The Tesla sticks are formatted in exFat which is not a wear level OS format.
If you mean the ones Tesla now includes with new cars, can't say as I've had mine since well before they began doing it.
But there's no reason you have to keep using exfat if you don't want to.
Model 3 owners manual page 75 said:
Model 3 requires the drive be formatted as exFAT, FAT 32, MS-DOS FAT, ext3, or ext4
This is largely irrelevant though because, again, you appear to be relying on a factually wrong understanding of flash storage and capabilities-
So the stick will need to have a wear level controller. However most consumer level USB sticks do not have wear leveling in the hardware so you fall back to the OS
This is absolutely false.
I even posted a link to a thread from
2009 discussing consumer USB sticks having wear leveling onboard via their controllers.
. Although I cannot specifically speak for Tesla’s OS, most OS’s in exFat format go for the first contiguous space available that will fit the write. So it will likely write to the same area of the stick over and over as files are deleted for looping. That will potentially cause a stick failure once the rated write limit is exceeded.
It certainly
will not do that, though the OS might "think" it's doing that.
Because what the controller presents to the OS is completely different from what it's doing putting data on the flash storage.
Because SD cards use flash memory, they should requires wear leveling to avoid significantly shortening the life of the card. At the same time, my understanding is that they usually use a FAT32 file
cs.stackexchange.com
That's a thread where someone is asking about wear leveling if they are running FAT32.
Several replies point out the question misunderstands how any of this works- as you appear to be doing.
For example:
The OS references blocks using a "logical block address". The SD card then maps this to a physical page of flash memory. With wear leveling, each time data in that block is changed, it will get mapped to a new physical page of flash memory. So, even though the OS is changing the same "logical block address" every time, this is causing different physical pages in flash to be erased and rewritten. This spreads out the "wear" across the entire flash device, lengthening its lifetime and avoiding the problem you mentioned. In other words, although the FAT32 is stored at the same "logical block address", it isn't stored on the same physical page of flash memory every time it is modified.
IMHO, unless it’s a performance rated USB stick it has a average life span of 2 years. Which back to my original point is why an SSD is better for longevity because they all include a higher write threshold which is due to the fact that SSD’s utilize static wear leveling.
USB sticks
also utilize wear leveling.
SSDs last longer because of 3 reasons-
1) They generally are much larger, so using 1 full write cycle (which again is writing the ENTIRE CAPACITY of the drive, not just 1 block) takes a lot longer.
and
2) They tend to use higher-end types of flash rated for more cycles (though this is not as true as it used to be outside of VERY expensive enterprise applications)
and
3) With usually larger physical size and higher pricing they can also overprovision (include more "spare" flash) on the physical device.
All that said- again, run the math
properly and you're going to get 5-10 years in typical use out of a quality 128GB stick for the little that the Tesla writes to it.
But if you
desperately need to save dashcam footage for your grandkids- then spend a few extra bucks not on an SSD- but on a large max-endurance SDCard.
It will use a lot less power, stand up to a lot wider range of temperatures, take up less space, and last decades.
The
only reason to seriously consider an SSD in the car is if you need a TON (like 512GB and higher) room for
music because SDcards and USB sticks tend to escalate a ton in price at that point versus SSDs.... (and of course since 95% of your use there is READING, not writing, you're STILL not benefiting from higher write endurance- you're just getting more space for an affordable price).[/B][/QUOTE]