Local HUB storage solutions

[GBUK]

I have a mix of Pro4XL and Essential Spotlight cameras. Which smart hub is best USB or SD Card?

[StephenB]

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@GBUK wrote:

I have a mix of Pro4XL and Essential Spotlight cameras. Which smart hub is best USB or SD Card?

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The differences between the VMB4540 and the VMB5000 are

• The VMB4540 uses USB storage, the VMB5000 uses a microSD card.  The microSD slot is on the bottom of the VMB5000, so concealed from a casual inspection.  The USB slot on the VMB4540 is on the back of the smarthub.
• The VMB4540 is single band (2.4 ghz), the VMB5000 is dual band (2.4ghz and 5 ghz)

Your cameras are all single band, so if you got the VMB5000, the 5 ghz band wouldn't be used (unless you got a dual-band camera at some point in the future).  Though with outdoor cameras, the 2.4 ghz band is more useful, since 2.4 ghz has more range.  So it is quite possible that the 5 ghz band wouldn't be used even if you got an Ultra or a Pro 5s in the future.

Either smarthub will do the job.  Since the VMB4540 is usually less expensive, it would be more cost effective.  

[GBUK]

So if I go for the VMB 4540 as you suggest, I presume I still need to purchase a suitable USB?  any reccomendations of make and size please?

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@GBUK wrote:

So if I go for the VMB 4540 as you suggest, I presume I still need to purchase a suitable USB?  any reccomendations of make and size please?

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Minimum size is 16 GB, the max is 2 TB.  128 GB will save a lot of recordings, so personally I suggest staying in the 128-512 GB range.  While a hard drive will work, I think a thumb drive is a better option.

Generally I recommend staying with brand names, as there are a lot of scam USB drives for sale that don't have the capacity they claim.

The drive will need to be formatted as FAT32 (not the default exFAT).  The smarthub can do that for you.   Unfortunately, the Windows GUI won't let you format anything > 32 GB as FAT32.  Still there are some third-party tools that don't have this restriction (and you can also format larger disks using the Windows command line interface). 

[GBUK]

Thankyou StephenB. Fro. your kind reply I can see uou reccomend using a push in USB stick 128-512Gb and of a decent known brand.

Just not clear on the formatting of the USB stick to what you refer to as Fat32?  You state that the smart hub can do this formating. Is this a simple task?

[StephenB]

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@GBUK wrote:

You state that the smart hub can do this formating. Is this a simple task?

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Yes, there is a format control in the app.

[GBUK]

Much appreciated thankyou.