VMB5000 keeps corrupting microSD cards

[Stevewins]

What’s going on with the SD card corruption issue?  I keep repairing the cards on my computer and the VMB5000 keeps re-corrupting them rendering my local storage option non-functional. 

[Vdubguy2k]

I had the old Arlo Pro cameras for about 7 years with hardly any issues to mention.  Recently upgraded and having quite a few issues, but the one that is driving me nuts the most is the micro SD cards keep corrupting and not recording locally to the VMB5000 hub.  I've contacted support, was told I would get a response back, but days later still nothing, so wanting to see if anyone else has had this issue and was able to solve.

I have: 

VMB5000 hub

3 Arlo Ultra 2 Cams

2 Essential indoor cams

2 older Arlo Pro cams (in garage testing to see how they work with new hub)

At first I purchased a 64GB micro SD card, brand new and formated to FAT32.  Inserted into hub and all seemed to work well (no thumbnail images for those recordings, but that is a known issue being "worked on").  About a day later on the phone app I got an orange USB looking warning on each cam saying  "There was an error writing to SD card".  On the desktop app it says the SD card is corrupted.   I pulled it out, reformatted, put back in....even let the Arlo hub reformat it.  Worked again for about a day then same thing.

Back to store, but a 128GB card new....same process as above, same results with corruption.   I look around online a bit and find people have the best luck with the 256GB sandisk extreme card with higher write speeds, so I go buy one of those.  Repeat all of the above and a day later corrupts again.

No matter what I do, I get about a day of recording then the SD card shows as corrupt.  I pulled the 256gb card out and scanned using my laptop and no issues were found with the card.  It has to be something with the hub or the arlo firmware.

Anyone have any ideas on this?  Still waiting for support, but based on other threads here I'm not holding my breath.  Only have 2 weeks to return all this stuff if I can't get it working.  Thanks!

[jguerdat]

There certainly have been recent reports here about this but it's not universal. My own 5000 hub is recording fine, with an average of ~8GB of recordings per month. It's certainly possible that it could be a faulty hub but it could also be something about the card. Do you have another one, perhaps of a different manufacturer/size?

[jguerdat]

One thing to try is to format on a computer (you'll need a FAT32 program to do this) and use a complete format, not a quick format. I rather doubt it will help but maybe...

[Vdubguy2k]

Thanks for the reply and suggestion!

I did format the card originally using the guiformat program that I downloaded to make sure it was FAT32, but I did the quick format.

Worth a shot to try the longer format.  I will give that a shot later and see if it works.  Can't get anymore broken than it is now I guess haha!

[SurferDude2k]

I have a 256 GB card that the hub reports as corrupted in the last couple of weeks. My guess is that it is full or near full since i installed it a year ago. I’ve not be able to find the adapter so I can load it into my computer to reformat it yet, but this seems like this has happened to others in the past as well. If anyone found a fix, please post it as it doesn’t seem like reformatting it resolves the issue.

[jguerdat]

WHile you're trying that, use Device Manager to verify that there's only one partition on the drive. If multiples (manufacturers many times use a small one at the beginning to store utilities), delete all partitions and create one large one for the whole drive.

[Stevewins]

Yeah, it seems to happen once the card reaches the threshold to start overwriting old clips. I repaired mine in my computer twice now but it keeps corrupting it. It’s a little under 90% full on a 128GB card. Today I’ll just reformat the card in the computer and start with an empty card again and see what happens. The reformat button in the Arlo app deactivates once the card gets corrupted.

[ShayneS]

Hey @Stevewins @SurferDude2k Thanks for the feedback, I will have this investigated and report back when I have more info to share. 

[Bartley]

Since April my VMB4000 quit recording regularly to the USB drive I had hooked up for local storage. The drive has been in use since 2019. It is 2 TB and it has been overwriting the data when it hits 10%. No issues until April. I hooked it up to a computer and I could watch the videos and had no issue. I hooked it back up to the Hub and it worked for a short period of time. Maybe a day. Then I got the drive needed formatted. I hooked it back up to the computer and I could no longer watch any videos. I formatted the drive and did a chkdsk and it reported no errors. I hooked it back up to the hub and it worked again for a short period of time. Figured the drive might have issues, so I bought another one. Still have the issue with the new drive. I'm sure it will start working again after another update. Seems to be the norm. Anyway the drive I replaced for troubleshooting that I had been using since 2019 works perfectly fine with my computer. Running backups with it. My two cents worth.

[Stevewins]

I started to reformat the SD card with my computer and discovered that Windows 10 doesn’t have FAT 32 formatting capability. The card was in FAT 32 format now so I didn’t want to change that to exFAT in case it mattered for Arlo. I repaired the card again in the computer and formatted it immediately with the Arlo base format function before it had a chance to corrupt it again. It seems to be working now that it’s starting from empty. We’ll see if it corrupts again. If it doesn’t, that would seem to indicate that the bug is related to the overwrite function.  

Does anyone know offhand what formats Arlo supports for the SD cards?

[SAub]

My USB flash drive also stopped working on May 8, 2023. It has worked successfully for 2+ years. It is a SanDisk 64gb model SDCZ430 USB 3.1.  It is too much of a coincidence that mine stopped working at the same time as lendelbogdan's. Arlo gave some generic error like unusable or corrupted (I don't remember exactly) and stated that it must be formatted. Yet the Arlo iPhone app did not give an option to format it. So, I attempted to format it on Win 10 as FAT32, but that failed as the drive is too large for FAT32, so then I formatted it as exFAT32 which succeeded. After inserting the SD card back into the base station, the base station stated that it must be formatted, and now the Arlo iPhone did give an option to format which I attempted, but that failed with error "USB device failed to format". 

The SanDisk 64 gb works correctly on Win 10 so it is not the problem. 

The firmware in base station and cameras have not recently updated. They are:

VMB4500r2 base station: 1.21.0.0_4145_a58d08a

Pro2: 1.125.17.1_11_de8490d

Pro: 1.092.1.0_9_120d8b7

The only oddness to my system is that 4 cameras are Pro2 and 1 is Pro. But that setup has been working successfully for almost 2 years and still is, other than the USB card issue that started occurring on May 8, 2023. And the Pro is not EOL'ed until July 1, 2023.

Can Arlo please investigate? Seems like a bug given that:

* the SanDisk works correctly in Win 10

* the SanDisk worked successfully with Arlo for 2+ years

* Lendelbogadan's and my USB card started failing at about the same time

Thanks, 

Steve

[StephenB]

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@Stevewins wrote:

Does anyone know offhand what formats Arlo supports for the SD cards?

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Only FAT32.

You can format using Powershell or CMD using the /FS:FAT32 option.

There are also some third-party freeware tools that will give you a GUI.  One is here:

• http://ridgecrop.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm

Click on the image to download the app, or use this link:

• http://ridgecrop.co.uk/guiformat.exe

[jguerdat]

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@StephenB wrote:

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You can format using Powershell or CMD using the /FS:FAT32 option.

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OOoohh! I didn't know that was an option. Thanks!

[SAub]

Update: On May 14th, my USB drive magically starting working again. I did nothing to it other than re-insert it into the base station. Didn't even need to format it. There have been no firmware updates to my base station, at least according to the firmware version shown in the Device Info. I have no idea why it stopped working, no idea why it started working a few days later, and no idea how long it will continue to work. It would be nice if someone from Arlo would weigh in on this issue.

[Baoviet]

Hello,

I keep getting error msg “SD Card is Corrupted”.  I’d tried 3 brand new cards but still the same error.  All SD cards are working fine in computer, copying or removing files.  Anyone has any idea?

Thanks in advance

 

 

[Stevewins]

Well, the base unit corrupted the newly reformatted SD card about 30 minutes ago, so the bug is likely not related to the overwrite function. This is another major malfunction along with the defective battery  charge indicator that renders the system pretty much unfit for purpose. Does this amateur hour fiasco never end? 

StephenB, thanks for the command  level reminder, I forgot about that, I haven’t needed it in decades. Arlo is sending us back to the 90’s/00’s lol. 

[Stevewins]

ShayneS, can you please ask them to roll back the update that broke the local storage function? This is absolutely ridiculous! That function is needed to capture clips that don’t get stored in the cloud and generate notifications, ie those outside the activity zones but which might be needed later. Not to mention it renders anyone’s newer system that  isn’t subscribed to the cloud service completely useless, or is that the plan all along. 

[Stevewins]

StephenB, it seems the windows 10 command level format function can’t do FAT32 on anything larger than 32GB. It runs for hours then errors out with that message. 

[StephenB]

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@Stevewins wrote:

StephenB, it seems the windows 10 command level format function can’t do FAT32 on anything larger than 32GB. It runs for hours then errors out with that message. 

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Interesting - it's been a while since I used it.  It's supposed to work though:

• https://www.howtogeek.com/316977/how-to-format-usb-drives-larger-than-32gb-with-fat32-on-windows/

There are other freeware tools you could also try, including AOMEI partition assistant.

• https://www.aomeitech.com/download.html

[Baoviet]

Stevewins, you can use powershell in windows 10 to format SD card larger than 32g. 

[Stevewins]

I put an 8GB card in the base. If the new firmware is going to continue corrupting the card every 2 days, I’d rather risk an 8GB vs a 128GB card. I get about a week on an 8GB card on Arlo. 

[ArloCustomer99]

I just started having the exact same issue.

[Baoviet]

Stevewins

you can reformat the corrupted sd card under exfat format with your computer then plug card back into base station.  It then gives you an option to format it as fat32 so you can reuse it

[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.