VMB5000 COMPATIBLE MICRO SD CARD for local storage

[igorpontes]

Hi everybody,

I'm having a terrible experience loading an SD CARD to my VMB5000 base station.

I've brought two already, and none of them worked.

Can you please share your experience and provide the part number (or Amazon link) from the sd cards you are using?

Thanks,

Igor

[jguerdat]

I can't help with a specific recommendation but any name brand card should work fine if it's at least 16GB. I suppose there could be an issue with huge cards >512GB.

[StephenB]

I use 128 GB EVO Select myself. Stay with 512 GB or smaller.

[igorpontes]

Hi,

Thank you for the information.

Are you using this one:

Amazon.com: SAMSUNG EVO Select Micro SD-Memory-Card + Adapter, 128GB microSDXC 130MB/s Full HD & 4K ...

??

[igorpontes]

My base STATION can't format the card.

I believe the base station is broken.

[igorpontes]

I finally could fix the problem.

The SD CARD comes with an exFAT partition.

I had to delete all the partition volumes and connect the card to Arlo Base Station.

After that, the app asked me to format the disk, which now works.

[StephenB]

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@igorpontes wrote:

Hi,

Thank you for the information.

Are you using this one:

Amazon.com: SAMSUNG EVO Select Micro SD-Memory-Card + Adapter, 128GB microSDXC 130MB/s Full HD & 4K ...

??

---

Yes, though my particular cards are a bit older (but branded the same).  The color is different.

[Retired_Member]

I cannot get any of the recommended ( on this chat ) micro SDX or SDXC cards to work with my VMB5000 SMART HUB.

It's not allowing me to format or complete any commands.

Am i missing something ?

I've tried the EVO select 128 and 256 and still nada 

[bmgoodman]

You're doing nothing wrong. You are trying to overcome terrible Arlo programming! I tried 2 well-regarded brands of microsd card and kept getting told they could not be used. They exceeded the specs, so I knife they SHOULD work.

I tried in my computer to wipe the existing partitions as suggested above. Didn't help. I tried using Windows to format as exFAT, then NTFS, but both failed. Finally I saw someone suggested a free formatting tool called Rufus. I had to try with different settings. I was in a hurry, so I didn't get to write it down. But I think it was "large exFAT" and "gpt" that finally made it with.

But the reality is Arlo hasn't fixed their software to recognize microsd cards from major brands! I think they hope you'll get frustrated and just buy a subscription!

[Retired_Member]

Thank you so much for your reply!
Very informative and I’ll give it a try 

Thank you 

[bmgoodman]

Sorry, I just looked again at Rufus.  I actually think it was GPT and "Large FAT32" that worked for me.  That option wasn't there when I tried a 32 GB drive, but it was for a 128 GB drive.  So it seems to depend on the size.  In any event, I think it may be the exFAT that the drives come with that trips up Arlo, but they really should fix this!

[Retired_Member]

Thanks again !!

[StephenB]

It needs to be formatted as FAT32, not exFAT.

Not sure about GPT, but I think it actually requires MBR.

[bmgoodman]

@StephenBYes, I got it wrong in my first post, but I was unable to edit that post.  So I corrected myself in a later post.  And, yes, I might have been wrong about GPT vs. MBR.  But I was doing this on an Arlo that's an hour away from me, so I cannot easily redo it.

I think the most important point is that the Arlo hub won't touch the microsd cards that come pre-formatted with exFAT file system and the message makes it sound like the card itself is defective.  I don't understand why it's unable to simply format the card the way it needs to be.  Nor can I understand why there's not much information on this issue.  Microsd cards are just getting bigger and many will come pre-formatted as exFAT.  This is not some esoteric, rarely-seen, thing.

[StephenB]

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@bmgoodman wrote:

I think the most important point is that the Arlo hub won't touch the microsd cards that come pre-formatted with exFAT file system and the message makes it sound like the card itself is defective.  I don't understand why it's unable to simply format the card the way it needs to be.  Nor can I understand why there's not much information on this issue.  Microsd cards are just getting bigger and many will come pre-formatted as exFAT.  This is not some esoteric, rarely-seen, thing.

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exFAT is standard now for flash drives and microSD, and it would be great if the hubs used it. The problem is that it requires royalty payments.  

• https://embedded-access.com/exfat-royalties/

I don't recall if I formatted my cards myself before I put them into the smarthubs (and it was quite a while ago, so the hub behavior might be different now).

[bmgoodman]

I wouldn't care if they "support" it, but shouldn't it be able to recognize it and offer to reformat to something usable?  Rather than just saying the microsd is not usable?  Their error message meant I returned what was a perfectly good microsd card as defective.  (The first time I didn't take my laptop so I couldn't test it.)

[StephenB]

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@bmgoodman wrote:

shouldn't it be able to recognize it and offer to reformat to something usable?  Rather than just saying the microsd is not usable?  

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Yes.

[Mac-Cat]

Just reformat the ExFAT to Microsoft FAT (FAT32).

ExFAT is not universal and it was created for file sizes over 4 GB.