Arlo pro base station USB formatting issue

[yimandy]

Hi,

DUe to the end of life policy, I have tried to insert USB drives to  my base station, it requires me to format USB drive.  Formatting did not work.

I have looked through several forums, although there seems to be solution, there doesn't seem to be a clearcut answer on why the station cannot format the USB drive.

Is there specific or even recommeded from the community / Arlo, so I can purchase a specific USB drive storage before end of life starts in April?

Andy

[jguerdat]

First, the drive must be at least 16GB - smaller won't work. Second, format must be FAT32 which is what the base will perform. If formatting on a computer, a 3rd party program may be needed.

Are your drives at least 16GB? Are they write-protected? Can you format them on a computer and see if they are then recognized? What base station do you have? The original VMB3000 had ports that can't be used.

[yimandy]

Hi there,

The USB thumb drive I used has 32gb capacity and I tried formatting it on my PC to FAT32, and base still didn't "recognize" it asking me to format, but couldn't.

I don't think it is write-protected", seems like it did allow me to format on my PC.

is there a 3rd party program that you could recommend?

My base station is VMB4000r3

[jguerdat · Accepted solution]

Did you verify that it was actually formatted as FAT32? 32GB should be possible without a separate application but you could try using something like this:

https://fat32-format.en.softonic.com/

Have you rebooted the base so see if that helps?

[yimandy]

Ok thumb drive is FAT and but it only shows 60mb. Not the 32gb, I might have screwed up the formatting earlier. 

I am trying to run the application you sent earlier, but it won't run.  Trying to run in compatibility mode, no luck yet.  Application windows flashes quickly on screen then disappear.

[jguerdat]

A couple of things:

1) Using a computer, check to see how many partitions are on the drive. If more than one, delete all of them and try again. Arlo will only format the first partition which is sometimes present for the manufacturer's utilities, etc.

2) Google for FAT32 formatting programs to find one that works for you. However, with a 32GB drive that shouldn't be necessary - just use the computer's formatting capability and be sure to choose FAT32.

[Elf01]

End of life forced me to look into local storage on a USB drive.  Bought two Seagate 2tb USB drives on Amazon.  And yes, had some headaches with Fat32 and Windows 10.  Used guiformat to format the drive but forgot about the EFI partition.   I had to use diskpart to remove all partitions with "clean" on the drive.  Then had to use "convert to mbr" from "gpt".  Be absolutely sure you selected the correct drive or you will mess up big time by deleting the partitions on your computer drive.  Again, be absolutely sure you selected the correct drive.  Used "disk management" to create and format the whole 2tb drive....extfat...then used guiformat to change to Fat32.  Plugged the drive into VMB4000r3 running 1.20.4.1_4214_d606780...storage settings...and was able to record locally with best local recording and overwrite automatically and "Camera" (which was the label I chose for the Usb drive) "Ready".  Hope this helps others cause it was very convoluted.  Had to take information from other postings to get this working.

[yimandy]

I followed method 1 on this to reformat my thumbdrive, so far so good.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-fix-a-32GB-Sandisk-flash-drive-that-is-showing-only-64MB