A quick format clears the file system index in about two seconds. Your Sentry Mode and Dashcam videos are still physically on the flash chips, untouched, until something new gets written over them.
Six cameras, one-minute MP4 clips, exFAT with 128 KB clusters, and a three-folder hierarchy. Understand the storage layout and you understand what's recoverable.
The technique that reads raw disk sectors and finds MP4 files by their signatures — no file system required. Works after formatting, corruption, or accidental deletion.
Time doesn't degrade flash storage. Only new writes do. A formatted drive in a drawer is 100% recoverable; one driven for a day may be losing footage by the minute.
Tesla uses three storage buckets with different retention. RecentClips rotates constantly, SentryClips gets auto-cleaned when the drive fills, and only SavedClips is permanent.