an enclosure though (but only because the PCB is exposed) - I'm not sure there's any direct USB to m.2 cables anyways, so you'd probably need an enclosure regardless. I would stick with regular 2.5" form factor SSD for simplicity and likely lower cost.

 

[Robertg2]

The issue is a software problem from Tesla with the TeslaCam drives. They are formatted FAT 32 and filling up fast from the 4 cameras and not overlapping once the drives get full. The larger thumb drive you have, the longer it takes to fill up. Once full, it corrupts and shows the "X".

 

[BioSehnsucht]

The issue is a software problem from Tesla with the TeslaCam drives. They are formatted FAT 32 and filling up fast from the 4 cameras and not overlapping once the drives get full. The larger thumb drive you have, the longer it takes to fill up. Once full, it corrupts and shows the "X".

The X can happen for any reason that prevents it from working.

A full drive is one way (more space is needed since they added the side cameras, plus if you use sentry mode MUCH more space may be needed depending on how often it's triggered - it would be nice if there was a built in way to review / delete videos on the vehicle itself). The normal recording of dashcam functionality when driving around however should be keeping only an hour (ignoring things you have told it to save by tapping on the dashcam icon), so if you don't have sentry cam running and aren't saving any videos, once it reaches the size required for all three cameras for an hour it should not need any more space (possibly, an hour plus a minute, if it deletes the oldest clips AFTER it finishes recording the current clip).

The other more common (or at least, used to be more common) cause is filesystem corruption. Whenever the screen crashes, is rebooted, or apparently just whenever the hell it feels like it when you park the car (though I have this problem almost never now that I have a faster drive), the filesystem may be corrupted. Slow USB sticks make this a more common problem, potentially - I suspect faster drives are more likely to finish flushing the writes as the system powers down when parked, and slower drives may lose power before they're done writing, causing filesystem corruption.

The latter issue is arguably a software problem, in that ideally it should wait for the device to become idle before powering off the screen, though a good USB device seems to solve it generally. Plus, it would be trivial to have the car perform a fsck on the filesystem when an error is detected to self-heal, rather than just giving up.

The first issue can also be solved with software, though a full drive is a full drive - if you decide never to clean up anything, would you rather it start deleting the things you told it to keep or to stop recording? I think a combination of better status notification (perhaps even a disk full % indication), and the ability to review/manage/delete recordings from the car itself, would be wonderful. Maybe when we get that update to let use Netflix at Superchargers ...

 

[CSFTN]

I decided on going down the SSD route, since it was reasonably cheap and because I can partition the drive for USB music playback as well.


Specifically, I looked for a SSD using 3D Nand technology after your guidance. I dont know much about this stuff apart from it being better than 2D Nand, haha. Apparently, Its supposed to operate more efficienty and has quicker read/write speeds which you mentioned would be important.

Plugged it in this evening and will update on any failures. It was super easy to set up on a Mac following the directions found on YouTube.

DIERYA K1 120GB Professional SSD... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M5JSDW6?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Side note: I dumped ~35 GB’s of mp3’s on a separate partition and didn’t realize that Tesla would go through and actually index the music after plugging it in. I guess it makes complete sense to do. It took roughly 2 minutes to index my library, but accessing any of my music while the TeslaCam is recording doesn’t seem to be a problem. Loving the setup already. Thank you to this community for the ideas!

You pick that brand for any reason other than listed features and price? If you zoom in on the picture of the device, they don't spell "rated" correctly. A small detail but ... I'd rather buy a recognizable brand, like WD Samsung etc.

 

[latimerluis]

You pick that brand for any reason other than listed features and price? If you zoom in on the picture of the device, they don't spell "rated" correctly. A small detail but ... I'd rather buy a recognizable brand, like WD Samsung etc.

I loved that the name of the company is probably pronounced as “diarrhea”. It goes well with fart mode. Makes my kid laugh.

No, really, it was just about the price and features for that price. Apparently someone opened it up and found Samsung parts.

 

[K-MTG]

Here's how I solved this.
First an overview: The issue is because the car cuts power to the flash drive before the drive had a chance to gracefully close the last write operation. Therefore data corruption aka 'dirty bit'. This problem can be resolved by using a special type of SSD that is designed to handle this situation. These SSDs have Tantalum Capacitors which means after power loss, the capacitors will continue providing power to the drive for a few seconds more so the drive can complete the write operation properly without a dirty bit leftover.

They are usually used in embedded and industrial systems. One such SSD is RECDATA Series 16 which you can pick up from Amazon for $29.99 (for the 64GB version). You will also need a USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA adaptor cable which you can also get on Amazon for $10.95. (e.g. StarTech). So for $40 you got yourself a rock solid dashcam solution. Heck you can even unplug the drive from the USB while you drive and plug it back after a couple of minutes. No corruption, no issue and recording continues.

PS: Don't forget to format your drive as FAT32 with a freeware program like MiniTool Partition Wizard.


View attachment 346457 View attachment 346456

I ordered this but when I first get into the car in the morning - the car doesn't see the drive. So I have to unplug it and plug it back in for it to start recording. Anyone else have this issue?

 

[Indian King]

I tried using the procedure outlined above and it still gives me error saying that the USB dirve is too slow. It is an USB 3.0 drive and pretty fast. I tried with a USB 2.0 drive too and same issue. I did not have the issue initially, but of late it has become persistent

 

[jelloslug]

I tried using the procedure outlined above and it still gives me error saying that the USB dirve is too slow. It is an USB 3.0 drive and pretty fast. I tried with a USB 2.0 drive too and same issue. I did not have the issue initially, but of late it has become persistent

What are the actual specs of the drive? Just because it says "USB 3.0" does not mean it is actually a drive suitable for constant writing.

 

[Cnasty]

I tried using the procedure outlined above and it still gives me error saying that the USB dirve is too slow. It is an USB 3.0 drive and pretty fast. I tried with a USB 2.0 drive too and same issue. I did not have the issue initially, but of late it has become persistent

Same here.

This is the one I was using in our 3s before the V10 update and worked fine every single time.

Now consistent errors that it isnt fast enough.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EZ0X55C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[CSFTN]

So now there are 3 cameras being recorded. That would imply 50% more data per second (of course, depends on sampling rate and compression method) so perhaps the memory cards need to be 50% faster. Anyone measure/analyze the data amount per second being written on a AP2.5 system under V10?