SD Card not recognized by HUB

[JayCPA]

There is another post similar to this which I give props for providing the correct answer as no one at Arlo could resolve it.  The iPhone Arlo APP will not allow you to format the SD Card.  In addition, you MUST use FAT32 which means if you have a modern computer that only supports NTFS and exFAT, you will either need to format it on an older computer that does support FAT32 OR go to my.arlo.com on your home network to access the Hub from there to format it via the hub.  My suggestion to Arlo is to make this kind of knowledge known to your untechnical support team so that the issue can be resolved in less than a month.  My suggestion to Arlo owners, check the community postings, you will find better solutions here.

[StephenB]

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@JayCPA wrote:

The iPhone Arlo APP will not allow you to format the SD Card.  

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FWIW, mine definitely does - I reformatted it yesterday. Are you getting an error when you do this?  Or are you not finding the control?

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@JayCPA wrote:

In addition, you MUST use FAT32 which means if you have a modern computer that only supports NTFS and exFAT, you will either need to format it on an older computer that does support FAT32 OR go to my.arlo.com on your home network to access the Hub from there to format it via the hub.  

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Actually you can format it as FAT32 on current Windows.  But not from the GUI. 

There are also some freeware tools that will format as FAT32 if you aren't comfortable using powershell.

It would be ideal if Arlo added support for exFAT (and switched to exFAT whenever you reformat from the app).

[JayCPA]

Once it has been formatted in FAT32, you can reformat it via the phone app.  Prior to that, the phone app will show it as grayed out and not allow any access of a new SD card.

In regards to formatting in FAT32, part of my desire for an improvement for arlo is that you do not have to jump through so many hoops to do what should be simple task.  It feels like they don't want you to store locally but instead want you to buy an upgraded cloud storage.  I could be wrong, but it is interesting that the best information on storing locally is found by users who did their own troubleshooting.

[StephenB]

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@JayCPA wrote:

Once it has been formatted in FAT32, you can reformat it via the phone app.  Prior to that, the phone app will show it as grayed out and not allow any access of a new SD card.

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I'm wondering if your card had multiple partitions???

It's been quite a while since I inserted a new microSD card, but I don't recall running into this particular problem before.  Of course it could be new behavior (and would be a bug if my.arlo.com allows you to format and the phone app doesn't).

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@JayCPA wrote:

In regards to formatting in FAT32, part of my desire for an improvement for arlo is that you do not have to jump through so many hoops to do what should be simple task. 

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As I said, it would be ideal if Arlo could support exFAT.  

Initially Microsoft charged royalties for exFAT licenses - not sure if they are still doing that or not.

[ArloMakesProbs]

Thanks for the info on using the webpage instead of the app. I wasted hours on this. I'm stunned just how bad this company is about basic user stuff.

[Bo25]

Thank you for putting this post up. This was very knowledgeable  and spot on. Went to the Hub on PC and it took me less then 2 min to complete task and recoding local. I have been at this for two days with support and web seafaring. Very helpful and thanks again @JayCPA  

[superbit]

Thank you JayCPA.

Logging worked on my MBP allowed me to formate the card. 

[maxximu]

perfect fix. After wasting my time with Arlo support, restarted ten times, formatting the card in my computer in different format, and I didn't think to pull my old windows to format FAT32. They could easily fix the APP issue to format the card as soon as you install a new card. Stupid. The support agent asked me to reset the HUB and pull down all 10 cameras I have installed up on the walls outside. I might as well just pull them all out and return it to the store. Thank you JayCPA for helping out the community. Tired of untrained customer support.