USB for dashcam exFAT vs FAT

[Gerben]

High endurance has nothing to do with handling vibration. None of them have any moving parts.

You can get USB flash drives that are just as "vibration rated" as any SSD or SD card.





First you said you have an SSD, now it's an SDcard?

Anyway, THIS is what "high endurance" means- the type of flash used is rated for more write cycles than "cheap" flash is.

That said- as repeatedly explained- you don't need that either because the car writes very little data compared to folks who are running multiple 4k cameras via 3rd party setups.

A 256GB "regular" flash key or SDcard would take 10+ years to use up its rated write cycles at the 2MB/s the car is writing data in normal use.

A "high endurance" card might get you 20-30 years instead of 10-15... but who keeps dashcam footage for 20 years?

With micro ssd I meant MicroSD

 

[Gerben]

High endurance has nothing to do with handling vibration. None of them have any moving parts.

You can get USB flash drives that are just as "vibration rated" as any SSD or SD card.





First you said you have an SSD, now it's an SDcard?

Anyway, THIS is what "high endurance" means- the type of flash used is rated for more write cycles than "cheap" flash is.

That said- as repeatedly explained- you don't need that either because the car writes very little data compared to folks who are running multiple 4k cameras via 3rd party setups.

A 256GB "regular" flash key or SDcard would take 10+ years to use up its rated write cycles at the 2MB/s the car is writing data in normal use.

A "high endurance" card might get you 20-30 years instead of 10-15... but who keeps dashcam footage for 20 years?

And sorry if I was wrong, It's just what I picked up on the internet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Kevy Baby]

And... Are there a bunch of low level Google employee trolls on here suggesting to Google "LMGTFY" every comment posted on this site? I'm seeing it on so many threads. So annoying!

When the question is so easily, obviously, and quickly answered by the individual by searching for it themselves and yet the post the question here, it deserves a LMGTFY. It makes the point ("get off your lazy butt and do it yourself") while still providing the answer.

I've done it and I am not a Google employee, low level, or a troll.

 

[Kevy Baby]

And sorry if I was wrong, It's just what I picked up on the internet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Gerben]

View attachment 510455

*after answering what google said*

When the question is so easily, obviously, and quickly answered by the individual by searching for it themselves and yet the post the question here, it deserves a LMGTFY. It makes the point ("get off your lazy butt and do it yourself") while still providing the answer.

I've done it and I am not a Google employee, low level, or a troll.

 

[jnads]

To update this thread, as of 2020.8.1 Tesla vehicles now support exFAT file system.

I'd recommend re-partitioning as exFAT. It's a more modern file system designed for flash devices.

 

[CertLive]

USB thumb drives and microSD cards are a waste of time. Use an NVME or SSD that are designed for much faster and heavier data writes and reads. Plus NVME’s use a lot less power of the two. Used in PC’s and Data centres as main storage medium its way slicker when plugged back into the pc for file transfer rates.

 

[Kevy Baby]

USB thumb drives and microSD cards are a waste of time.

Um, well, no they aren't. I have had two USB drives in my car (one for cams, one for music) since August, logging over 10,000 miles and have had no issues.

Blanket statements like this are narrow-minded.

 

[Occar]

To update this thread, as of 2020.8.1 Tesla vehicles now support exFAT file system.

I'd recommend re-partitioning as exFAT. It's a more modern file system designed for flash devices.

Exfat still isn’t journaled so ext4 is still going to be a superior choice. You need a 3rd party utility to format and read it if you only have access to a windows system though. Unexpected removal or power loss (such as might occur in an accident) is just as problematic with exfat as it is with fat32.

 

[jnads]

Exfat still isn’t journaled so ext4 is still going to be a superior choice. You need a 3rd party utility to format and read it if you only have access to a windows system though. Unexpected removal or power loss (such as might occur in an accident) is just as problematic with exfat as it is with fat32.

Not true.

Exfat stored copies of its partition table and has checksum capabilities.

It is far more error tolerant than fat32.

Ext4 is a superior choice, yes, BUT you cannot read it with a smartphone. At least not an android phone. Android won't automount ext4 partitions.

 

[jnads]

To update this thread, as of 2020.8.1 Tesla vehicles now support exFAT file system.

I'd recommend re-partitioning as exFAT. It's a more modern file system designed for flash devices.

To follow up on this despite claims on reddit that this is supported i could not get it to work.

 

[Knightshade]

USB thumb drives and microSD cards are a waste of time. Use an NVME or SSD that are designed for much faster and heavier data writes and reads.

Complete nonsense.

The car is writing a whole 2 MB/sec...which is 3-5 times slower than the slowest crap MicroSD or thumb drives out there, let alone decent ones that are 20-30 times faster.

That's about as far from "heavy" writing as you can get and still be writing.

 

[PoitNarf]

I’ll definitely be reformatting to exFAT as soon as my 3 gets 2020.8.x.

 

[linux-works]

Not true.

Ext4 is a superior choice, yes, BUT you cannot read it with a smartphone. At least not an android phone. Android won't automount ext4 partitions.

android started from linux (its not really full linux inside, but its based strongly on linux, some areas more than others) - but still - really - phones can't natively read ext4? my god. what has google done. (deep sigh)

as for exfat being more reliable, its not like it has journalling (ext4 has that). its just a slight evolution over fat32. it does have a feature where its possible to avoid fragmentation (fat32 fragments and needs 'cleaning' in one way or another, over time). its not clear that exfat is fully self cleaning, but I think it does have some optimal behavior in some use-cases.

there is also the issue of a license, which I think is needed for commercial use. don't think fat32 needs a license (maybe its too old already?). exfat is an extra install on linux systems and I think its that way for a license reason. because of that I'm no fan of exfat, to be honest. I think tesla has to pay for it, so it has an actual cost, too.

but I see why they did it and they were forced to, in a way. the world (MS) is moving away from fat32 and trying to make it hard to use (with their own tools). to most users, computers == MS and so if MS makes it hard, it IS hard (to them).

I still think its super easy to download linux-on-a-pendrive, boot that pen drive, format your usb stick to ext4, make a top level TeslaCam folder and eject both safely - you're done.

 

[CertLive]

Complete nonsense.

The car is writing a whole 2 MB/sec...which is 3-5 times slower than the slowest crap MicroSD or thumb drives out there, let alone decent ones that are 20-30 times faster.

That's about as far from "heavy" writing as you can get and still be writing.

If you read what I wrote its to do with the durability and offloading that content that an NVME is far superior in the use case such as Tesla. In fact there should be some way we can access this media direct via the app to offload it to a phone, view, delete and maintain this storage on our cars too. I just wonder how many microsd and usb thumb drives have been smoked by users so far...

 

[CertLive]

Um, well, no they aren't. I have had two USB drives in my car (one for cams, one for music) since August, logging over 10,000 miles and have had no issues.

Blanket statements like this are narrow-minded.

My car smoked through 2 high endurance micro sd,s in short order to the point the car stopped seeing them. NVME is solid and took me a nice small handful of seconds to transfer 125gb of footage to the PC. Or I can edit it straight from the drive itself. Many more advantages for about the same price and much higher endurance ratings.

 

[Knightshade]

there is also the issue of a license, which I think is needed for commercial use. don't think fat32 needs a license (maybe its too old already?). exfat is an extra install on linux systems and I think its that way for a license reason. because of that I'm no fan of exfat, to be honest. I think tesla has to pay for it, so it has an actual cost, too.

This used to be true- but no longer is... (as of October 2019 IIRC) which is probably the actual reason they've now added support... it's free now and didn't used t be.

My car smoked through 2 high endurance micro sd,s in short order to the point the car stopped seeing them.

Any chance they were amazon counterfeit specials? That's pretty common anymore...

because otherwise they should've been replaced under warranty as that's very very very abnormal behavior for a storage device explicitly sold to work for years with MUCH higher-write cameras than the ones Tesla is using.

If you read what I wrote its to do with the durability and offloading that content that an NVME is far superior in the use case such as Tesla.

Yes, and that, too, is nonsense based on the amount of data it's writing.

The basic math on this has been posted many many times.

You can do it yourself too if you like- typical TLC flash on a decent SDcard or USB key is rated for 3000-5000 write cycles (writing the entire size of the drive roughly).

Teslacam only writes 7.2 GB per hour.

Do the math.

You'll find even "regular" non-long-life flash should be good for 5-10 years on a 128/256GB key or SDcard with 24/7/365 use, let alone the 8-10 hours a day most people actually use it where regular memory should be good for decades.

"high endurance" SDcards and flash drives are more in the 5-10k writes, and should be good longer than you're likely to be alive unless you bought an expensive car very young.

So again- using an SSD (NVME or otherwise) is massive overkill for this application.

 

[linux-works]

I am a big believer in nvme for desktops and servers. if well implemented, laptops, too. cars - the jury is still out on that.

and unless the usb-nvme bridge adapter chips got better over the last year, they were *not* reliable and they also got quite hot, in addition to the nvme stick getting hot.

the car writing to usb and then usb writing to nvme - that's a trickle of data and so it won't truly heat up the nvme stick so much. I don't remember how much power the bridge chip took, just sitting there, but I think it was non-trivial.

I just don't trust the first gen of those bridge chips. and I really don't trust the el-cheapo connectors that mate with the nvme pcb fingers, from the low end $30 usb nvme adapters. I did try one a year ago and *wanted* to like it, but I returned it due to heat, lockups and data loss. I can't tolerate any of those 3, let alone ALL 3.

fwiw, at a project at work (for a car), I was actually pushing to use nvme memory, optionally in software RAID (could be reduced to JBOD if you had just 1 stick) - and I could not 'sell' the idea to the guys in the upper floors. too pricey, not 'car rated' (I know, some people will want to flame about that, but flamers will flame, I guess, lol). cost of socket is a lot and reliability is not there, yet. not for the heat, cool, vibration, dust, moisture needs that has to be passed before a car oem will put such a part in their design.

so don't get me wrong, I really love nvme and its concept, but I still caution its use in the car and think for dashcam use, its overkill.

but - on the other side - having a super fast read speed (which the nvme does give, if you go native and not usb-based) IS nice. copying off the media should be fast.

cert talks about editing ON the media. not smart, guy. you want to consider the media 'read only' and copy data OUT of it, to a safe place (other nvme or ssd or hd). from THAT, you can edit all you want. consider the usb drive that came out of tesla to be a once-in-a-lifetime recording. for such things, you treat them as read-only and NEVER write to that media until you have 'rescued' (copied) your fragile and oh-so-valuable data off. that's the best way to ensure that you don't risk the originals. writing is risky, reading never is - that's the general idea.

hth

 

[Occar]

Not true.

Exfat stored copies of its partition table and has checksum capabilities.

It is far more error tolerant than fat32.

Ext4 is a superior choice, yes, BUT you cannot read it with a smartphone. At least not an android phone. Android won't automount ext4 partitions.

You are confused a bit. A file system doesn’t have a “partition table”. That’s a higher level than a file system. If you mean file allocation table, no, exfat only stores a single copy. It does have checksum capability for metadata, but this does nothing to address the scenarios I mentioned and only protects against corruption of metadata (the major issues come from when metadata doesn’t agree with actual disk contents which journaling resolves). You still need a journaled file system for reliability in this application.

There is a transactional version of FAT which would resolve these issues, but that’s exfat.

 

[CertLive]

I am a big believer in nvme for desktops and servers. if well implemented, laptops, too. cars - the jury is still out on that.

and unless the usb-nvme bridge adapter chips got better over the last year, they were *not* reliable and they also got quite hot, in addition to the nvme stick getting hot.

the car writing to usb and then usb writing to nvme - that's a trickle of data and so it won't truly heat up the nvme stick so much. I don't remember how much power the bridge chip took, just sitting there, but I think it was non-trivial.

I just don't trust the first gen of those bridge chips. and I really don't trust the el-cheapo connectors that mate with the nvme pcb fingers, from the low end $30 usb nvme adapters. I did try one a year ago and *wanted* to like it, but I returned it due to heat, lockups and data loss. I can't tolerate any of those 3, let alone ALL 3.

fwiw, at a project at work (for a car), I was actually pushing to use nvme memory, optionally in software RAID (could be reduced to JBOD if you had just 1 stick) - and I could not 'sell' the idea to the guys in the upper floors. too pricey, not 'car rated' (I know, some people will want to flame about that, but flamers will flame, I guess, lol). cost of socket is a lot and reliability is not there, yet. not for the heat, cool, vibration, dust, moisture needs that has to be passed before a car oem will put such a part in their design.

so don't get me wrong, I really love nvme and its concept, but I still caution its use in the car and think for dashcam use, its overkill.

but - on the other side - having a super fast read speed (which the nvme does give, if you go native and not usb-based) IS nice. copying off the media should be fast.

cert talks about editing ON the media. not smart, guy. you want to consider the media 'read only' and copy data OUT of it, to a safe place (other nvme or ssd or hd). from THAT, you can edit all you want. consider the usb drive that came out of tesla to be a once-in-a-lifetime recording. for such things, you treat them as read-only and NEVER write to that media until you have 'rescued' (copied) your fragile and oh-so-valuable data off. that's the best way to ensure that you don't risk the originals. writing is risky, reading never is - that's the general idea.

hth

Temperature is not an issue here. The car writes nowhere near its peak plus they are around the same price. You can never go overkill on rated run times. Sure you often get what you pay for down the cheap end of memory storage. As for the editing off the drive lol up to the user if they want to overwrite the originals but as for access much much faster. Scrub through the files nice and fast. It seems here we have a case of trying to over complicate an item that is superior to the others in all aspects when endurance is what you want the most. NVME cremates microSD for longevity so for the same price I would chose this. If you know anything about NVME's you realise they do not heat up much under low utilisation and even throttle control if it was to ever reach this. So for all the smart/not smart info you are full of rather guess work assumptions even on how I would edit my media. It is a superior endurance performance format and costs around the same of any micro sd high endurance.