Over the last few weeks we have received reports from several Tesla owners who have told us their Dashcam and Sentry Mode are no longer working.
Based on those reports it appears as though the issue arose after the 2022.12.3.2 software update, and results in a red X over the camera icon with an error message – “Dashcam unavailable – Check USB Drive.”
However the issue is not with your USB drive, but rather an issue with the software that Tesla is aware of and currently developing a fix for. According to a message sent by a Tesla Service team member to Roman M., the root cause of the error is the flash drive unmounting resulting in Sentry Mode or Dashcam not recording.
“The flash drive is unmounting, causing the dash camera to go to a paused state, which triggers sentry to stop recording as soon as it starts,” the message reads.
The employees says that “engineering is aware of the issue” and are testing a fix right now, but he unfortunately does not have a date for when it will be deployed to the fleet through an over-the-air (OTA) software update.
While you wait, the easiest solution seems to be to unplug your USB drive, wait about 5 seconds, and then plug it back in. While it seems to work, you unfortunately you have to do this every time you get in the car.
Let us know in the comments below if you are experiencing this issue, and if you have any other quick fixes.
