What’s on your Rivian’s USB drive: folders and files explained
Updated October 2026
Open your Rivian’s USB drive in Finder or File Explorer and you’ll find hundreds of video files with long names. Here’s how the drive is organized, so you know where each kind of recording lives and how the files fit together. (Layouts can change with vehicle software updates; this describes what current vehicles write.)
The top level
A drive formatted by the vehicle is named android. Inside it there’s a folder per vehicle, named with the model and the vehicle identification number (VIN), for example R2_7PD…. If you move one drive between vehicles, each gets its own folder.
The main folders
| Folder | What’s in it |
|---|---|
GearGuardVideo | Recordings made while the vehicle was parked and Gear Guard noticed movement or contact nearby. Recordings you star in the vehicle go in a Starred folder inside. |
IncidentCam | Recordings saved automatically around a sudden event while driving, such as hard braking or an impact. |
RoadCam/DriveStream | Continuous recording while driving, if you’ve turned it on. Each drive gets its own folder named with its start time. |
RoadCam/SaveClips | Clips you saved on purpose from the vehicle while driving. |
Reading the file names
File names carry the date, time and camera. Dates are written MM_DD_YY_HHMMSS, so 10_05_26_101500 means October 5, 2026 at 10:15:00 in the vehicle’s local time. The camera appears in the name too:
frontCenter: the forward-facing camera;rearCenter: the rear camera;sideLeftandsideRight: the side cameras, usually wide-angle, which is why straight lines bend near the edges.
One moment in time is therefore several files, one per camera, that start at (nearly) the same second. Some vehicles and software versions add other cameras; Overlook shows whatever cameras it finds.
Segments
Long drive recordings are split into parts. DriveStream files are cut into 15-minute pieces numbered _001, _002 and so on. To watch a drive end to end you need the parts in order, for every camera. Overlook joins the parts back together so a drive plays as one recording.
Information inside the files
Besides video, the files can include the time zone, the vehicle’s location (GPS) and other details. Overlook reads these on your computer to show recordings on a map and to put the right local time on screen. The VIN in the folder name identifies the vehicle, so think before sharing original files publicly.
Tips
- Don’t rename or move files on the drive the vehicle uses; it expects its own layout.
- To keep something, copy the whole recording (every camera), not just the front camera.
- If a file won’t play, it may have been cut off when the drive was removed too early.
Ready to look? Here’s how to watch everything in sync.
More guides
- How to watch Rivian Gear Guard footage on a Mac or PCStep by step: take the USB drive out, open it on a computer, and play every camera in sync.
- Gear Guard vs RoadCam vs Incident Cam: what each Rivian camera mode recordsWhen each mode records, where it saves, and which to check after something happens.
- Using Rivian camera footage for an insurance claim or police reportWhat to keep, how to show it was not edited, and how to send it.