USB Local Storage Does Not Include Footage When The Internet Is Down

[heptamewo]

I have the 2x Arlo Pro 2 + base station bundle. The base station firmware is 1.10.0.9_23037.

I've been testing whether the system can still record clips when the internet goes down, and am alarmed and disappointed.

I've simulated loss of internet by unplugging the ethernet cable from the base station, and then going in front of the camera(s) to trigger recordings. I then safely remove the local storage and go view the files on my computer. There are files for the events that happened without a network connection, but they are 2KB in size, and 0 seconds long. In other words, I have no footage of anything that happened when there's no internet!

What's the point of those 2KB files? Why can't the base station record footage while offline?

[jguerdat]

It's possible the drive is bad or needs to be reformatted. Also, try power cycling the base, just to be thorough.

[bubdog]

I highly doubt that your drive is bad. There are bugs with local storage.

I had local storage enabled on my system and have had no interruptions in internet service yet it simply stopped recording to local storage all together. It never notified me there was a problem. It was still enabled in the app. Nearly a month went by where I thought it was recording but it wasn't. When it stopped recording there was a 2kb corrupt video as the last recording. I unmounted and tested the drive on a computer, there is nothing wrong with the drive I was using, no formatting issues or bad sectors.

This is yet another thing that is broken with Arlo. Arlo cannot be trusted with anybody's home security at the moment. It would be a great system if it did what it said on the box but it doesn't due to all the software bugs.

I really wish they would give us a list of known issues and the status of fixes for them. Being in the dark about whether they have even acknowledged all these bugs much less the status of fixing them really isn't a good customer experience.

[heptamewo]

There's nothing wrong with the drive at least from the SMART data, and I had the base station itself format the drive right from the start (a few days ago) so its formatted the way Arlo would want.

I did try again yesterday with taking it offline before power cycling the base, as well as taking it offline again after power cycling the base. 2KB files while offline both times.

I also tried a SanDisk Extreme (read: not cheap crap) flash drive and Arlo can't handle it - try to format it or use it as the recording destination and the drive disappears from the UI immediately and needs to be replugged.

[heptamewo]

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@bubdog wrote:
<snip>

This is yet another thing that is broken with Arlo. Arlo cannot be trusted with anybody's home security at the moment. It would be a great system if it did what it said on the box but it doesn't due to all the software bugs.

 </snip>

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Do you know if theres a better brand to buy?

[ShayneS]

The Arlo development team is currently investigating this issue. We will provide an update as soon as we have more information to share with the community.