USB not recognised after formatting with car?

[leisurelee]

I have a USB drive that I use for my dashcam, and a short time ago I got a notice that the drive was almost full. Having no incidents that I needed footage for, I used the in-car operation to format the drive, and then went about my merry way.

Fast forward a couple weeks, and my car was dinged in a parking garage hard enough to dent the door and for me to get a car alarm notice on the app. However when I pulled the drive and went to review the footage on my computer, I found the drive is formatted but completely blank.

WTF? Has anyone had this happen? Obviously now the car won't have any footage from the incident, and I'm a bit concerned about how secure I should feel about the car's sentry features if the dashcam drive isn't going to record anything.

 

[leisurelee]

When I say completely blank, I mean it. The car didn't create the "TeslaCam" folder after formatting. So that's probably why I have no files. Known issue?

 

[sduck]

My car did that the one time i tried formatting the drive in the car. That was 6 or more months ago though, right after they introduced the format in car feature. Did the format, but forgot to add the TeslaCam folder. Weird. It was easy enough to add it on my computer, and i've been using it ever since then with no issues.

 

[Dolemite]

I've been having a ton of problems with this damn thing lately - not acknowledging the drive, phantom sentry messages that I'm unable to clear, etc.

 

[Joey T]

I kept getting error messages like "drive speed is insufficient" or "check format of USB drive." even though I had a good quality USB stick. Since the cameras are important, and cold winters and hot summers are bad for USB sticks, and there is so much rewriting, I have been using a Samsung solid state drive for 2 years. No problems since.

Samsung 500GB T7 Portable SSD (Titan Gray)

Buy Samsung 500GB T7 Portable SSD (Titan Gray) featuring 500GB Capacity, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Interface, PCIe NVMe Technology, Read Speeds up to 1050 MB/s, Write Speeds up to 1000 MB/s, 256-Bit AES Hardware Encryption. Review Samsung T7

www.bhphotovideo.com

 

[MikeyC]

I too have had intermittent problems with various flash drives including the Tesla flash drive that came with my Model 3. Sometimes it'd say no USB drive present. Other times it'd see it but videos would have artifacts or would cut off midstream. I finally bit the bullet and went the Samsung T7 route and have not had any problems since doing that. Seems like the Samsung SSD drives are the only ones that are truly reliable (and fast) enough to do the job consistently. I still get the occasional video artifact but nothing like when I was using the flash drives.

Mike

 

[android04]

The times I've used the FORMAT button on the car settings, I've usually had to format twice. I would press FORMAT once, and the dashcam icon would not show up. I would have to press FORMAT a 2nd time for it to show up and everything would work normally.

 

[EVRider-FL]

If the incident generated a Sentry Mode Alarm event (where you get notified by the app), the video is recorded in the onboard memory, so you can view and download that video to a USB. See the manual for details if you need them.

 

[leisurelee]

If the incident generated a Sentry Mode Alarm event (where you get notified by the app), the video is recorded in the onboard memory, so you can view and download that video to a USB. See the manual for details if you need them.

Oh, this is worth looking up! I did get a notification through the app. However I have a 2018 M3, so I'm not sure I have onboard memory...

 

[leisurelee]

I stand corrected. Just had to have a properly-formatted USB drive plugged in to get the viewer.

Unfortunately, an idiot on an overly-loud motorcycle had set the alarm off a second time later in the morning, so the footage of someone hitting my car was overwritten. Seems onboard memory only saves one event. Sigh.

 

[Transplant]

My car did that the one time i tried formatting the drive in the car. That was 6 or more months ago though, right after they introduced the format in car feature. Did the format, but forgot to add the TeslaCam folder. Weird. It was easy enough to add it on my computer, and i've been using it ever since then with no issues.

Large USB devices have that problem. The format button formats the drive but doesn’t create the TeslaCam folder. You have to add the folder using your computer, as you discovered

 

[NedH]

Large USB devices have that problem. The format button formats the drive but doesn’t create the TeslaCam folder. You have to add the folder using your computer, as you discovered

What do you mean by "Large USB devices"? The format button on my car formats 128GB drives and creates the TeslaCam folder.

 

[Transplant]

What do you mean by "Large USB devices"? The format button on my car formats 128GB drives and creates the TeslaCam folder.

I don’t know what the limit is. To me, 128GB is small and 1TB is large

 

[vanderark1]

I have a 500GB SSD and a 1TB SSD. They both worked with the FORMAT button in my M3. Now, when I format either one in the car, it erases everything but doesn't create the TeslaCam folder. I'm on v10.2 (2021.32.22).

I don't know the software version that last worked - but I know it did. I like to erase all the videos periodically and the FORMAT button made that convenient but no longer works. I have to take the drive out, format on a laptop or PC and put it back in.

Anyone know if Tesla intends to fix this?

 

[NedH]

I have a 500GB SSD and a 1TB SSD. They both worked with the FORMAT button in my M3. Now, when I format either one in the car, it erases everything but doesn't create the TeslaCam folder. I'm on v10.2 (2021.32.22).

I don't know the software version that last worked - but I know it did. I like to erase all the videos periodically and the FORMAT button made that convenient but no longer works. I have to take the drive out, format on a laptop or PC and put it back in.

Anyone know if Tesla intends to fix this?

When I format using the car it does not create a TeslaCam folder either. But the TeslaCam folder (and subfolders) get created when the car first writes to the USB drive.

 

[DWtsn]

I have a 500GB SSD and a 1TB SSD. They both worked with the FORMAT button in my M3. Now, when I format either one in the car, it erases everything but doesn't create the TeslaCam folder. I'm on v10.2 (2021.32.22).

I don't know the software version that last worked - but I know it did. I like to erase all the videos periodically and the FORMAT button made that convenient but no longer works. I have to take the drive out, format on a laptop or PC and put it back in.

Anyone know if Tesla intends to fix this?

I'm also using a 500GB SanDisk solid state drive, and I have a duplicate backup drive. I have formatted both and my Model S will create the TeslaCam folder but I still get the alert "Dashcam USB drive not plugged into glovebox." It's frustrating that this has only started doing this a few weeks ago. I'm wondering if this is associated with an update?

 

[tstolze]

The only time I have seen this was using faulty MicroSD to USB Adapters, they were SanDisk MobileMates, I replaced them with a different brand and have had no issues in the last 5 months.

 

[Dangerous Fish]

I do think these problems are associated with the recent change Tesla made from using FAT32 to now using ExFAT format, which happened a few releases ago.
I've had problems with both of my Model 3s since then which use Samsung SSDs partitioned so I can have a TeslaCam drive and a Music drive on the same SSD.

Yesterday I noticed dashcam wasn't working in one of them, but Sentry seemed to be still working which was odd. However I re-partitioned that drive and formatted both partitions on a PC using ExFAT and it's all working again for now.

The problem with formatting a partitioned drive in the car is it wipes out the partitions and makes it one big TeslaCam drive, so I don't want to have to do that in the long run.

 

[DWtsn]

The only time I have seen this was using faulty MicroSD to USB Adapters, they were SanDisk MobileMates, I replaced them with a different brand and have had no issues in the last 5 months.

I thought the same thing so I used two different USB-C to USB adapters and then plugged the drive straight into the center console with no adapters, straight USB-C to USB-C, and sadly got the same results. It will recognize the drive and allow me to format the drive, it will create the TeslaCam folder but still shows "Dashcam USB drive not plugged into glovebox."

 

[f308gt4]

Bringing this up again. When I format my USB drive(Sandisk 256 GB) in the car, the drive gets formatted, but it is not creating a TeslaCam folder.

I get the camera icon with the red dot on it, but when I touch It to view teslacam, the teslacam viewer closes on me, and the camera icon disappears. If I then go to the security settings, it tells me to format the drive. If I click on format, the same thing happens again.

If I remove the drive and view it on a computer, the drive is blank. Once I create the TeslaCam folder, everything works as it’s supposed to. Until I reformat the drive in the car.

It’s not an end of the world type problem, but annoying to have to remove the drive to reformat and create a TeslaCam folder.

I am on 2021.36.8.

Any solution to this?