Arlo Base Station VMB4000r3 "USB Device Failed to Format"

[notusername]

I'm not sure how this is still an issue after 6+ years but here we are.

When plugging in an external USB hard drive, formatted to FAT32 (already tried exFAT), the Arlo home base recognizes the drive, but still gives me the "USB device failed to format" message, half a second after attempting to format.

Tried when I purchased the camera system, brushed it off since they have cloud storage. Tried again a few years ago, same issue so I didn't bother. Tried the past few days, and the problem still occurs. How is this still an issue?

The device is a USB 3.0 external hard drive, 1TB capacity. Reads and writes just fine. Maybe a power consumption issue (powered via usb, not external adapter), does a flash drive work better?

[StephenB]

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@notusername wrote:

The device is a USB 3.0 external hard drive, 1TB capacity. Reads and writes just fine. Maybe a power consumption issue (powered via usb, not external adapter), does a flash drive work better?

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Power could be a factor, as the VMB4000 has USB 2.0 ports, which provide less power.

Personally I favor using flash drives.

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@notusername wrote:

When plugging in an external USB hard drive, formatted to FAT32 (already tried exFAT), the Arlo home base recognizes the drive, but still gives me the "USB device failed to format" message, half a second after attempting to format.

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Has to be FAT32, exFAT won't work.

Some external drives are shipped with multiple partitions (a small one with some utilities and maybe a manual, the other for the data).  Those need to be repartitioned (the base requires only one).  You can see if that's your issue using the Windows disk manager.

[Rounder12e]

Did you ever find a solution? I’m in the same boat. Had a 1gb usb stick work about 5 yrs ago and when it filled up, I never bothered to look at it because of the cloud support. Fast forward to now and the usb sticks don’t work (now there’s a 16gb minimum?) and my 500gb HD doesn’t work either. Formatted with fat32 on my Mac.  HD is powered, so that is not an issue.  

It seems like there’s a strong nudge to rely on the cloud services…..which is fine when they're free.  

[StephenB]

A USB stick 16 GB or larger will work, but will need to be reformatted (as they generally come formatted with exFAT). Some do have multiple partitions (putting software in one), and those also need to be repartitioned.  I don't have a Mac, so I don't know what tools you'd need to do that.

The USB hard drive should also work, though the base only supplies USB-2 level power, which might not be enough to power the drive.

Note that while the VMB4000 and VMB4500 support local recording, they do not support playback.  The only way to see the recordings with those hubs is to eject the storage from the hub and connect it to a PC.

[Rounder12e]

Yes, the HD I'm using is fully self powered so USB power is not relevant.

If I could only get it to recognize and record to the hard drive that would be great. I don't expect to be able to playback  using the local storage, except by mounting and accessing it from my computer.

[StephenB]

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@Rounder12e wrote:

Yes, the HD I'm using is fully self powered so USB power is not relevant.

If I could only get it to recognize and record to the hard drive that would be great. I don't expect to be able to playback  using the local storage, except by mounting and accessing it from my computer.

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Did you confirm that it only has one partition?

[Rounder12e]

Yes. 500GB. Single partition. Fat32.

[StephenB]

What tool are you using in the screenshot above?

Just wondering if there is any significance in the vertical line starting from the center of the circle.

[Rounder12e]

Got it to work.

It's not quite the number of partitions so much as the partitioning scheme. diskutil defaults to GUID Partition Table (GPT) and the UI doesn't let you change it, but it looks like it needs to be MBR/Fdisk style for the Arlo base station to recognize it. 

In addition to my 500GB hard drive, I was also able to get my 4GB usb stick (i.e.,  < 16GB will work) using the same partitioning scheme.

For Mac users, you can use this command to repartition using the MBR scheme. Replace [your device] with the device name listed under /dev; Disk Utility will also displays it in the GUI under device field. Note: This erases everything on the HD! :

diskutil partitionDisk [your device] 1 MBR FAT32 Arlo 0

For Mac users, here's the diskutil info dump for my drive that works, first one is for the drive device, second is for the partition (note that the device name [disk14] may be different for your system):

diskutil info /dev/disk14
Device Identifier: disk14
Device Node: /dev/disk14
Whole: Yes
Part of Whole: disk14
Device / Media Name: 0A

Volume Name: Not applicable (no file system)
Mounted: Not applicable (no file system)
File System: None

Content (IOContent): FDisk_partition_scheme
OS Can Be Installed: No
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: USB
SMART Status: Not Supported

Disk Size: 500.1 GB (500107862016 Bytes) (exactly 976773168 512-Byte-Units)
Device Block Size: 512 Bytes

Media OS Use Only: No
Media Read-Only: No
Volume Read-Only: Not applicable (no file system)

Device Location: External
Removable Media: Fixed

Solid State: Info not available
Virtual: No

diskutil info /dev/disk14s1
Device Identifier: disk14s1
Device Node: /dev/disk14s1
Whole: No
Part of Whole: disk14

Volume Name: ARLO
Mounted: Yes
Mount Point: /Volumes/ARLO

Partition Type: DOS_FAT_32
File System Personality: MS-DOS FAT32
Type (Bundle): msdos
Name (User Visible): MS-DOS (FAT32)

OS Can Be Installed: No
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: USB
SMART Status: Not Supported
Volume UUID: A13233E0-3402-3AF9-9F0C-FB0ECBD65A57
Partition Offset: 1048576 Bytes (2048 512-Byte-Device-Blocks)

Disk Size: 500.1 GB (500106788864 Bytes) (exactly 976771072 512-Byte-Units)
Device Block Size: 512 Bytes

Volume Total Space: 500.0 GB (499984728064 Bytes) (exactly 976532672 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Used Space: 3.0 MB (2981888 Bytes) (exactly 5824 512-Byte-Units) (0.0%)
Volume Free Space: 500.0 GB (499981746176 Bytes) (exactly 976526848 512-Byte-Units) (100.0%)
Allocation Block Size: 512 Bytes

Media OS Use Only: No
Media Read-Only: No
Volume Read-Only: No

Device Location: External
Removable Media: Fixed

Solid State: Info not available