USB for dashcam exFAT vs FAT

[linux-works]

do what you want - its your car and media.

but when you edit a file on the media itself, its open for write. when media is open for write, you are at a much higher risk level than if you simply copy the data off (read-only style) to some other media, then edit that copy. its just common sense.

I used to do video (and audio) editing - and so I understand the concept of 'valuable masters' and you don't ever risk those if you are going to do edits.

but you have your own ideas and don't want to hear otherwise. ok, I get it.

 

[silentsnow31802]

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

I also cannot get it to work. Doing the same as FAT32 setup except for selecting exFAT. Same folder structure. Do you have a link to this reddit thread?

 

[CertLive]

do what you want - its your car and media.

but when you edit a file on the media itself, its open for write. when media is open for write, you are at a much higher risk level than if you simply copy the data off (read-only style) to some other media, then edit that copy. its just common sense.

I used to do video (and audio) editing - and so I understand the concept of 'valuable masters' and you don't ever risk those if you are going to do edits.

but you have your own ideas and don't want to hear otherwise. ok, I get it.

If you are a forward thinker like me, though I do not like to go so far forward that some of the things that should work are not fixed like my voice commands do now work wonderfully, whoever let that patch out to a world wide car fleet should be told off! You maybe want to try like myself and make sure everything the moment it is plugged in is backed up to the cloud. Then it becomes quite irrelevant as I edit video all the time. See even better practises are available in 2020. But you hit the nail on the head worrying about accessing the data on the fly as to not put extra writes onto the source storage media. Then comes along NVME which would allow you do to just that without worry. No hardware is bullet proof 100% of the time but it is well worth going for memory that is rated in far excess of the very media (microsd / thumb drives ) people around here were going through like no tomorrow last year. The exFat support is very welcome though and I suspect will make a lot of windows users happy. A very good addition.

 

[SageBrush]

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.

I don't think I am following the argument here. I understand NVME to be an interface, not the memory itself. If the interface is the soft spot that goes bad then if NVME is superior great; but if it is the memory that is corrupted or is defective I don't understand why NVME is a better option.

 

[emailrob]

I also cannot get it to work. Doing the same as FAT32 setup except for selecting exFAT. Same folder structure. Do you have a link to this reddit thread?

Same. can't get it to work using exfat and the same folder structure as fat32. No documentation in the Tesla manual online, is the car one updated more frequently?

 

[sduck]

Same. can't get it to work using exfat and the same folder structure as fat32. No documentation in the Tesla manual online, is the car one updated more frequently?

Do you guys have the newest firmware? Very few people do.

 

[linux-works]

I don't think I am following the argument here. I understand NVME to be an interface, not the memory itself. If the interface is the soft spot that goes bad then if NVME is superior great; but if it is the memory that is corrupted or is defective I don't understand why NVME is a better option.

you are correct in all of that.

nvme is a protocol - like sata or usb-storage that carries read and write commands to a controller that finally converts that into media reads and writes.

a lot of the stability is also in how 'thick' and complex the layers are between the writer (tesla usb, in this case) and the flash media, itself.

usb is pretty simple and you are not going thru very many software layers (think, api calls or service calls). usb to nvme, otoh, is a very complex set of operations and that's why it takes such a huge chip (compared to usb/flash) and its not a natural conversion - I'd use the word gateway more than bridge since it does a lot of mapping of A to B kinds of things. lots ot go wrong and when I tested those devices, they froze up on occasion and some file corruption did occur. I returned to amazon and figured I'd check back next gen of chipset (which is not here, yet, afaik).

native nvme on a motherboard is really nice and slick stuff. but the pci-e controller is already there (!) and so its all just pure software at that point.

converting usb to pci-e (that's what nvme is at the frame level) is kind of a hard job and that's why the first gen chipset converter boards are to be avoided. "they work until they silently fail".

the memory chips on nvme sticks are far superior to flash, simply because they are 'serious' flash memory meant for motherboards, directly. but these are not meant for the environmental extremes that cars see and so any gains you get from nvme flash is lost by the implementation, itself.

 

[SageBrush]

^^ That is really informative and helpful, thanks.

Going back to what to buy, can an ignorant consumer like me just shop for flash memory warranted for e.g. HD camcorder use while keeping in mind that larger capacity improves reliability ?

 

[PoitNarf]

Updated to 2020.8.1 and reformatted my flash drive as exFAT and recreated the TeslaCam folder. It isn’t being detected anymore. Anyone else actually get this working with exFAT?

 

[Knightshade]

I don't recall the actual release notes saying exfat support was added... AFAIK the only source on this was Greentheonly before official release notes were out- any chance he just saw a reference to it in the code but it's not actually implemented yet?

 

[PoitNarf]

I don't recall the actual release notes saying exfat support was added... AFAIK the only source on this was Greentheonly before official release notes were out- any chance he just saw a reference to it in the code but it's not actually implemented yet?

That must be it. As soon as I switched back over to FAT32 everything started working again. I’ve yet to see a confirmed case of exFAT actually working.

 

[sduck]

I don't think it's actually supported yet. I tried formatting my ssd in exfat both with a mac and a pc and couldn't get it to work. Back to fat32, it works again.

 

[i11matic]

Reddit thread mentioned that 2020.8 was reading exFAT, but 2020.8.1 does not. Not sure if there was a change regarding exFAT and music files. I have a partitioned drive for music and dashcam. When I loaded 2020.8.1, i formatted both partitions to exFAT but the dashcam partition would not work, music partition works fine. Dashcam partion is now back to FAT32.

 

[frankusb]

When I loaded 2020.8.1, i formatted both partitions to exFAT but the dashcam partition would not work, music partition works fine.

How long did you play music? I get audio dropouts almost every song playing from the same USB stick that worked fine last week before 2020.8.1.

 

[silentsnow31802]

How long did you play music? I get audio dropouts almost every song playing from the same USB stick that worked fine last week before 2020.8.1.

I had audio dropout issues when I was using the same USB for music and dash cam. I ended up putting them on two separate sticks and its been fine since. Probably for the best anyways. I dont want any chance of the dash cam video being compromised.

Also for record exFAT is not enabled on 2020.8.1

 

[PatrickCH4313]

I don't think it's actually supported yet. I tried formatting my ssd in exfat both with a mac and a pc and couldn't get it to work. Back to fat32, it works again.

Since fw 2020.8.1 my USB stick is not working any more even after several reformatting ! Using FAT32 (from Mac), recordings is working and after several videos stored, I got the message that the disk is full, error code "MCU_w067, Dashcam write error : USB DrIve full" (1.2 GB used from 64 GB).

 

[frankusb]

How long did you play music? I get audio dropouts almost every song playing from the same USB stick that worked fine last week before 2020.8.1.

I contacted Tesla and they told me to pound sand, they don't support multiple partitions on one USB stick.

I did try changing the format from FAT to ext4 but no change.

 

[PatrickCH4313]

The Dashcam creates the 2 directories, RecentsClips and SavedClips, then stores some videos and sent the error message already mentioned ("MCU_w067, Dashcam write error : USB DrIve full") The USB is only used with 1.2 GB used from 64 GB.
I'm using the SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 Flash Drive with 64 GB.

 

[PatrickCH4313]

Pictures of the USB drive setup and contents.



This happens since firmware 2020.8.1. I don't know how to fixe it, may be wait for a new firmware with fixes.

 

[sduck]

Try another drive. They're cheap.