Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras

After restart, base station complains that USB disk needs formatting, but never formats

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Purple_Silicon
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Aspirant

I had some trouble getting the base station to talk with the camera. As a troubleshooting step, I decided to restart the base station. Before I restarted it, the USB disk was reported as good (in green). After the restart, magically, the USB stick was reported as "Requires Formatting" (in yellow). So I tap on "FORMAT USB DEVICE". The formatting process is lightning fast! Except, it does nothing. The USB disk is still (again?) reprted as "Requires Formatting":

I shall emphasize that this happened after restert. Before, the USB disk was perfectly fine.
What to do?

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Purple_Silicon
Aspirant
Aspirant

Since I proved that there was nothing wrong with the USB disk - it was FAT32-formatted all along, this is simply an Arlo (VMB4500) firmware  bug. There is no way to get rid of the bug, but you can get rid of the error message by unpluggin and then re-inserting the USB disk.

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StephenB
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Guru

Maybe try connecting it to a PC and formatting it there.

Purple_Silicon
Aspirant
Aspirant

I removed the USB drive and inserted it in a PC, and guess what? It's FAT32-formatted and it has an Arlo directory on. In other words, there was nothing wrong with the USB drive at all. 

 

How do we report bugs to Arlo?

Purple_Silicon
Aspirant
Aspirant

Since I proved that there was nothing wrong with the USB disk - it was FAT32-formatted all along, this is simply an Arlo (VMB4500) firmware  bug. There is no way to get rid of the bug, but you can get rid of the error message by unpluggin and then re-inserting the USB disk.