Arlo Pro 2, utilizing USB port to connect to surveillance hard drive as local backup

[scientificsolve]

I am thinking of utilizing surveillance hard drive (4 TB WD Purple) to do continuous recording on Arlo. I know that a power supply is needed for hard drive which I have way around that. All I need to know is if adding a surveillance hard drive will work as local backup. 

Hence, this is what I am thinking. Take 4 TB hard drive, get a local power supply for hard drive, use a USB to hard drive connector, and do local backup of continuous video stream. Did anyone tried this approach or is it theoretically possible with base station?

[michaelkenward]

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@scientificsolve wrote:

I am thinking of utilizing surveillance hard drive (4 TB WD Purple) to do continuous recording on Arlo. I know that a power supply is needed for hard drive which I have way around that. All I need to know is if adding a surveillance hard drive will work as local backup. 

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Attempts to get that sort of thing to work have been less than startling.

If you read the documentation for the Ultra system, for example, it says:

"The minimum USB drive size is 16 GB and the maximum size drive that those file systems support is 2 TB. "

It may be that the 16 GB has grown to 32 GB, but there has been no increase at the top end. Pro 2 and Pro 3 come with similar warnings.

The manual also says:

The SmartHub supports USB 2.0-compatible devices. Not all HDDs are compatible with the SmartHub. If you’re not sure, consult the manufacturer of the HDD.

Personally, I wouldn't trust any disk manufacturer , or Arlo, to know all the different combinations that might work.

Most people find that a 256 GB drive keeps the going for months before recordings overwrite.

[jguerdat]

Not to mention that you can't record 24/7 with any Arlo camera. CVR is the closest you can get and that's totally cloud-based. Also, in my limited testing, I found an hour's recording of live view (when that was possible) was well over 1GB which would fill that 2TB partition in 1/4 year-ish so not exactly all that useful, especially trying to find a time period in that mammoth file.