Arlo VMB4540R Hub Local Storage is Corrupted.

[Csmooth_08]

Hello. Last week, since the update for Arlo base station hub (#vmb4540r) the storage hasn’t been working correctly. Every 2-3 days, it keeps saying the storage has been corrupted and needs to be reformatted, regardless of me troubleshooting with installing different usb drives. It was working fine with no issues for over 5 months. 

This is becoming very nuisance. I spent too much money on these security devices  to not have them working. 

Ps the hub software version is 1.21.0.0_1377_a58d08a

[JamesC]

The development team is currently reviewing reports of this issue. I will provide an update once I have more information to share.

JamesC

[JCGarZa]

Because we do not receive any response from them, I suggest to file a group lawsuit to this company

[Manolo86]

Arlo has never been "set and forget" for me. Something is always broken. I'm waiting for Black Friday to buy Eufy cameras.

[Timinglight]

Let's do it.

[Vdubguy2k]

I posted about this exact issue almost a month ago in these forums and found many others having the same issue.   Arlo "support" said my hub was bad, sent me a new one and still have the same problem.  They now don't even respond to my support requests any longer it seems.

I bought 3 brand new microSD cards, thinking that was the issue.  $150 in sd cards because Arlo can't get their stuff together.  

I pay the monthly fee for cloud storage and was paying even more for CVR, and still corrupting, so I don't think it's just a thing to get people to subscribe.  I really think they they just have no clue why it's doing it or how to fix it.  

Was a loyal Arlo fan/subscriber for the last 7 years. After I upgraded my whole system last month, I regret it completely, total waste of money on something that barely works as it's supposed to.

[Timinglight]

I agree they have a problem on their hands, and they won't answer simple questions. e.g. 'Why are the USB's corrupting?'

Now the cameras only record until activity stops even though they're set for two minutes. Plus, when there is activity all around the house, some cameras won't work. Obviously they're bypassing our settings and limiting recording time to circumvent the corruption issue. Meanwhile, activity I need recorded is being completely missed.

[ArloCorrupts]

The same thing has happened to me, and Arlo has been no help whatsoever. I even returned the first unit thinking maybe I just bought a faulty hub. However, the second one did the same thing. It records fine for about a month, and it just corrupted again. Arlo knows they have sold a garbage product and refuses to own up to it and instead makes suggestions like reinstalling the app. They offer no help and no solution to the problem. I'll be returning this device as well and purchasing a ring or Eufy. At least they don't have a known software issue causing problems that they refuse to address or own up to.

[JamesC]

The development team is currently testing a fix for this issue. I will provide an update as soon as I have more information available to share.

JamesC

[Timinglight]

Hi Community Manager JamesC,

Over the years, I've only asked one question:

1. While the development team is working on this urgent matter, what temporary measure is being taken to ensure the cameras record and store video?

This is not a new issue, and its been going on for years. The USB's are corrupting and all recorded video becomes lost. We paid good money and deserve an answer. Ignoring one question repeated many times by the community is a poor strategy.

Sincerely,

Arlo Community

[Timinglight]

Let's do it!

[Timinglight]

Hi Community Manager JamesC,

Over the years, I've only asked one question:

1. While the development team is working on this urgent matter, what temporary measure is being taken to ensure the cameras record and store video?

This is not a new issue, and its been going on for years. The USB's are corrupting and all recorded video becomes lost. We paid good money and deserve an answer. Ignoring one question repeated many times by the community is a deceptive strategy.

Sincerely,

Arlo Community

[Jamjars]

Hi

i had this issue in the past week.

i ejected the hard drive from the Arlo hub. I was considering formatting but didn’t want to lose the data.

i took the USB hard drive & plugged it into a windows 10 machine and error checked the USB hard drive also defrag’d the USB hard drive. It did find errors and took most of the day (6 hours) to defrag. Returned it to the Arlo hub and it worked. The only issue I had was it didn’t see the new recordings but just the old ones on the USB hard drive, to resolve this I had to delete the app and reinstall the app and allow it to see my network. Now all working. I hope this helps.

[Merlinbk]

I’m having this exact same issue with my VMB4000. I purchased new jump drives because I thought it was my jump drive. But even the new ones, after sometime, are getting the same error. I’ll format and then it will work fine and then back to the error. 

[Pcken]

Same here... So frustrated.  

[LUser1526]

I have the same problem as others on this thread. For YEARS I've had a 2TB portable hard drive connected to my base station, then all of a sudden around May 23rd (about a month ago) I got the error message that the drive needs to be formatted. I checked, and there was nothing wrong with the drive. It was FAT32, and still had the over 90% of storage capacity, and the ~5 years worth of recordings on it. But when connected to the base station, NEW recordings would not get written to the drive. I thought, ok, maybe after 5 years the hard drive died, despite it being an armored-tech harddrive designed to last forever and that when connected to my laptop/PC the drive was working just fine. So I ordered a 512GB USB stick this time and plugged that in. It worked fine, as designed, but now yesterday (less than 1 month later) again I get the formatting error. There's no way two drives in a row fail in less than a month unless it's Arlo's fault.

Please keep me posted when Arlo has a fix for this... it's so frustrating that things keep going wrong and are buggy with Arlo. If it's not one problem, it's another. I almost have to spend a couple of hours a month trouble-shooting/rebooting the system to get it to work the way it's designed to work!

[sternzy]

Local storage has not been working properly for months for me.  I also had corruption, reformatted since then and it shows recording space used but i dont see any videos in storage from my iphone.

[Manolo86]

I think they're trying to scrub people without a subscription off their cloud. It's working. I'm going to Eufy where a subscription isn't required and local storage is standard. 

[JamesC]

A firmware fix to resolve this issue is currently slated to be released very soon. I will provide an update here in the community once this firmware release is available.

JamesC

[PJ2000]

Base: VMB4000r3
Camera: H6

Using Arlo since on 02/17/20. Have had no issues with local recording until a few months ago. Changed out the hard drive but it has the same behavior of becoming corrupted after a few days.

This seems to be a concerted effort to get us all to pay for their subscription. Too many different base stations for this not to be intentional.

I see a class action lawsuit or a small claims action coming their way.

[PJ2000]

Base:
VMB4000r3
Camera:
H6

Using since on 02/17/20. Have had no issues with local recording until a few months ago. Changed out the hard drive and it has the same behavior of becoming corrupted after a few days.

This seems to be a concerted effort to get us all to pay for their subscription. Too many different base stations for this not to be intentional.

I see a class action lawsuit or a small claims action coming their way.

[Merlinbk]

Is this going to apply across the board? Including VMB4000?

[PJ2000]

I'm guessing yes as it has happened on my VMB4000r3.

Seems clear that Arlo has disabled local recordings past a few days with an update that makes you believe that your hard drive is corrupted. Obviously they don't want the local recordings to go past the free week of cloud recording they give.

If it was just one model doing this then they could have pulled it off but clearly they did not expect us all to exchange notes.

[Ravedood]

I pay for cloud storage and also have local storage enabled because of my paranoia. This is also affecting me. It stopped recording locally a few months ago. I thought my SD cards were bad but they both had the error symbols on two hubs at the same time so this must have been an update they pushed out. I have two hubs and 10 Ultra cameras.  This needs to be fixed ASAP before it gets escalated. This leaves Arlo open for liability in case something happens and it is not captured via the method that they say works especially after many people have complained over time that it doesn't. 

[PJ2000]

good to know

[Pcken]

A workaround has been mentioned in another Arlo forum that worked for me... should work for you: Plug the drive for SD card into a computer.  Look for the most recent folder date, and check to see how many files are in it. If greater than 512  delete enough files to get to 512.  Mine had 513 in the folder with the same date of the last captured recording.   After deleting to get to 512 in each folder, plug the SD card or drive back in, and it will work again.    Something with a firmware update causes the system to get confused on how many files it is writing in the folder.  The system is configured to only have 512 recordings in each folder before making additional folders.  It seems that if you have multiple recordings happening simultaneously, it saves into the same folder without realizing it exceeded the 512 limit.   

One other tweak to improve the system is to stagger the amount of time a camera records.  The default is to record until activity stops.  I found that one camera was recording 10 seconds very frequently.  Like the camera picked up a shadow or something, and recorded a minimum 10 seconds.  So I changed that to record for 21 seconds at a time and doesn't seem to blip so often.

[PJ2000]

Did you have to delete the extra video file that one time or multiple times thereafter? Meaning did Arlo put over 512 files later on in a new folder and you had to repeat the process?