topic Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing. Tried rebooting and removing the drive. in Arlo Pro

Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing. Tried rebooting and removing the drive.

theluke79 — Thu, 14 May 2020 14:36:05 GMT

Hi, I have a weird issue with the USB storage on my Arlo Pro Base station.

FW: 1.16.1.3

HW: VMB4000r3

SN: 4RD17371A4683

I have upgraded my external storage to a high quality 2 TB Sata 2.5" disk.

When I first connected the disk to the base station it was correctly recognized formatted and used to record videos.

The other day I noticed that the device was not recognized anymore by the base station, I have rebooted the base station, removed the drive and plugged it back in: the drive showed up again.

Same thing happened after 24 hours, I did the same procedure and changed the usb port, after 8h the drive disappeared again.

Why?

The hdd works fine when connected to my laptop.

Thank you

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

jguerdat — Thu, 14 May 2020 13:14:41 GMT

Is the drive externally powered or does it use power from the USB port? If the latter, I suspect that's your issue. I much prefer to use thumb drives, partly for this reason. 2TB is generally massive overkill while a 64GB thumb drive will not fill up for a long time.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

theluke79 — Thu, 14 May 2020 13:46:59 GMT

Hello, thanks for your reply.

The drive draws power from the Base Station, what you say makes sense, I will now replace it with a thumbdrive.

I wanted to use a 2 TB drive to ensure reliability over time, while a flashdrive would perish under constant writes.

Maybe a very large flashdrive?

On the other hand, even when the base station was not showing the USB drive, the images were still recorded on it....

This is weird, I am going to do more testing

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

theluke79 — Thu, 14 May 2020 14:04:57 GMT

I have now inserted a brand new Sandisk 64 GB thumbdrive (not the super small ones, they tend to heat up like crazy).

Before doing that I also ran a test, having one of the Arlo Q camera recording movement, while the 2TB hdd was connected but not showing up, the video was NOT recorded on the HDD unfortunately.

But, on the other hand, I could see thousands of videos on the HDD, up until 4 minutes ago, which makes me suspect that somehow the videos are recorded on the HDD even if the base station does not show the HDD connected.

I decided to use a flashdrive from now on anyway, I do not have time for further testing unfortunately

VMB4000 local storage problem

whaler58 — Fri, 15 May 2020 13:38:36 GMT

After the last firmware upgrade, my USB devices quite showing up as installed. Local storage initially shows up, but when the system tries to store a new file to the USB stick it resets itself and when it comes back up the storage is not available. I have tried several USB sticks 32 and 64 gig sticks. They format fine on my computer and worked perfectly until the last firmware update. They also format fine on the base station and look fine until a write is attempted to the device. They also get very warm after a write is attempted. I have tried many USB devices none work now, while never had an issue until the latest firmware update.

Re: VMB4000 local storage problem

Manolo86 — Sat, 16 May 2020 21:15:30 GMT

Same here, it worked fine before. 2 app updates ago it stopped working. Port forwarding is useless now as well. I just updated the app to the lastest version, but that did not fix it. It did fix the "not connected to the internet" issue though.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

Manolo86 — Sat, 16 May 2020 21:24:22 GMT

I have the same issue with my 256gb flash drive. I had no problem prior to an update. I also can't get the port forwarding settings to remain. Once I switch networks the settings disappear and local storage may or may not reappear.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

Manolo86 — Sat, 16 May 2020 22:26:11 GMT

I take it back. I can switch networks, but as soon as the app is closed the issues start. I've tried reinstalling the app and flash drive, but it's still a no go.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

theluke79 — Sun, 17 May 2020 04:50:19 GMT

Same problem here.
I checked today and the flash drive storage is disappeared again....
This is frustrating.
Upon reboot it has shown up again.
I am thinking about a new base station.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

Manolo86 — Sun, 17 May 2020 05:40:48 GMT

I already tried that. It was the last update I believe. I also keep getting crash errors and high battery usage errors from the Android OS about the Arlo app. Tried everything.....

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing. Tried rebooting and removing the drive.

Manolo86 — Sun, 17 May 2020 12:49:04 GMT

There is another thread where this guy is trying to garnish likes to bring attention to this issue (among others). It's as follows:

https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Ultra/Direct-Storage-Access-Wishlist/m-p/1772113#M13080

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

theluke79 — Sun, 17 May 2020 15:24:02 GMT

Even if the USB storage was not showing up in the APP, the clips we recorded on it....

Beats me why, Arlo is quite disappointing.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

JessicaP — Mon, 18 May 2020 20:26:02 GMT

Hi Manolo86 and theluke79,

If you're having problems where your USB is disappearing from your Arlo Pro Base Station, contact the Support Team to further investigate this issue. You will find several options for contacting support in the provided link.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

Manolo86 — Mon, 18 May 2020 23:56:08 GMT

Yeah, they're useless. I've already troubleshooted more than they'll have me redo. I just need Arlo developers to acknowledge the issue and debug it.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

whaler58 — Tue, 19 May 2020 00:49:19 GMT

Mine has the same behavior, is your drive warm to the touch? I think is a firmware issue.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

Manolo86 — Tue, 19 May 2020 00:52:00 GMT

Yes it is. I thought that was odd, but I didn't have anything to compare to. My phone gets hot too, when Arlo uses 85% of my battery and crashes over and over. The issues with the app crashing and killing my battery seem to lessen when I turn port forwarding off. Local storage still disappears though.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

Manolo86 — Tue, 19 May 2020 00:54:14 GMT

Also, port forwarding settings disappear as well once I leave the app. It works just fine until then, even after switching to mobile data. It then makes me reverify my phone with 2 step verification. It's just better to leave it off until Arlo hopefully fixes this garbage.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

Manolo86 — Tue, 19 May 2020 00:56:25 GMT

Check this out.

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

Manolo86 — Mon, 25 May 2020 13:53:47 GMT

If these idiots don't fix this trash before Black Friday, I'm changing to Eufy. They have stellar product AND app reviews, local storage, they say it's a one time cost won't hurt your wallet purchase, anti theft alarms on their cameras, image enhancement technology, etc. I've spent too much time on this junk recently to change now. Black Friday is my deadline......

Re: Arlo Pro base station USB storage disappearing

whaler58 — Fri, 29 May 2020 16:59:02 GMT

still waiting for a new firmware update, hopefully they will realize this is the source of the problem