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

[theluke79]

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

[jguerdat]

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.

[theluke79]

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

[theluke79]

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

[whaler58]

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. 

[Manolo86]

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.

[Manolo86]

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.

[Manolo86]

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.

[theluke79]

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.

[Manolo86]

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.....

[Manolo86]

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

[theluke79]

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.

[JessicaP]

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.

[Manolo86]

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.

[whaler58]

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

[Manolo86]

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.

[Manolo86]

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.

[Manolo86]

Check this out.

[Manolo86]

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......

[whaler58]

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

[Mark_in_PDX]

VMB4500r2, FW 1.16.2.4_3403_f4757f1, iOS.

Same problem.  The USB was connected and formatting and storing video fine.  It now shows as not connected.  A restart has sometimes fixed the problem.  While the problem is not fixed, it does appear that motion-activated video is stored.  I appear unable to store live video.  I notice that there are similar reported problems by many others.

[dcfox1]

You can't store manual recordings to local storage, only to the cloud. 

https://kb.arlo.com/1146850/How-do-I-view-videos-saved-on-a-local-storage-USB-device

[whaler58]

After the last firmware update,  USB storage started working again.  Funny how that happens.