How-to: Upgrade the drive in your Apple TV
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Mar 23rd 2007 11:51PM
posted Mar 23rd 2007 11:51PM
While millions thousands of people were enjoying their Apple TVs last night, we decided to take ours apart for some pictures and to upgrade the drive. Seriously, 40 GB is smaller than our iPod and we don't like to have to pick and choose what to sync. While there is little doubt that this will void our warranty, isn't it worth it? We have just updated our process, which is much much faster and no longer requires iPartition, thanks to some comments by Epomymous. We decided to double the size of the HDD from 40 GB to 80 GB; we picked up a new 5400 RPM IDE laptop drive and went to town.
You're going to need a few other items to perform this upgrade -- besides the Apple TV and the new drive, of course. First you'll need a TORX 8 and 10 driver to remove the screws and some spray adhesive to reapply the rubber mat on the bottom of the unit. You will also need either an external 2.5 inch drive enclosure or a USB to IDE adapter like the one shown with a 3.5 inch to 2.5 inch adapter.
You can also use two 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch drive adapters and a computer with dual IDE channels to do a disk to disk copy which would be much faster, but you don't get a backup of the original drive.
First we need to disassemble the Apple TV by peeling off the rubber from the bottom. Start on one corner and peal slowly so you don't tear it. There will be 4 TORX screws, one in each corner; don't remove the other 4 closer to the middle just yet.
After you remove the first four screws, gently pull the bottom away from the top. The hard drive is attached to the bottom so be mindful of the IDE cable.
Fold the bottom cover over so you don't stress the cable and gently pull the IDE cable from the main board of the Apple TV. After you're done admiring the internals, remove those other four screws on the back while holding the hard drive. Finally, unplug the IDE cable from the drive and plug it into your USB adapter.
Now we need to copy the disk -- and while there are probably 100 ways to do this, we are going to show our Linux roots by using our favorite command, "dd."
Sine we are only using one 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch hard drive adapter, first we are going to make a image of the disk onto our internal hard drive, then swap drives to copy the image back to the new disc. This will obviously take twice as long, but also gives us a backup of the original drive. If you have two USB to IDE adapters or a computer with two laptop drive adapters you can do a disk to disk copy which is much faster.
Plug the USB adapter into your Mac. From the Terminal, use diskutil to verify what disc we are working with:
*on Linux use fdisk -l instead*
diskutil list
Look for the disk that looks like this, it will have a partition named OSBoot and Media.
This tells us that the Apple TV drive is disk2 or more specifically. /dev/disk2
The tool we are going to use to copy the disk is dd, which simply means copy the input device to the output device. We are using disk2 for input and an image file in our home directory for the output. Make sure you have enough room for the entire 37GB file. Here is the command we are going to run form the terminal:
dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/Users/Engadget/AppleTV.img bs=1024k
To be clear, this command instructs the system to copy the entire disk, including all the partitions on disk2 to a image file stored at /Users/Engadget/AppleTV.img and the bs=1024k helps speed it along. If you want to only copy the parts of the drive you need add the count=1335 switch like the next command, we left it out despite the copy time so we could have a complete backup image of the original drive.
You should see the following screen when it's completed; unfortunately, there's no progress indicator.
Optional step: If you have a way to connect both drives to the computer at the same time, then use this command instead, assuming that disk2 is the source drive and disk3 is the destination:
dd if=/dev/disk2 count=1335 of=/dev/disk3 bs=1024k
When the image is finished we need to swap the drives and copy the image back to the new, bigger hard disk. Use diskutil again to verify the drive and then this command to start the copy.
** Update ** Now we are only copying the partitions we want, by adding the count= switch. It is much faster to copy 1.4 GB instead of 37 GB.
dd if=/Users/Engadget/AppleTV.img count=1335 of=/dev/disk2 bs=1024k
(If you connected both drives at the same time this step is not necessary.)
Again you will see the output confirming completion.
**Update**
We removed the iPartition steps, they are no longer necessary, now we do it manually and free.
First we eject the disk, we have to do this every time we run gpt or you will get an error.
diskutil eject disk2
Just in case lets try to recover the partition table.
gpt recover disk2
diskutil eject disk2
Then we remove the old Media Partition. (don't remove the wrong one!)
gpt remove -i 4 disk2
diskutil eject disk2
Then find our new start and size.
gpt show disk2
This will return this.
It we look just above the Sec GPT table we will see that the empty space starts at 3141672 and is 74998455 in size so we will use those in our next command.Eject the disk again.
diskutil eject disk2
Then create the new partition, using the info from the last step.
gpt add -b 3141672 -i 4 -t hfs /dev/disk2
Last, we format the drive.
diskutil eraseVolume "Journaled HFS+" Media /dev/disk2s4
Now before we dismount the drive, verify that there are no .Spotlight folders on the partitions by typing this command in the Terminal:
ls -a /Volumes/Media
and
ls -a /Volumes/OSBoot
If there are, then use this command to remove them, but be very careful, this command can delete everything.
sudo rm -rf /Volumes/OSBoot/.Spotlight-V100
or
sudo rm -rf /Volumes/Media/.Spotlight-V100
Now dismount and disconnect the drive and then install it back into your Apple TV.
diskutil eject disk2
It will boot like the first time again and now you should now be able to go into the Apple TV menu and see the size as well as in iTunes.
Stayed tuned as we learn more about what we can make this thing do.
Call me an ignoramous if you want, but if anyone can answer me this: There is no way that apple can prevent, say, a perpendicular type of HD from working with this setup, right? As long as it has the same IDE connector? thnx
It will work with any HD, that can be converted to the laptop IDE cable.
SDD would work. Also if you hacked up a cable and put it to a desktop-IDE cable end, and had some way to power the drive then you could use a desktop drive... It'd look kinda wonky, but they just released new 1TB drives...
What you really want is this neat USB-to-IDE adapter:
http://www.usbgeek.com/prod_detail.php?prod_id=0208
but note that the 2.5" side unfortunately won't work on a laptop that does not provide adequate power via USB *cough*PowerbookG4*cough*
Your problem is the drive, not the Powerbook. The USB specification only allows for 0.5 amps MAX one a single port. Only low power drives can use this adapter, as most use something like 0.6-1.2 amps, at spin-up anyway. If you got the same drive to work on a different computer, the hub or adapter you were using had VERRY sloppy power management. That is why most USB 2.5" adapters use a pigtail cable to siphon more power from other ports. Many of these adapters have a way to use a PSU with them, contact your manufacture to see if they offer one.
Just out of curiosity, but did you guys try booting your Mac from the Apple TV drive? I know its a long shot, but just curios.
correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't the apply tv basically doing what any iPod Video should do with in a dock hooked up to a tv? except, perhaps the whole network thing. but seriously, it just seems like iPod video should be able to do all of this - drop it in the apple dock, and have 80 gigs of your pictures, music and videos - and the little apple remote - a menu SHOULD pop up on the screen like this one.. if you ask me, apple just dosent allow the ipod to do this, to get this to market - and seems mighty pointless to me.
AppleTV is supposed to handle HD content. iPods and iPods do not.
dd has a progress indicator, it shows itself when hit with the USR1 signal it's an easy way to see how far along you are, usage: `kill -USR1 `pidof dd`` running that in a sepearte terminal should cause dd to spit out information about how far and how fast it's running
you may also consider ddrescue (http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html) which is a bit of a change to regular dd which comes with a decent enough progress indicator by default and a means to try and get at hosed disks in case you ever drop your apple tv.
as far as partioning freely you might use any number of free live cds say for instance one from Ubuntu and use gparted. As a bonus all tools dd, ddrescue, and gparted would likely be found on said live cds.
Just FYI, kill -USR1 stops dd. To get status, use kill -INFO.
I am just wondering how to do this without linux and with mac os x, can it be done in vista or xp to copy the drive
Dude they did that with OS X. Didnt you read the artrical?
yeah but is it possible with xp or vista
and how?
Its probably possible to do in windows but I don't remember the name of a disk imaging utility off the top of my head. And you'll need to find a partition manager that can handle resizing the mac partition. You can do it, but it'll be more of a pain. Just boot a linux live cd for the disk copy. If your pc can run vista, it can run linux
A free way to partition the drive, and one that supports every filesystem under the sun is the GParted LiveCD. Pop it in the drive and it will recognise all drives including externals and usb keys, and as it's a linux gui it's self-intuitive.
Yea, a free way that unfortunately doesn't work ;)
From the GNU Parted features page (the library GParted uses):
"Parted can only shrink HFS and HFS+ filesystems."
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/features.shtml
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php
So engadget hates the apple ipod, but loves the apple TV.
Hey scottstrash, no offense, but how the hell can an iPod get up to 1080i resolution via and HDMI adapter. Sorry but the apple tv and ipod are 2 really different things.
alright, sounds viable. but i thought the appletv put out at 720p - that and if they had a high quality dock for the ipod, you could store high quality/play high quality files off it - sure apple tv can do this - and at your high def; but i'm just saying it seems like they are really releasing this device, a plugged in; modified ipod (minus a screen, plus networking ability - which may not be far off on the ipod) or maybe more of what i'm saying is if they made a better dock for the ipod basically the same thing can be accomplished. yet, they dont allow any sort of menus' through ipod video when on a dock, with a remote.
Sorry bud no such thing, no offense sounds like you havent even tried to connect your video ipod to your tv. It looks horrible, all blurry and grainy. If you look at the engadget modded pics of the apple tv the resolution they have it set to it 1080i. I understand what you mean by how you want one product to do this all, well it would have to be a big unit to fit all the processors in. Maybe in 2045 with the new iPhone lol.
I may have a free way to do the resize step instead of using iPartition for those who are on OS X 10.4. First of all make sure you have updated to 10.4.6 as the a useful feature was added to diskutil in this update to hlep bootcamp resize drives.
It will add 'resizeVolume' functionality to diskutil. I've done this before when resizing drives to triple boot my Macbook. I dont recall the exact syntax required, but follow the link below and change it around depending on your drive size.
If this works for anyone let me know :-)
http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/cli/nondestructively_resizing_volumes
I spent many hours trying to use diskutil's resizeVolume to work, but it seems it can only make volumes smaller not larger.
I originally bought iPartition for the same reason some time ago, I wanted to remove Boot camp and wasn't able to reclaim all my drive space with diskutil. Other than reformatting the disc of course.
Seems like the same limitation as gparted according to Ignacio.
(By the way, my previous comment was a response to hongkongtechkid, not Justin Y)
You could probably use a tool like Winhex to copy the drive in XP/Vista.
Not sure what you'd use to change the partition size.
Oh, and for a free way to clone the drive, just use Cygwin.
Only trick is finding the proper /dev:
http://www.cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-specialnames.html
(in short, /dev/sda = first hard disk, /dev/sdb = second disk, etc.)
Once you figure out the right device, just proceed as in the article above (ie, use the 'dd' command). As always, be careful or you can wipe your main hard drive!
To add one more bit about Cygwin and /dev names:
Use the Windows Disk Manager (right-click on My Computer, Manage, Disk Management) to find out the Windows drive number for every attached disk. Then just convert:
Disk 0 -> /dev/sda
Disk 1 -> /dev/sdb
Disk 2 -> /dev/sdc
etc.
ENOUGH APPLE TV CRAP, OMG IM GOING TO PUKE IT ISNT EVEN A UNIQUE PRODUCT ENOUGH
Out of the box I still think this is an overrated product. Apple have done a great job with a nice UI etc but it is a very very limited product (compared to say XMBC).
Issues :-
(1) Does not stream! (if you have more than 40GB of media on your server - start getting selective!)
(2) Limited video format support (e.g. no DIVX, WMV etc)
(3) No true TV support (no TV streaming, recording, PVR functionality whatsoever)
(4) Limited HD (no 1080p for example)
For the price other greater alternatives exist, however it will still do well due to the Apple name.
Since the Media volume is empty, instead of resizing it, you can use the gpt command line tool to remove it and add back another larger partition.
something like:
sudo gpt show /dev/disk2
sudo gpt remove -i 4 /dev/disk2
sudo gpt add -s 231709543 /dev/disk2
where partition 4 is the media partition and 231709543 is the size of the new partition in sectors.
the disk arbitration daemon keeps wanting to remount the volumes each time the partition table changes, so you need to keep ejecting them between commands.
You then need to format the new partition with journaled HFS+.
The Media partition isn't empty.
Not sure what is on their other than your Media. I am sure with enough time it could be worked out.
I did try this and the data was still there despite the expanded partition. But because I didn't reformat, the size of the volume was still the same according to OS X.
If you did reformat you could copy the data from the Media directory from the image we created with DD in the first step.
This would take longer since you would have to copy the biggest partition 3 times. (once from source, once to the destination and a third after formating.)
The real trick would be to modify the partition table to recognize the extra space without reformatting after expanding the partition.
Upgrading the drive, eh? Hmm. How about we first have a "How-to: Make your Apple TV useful in the first place"?
OK, so that sounds more like flamebait than I had intended, but I'm still not the first to say it: This thing is kinda lame.
Not Engadget's fault, though. Kudos for the haxx0ring skills, I always like to see that kind of stuff.
9 hours to get the original disk image, and another 8 to write it back to the new disk. Ouch!
Robinator: It does stream. Maybe not from the 'net, but from other machines on the same LAN. (Who wants to watch youtube on an HDTV?)
We're pretty sure this is a problem on our end, but didn't spend the time to figure out why. The first 9 hours was when we were sleeping and the second we were at work. If we used a linux live CD with real IDE bus,(rather than usb) it would prob take closer to 15 mins each.
I think the Apple TV is going to be one of the most Mac Hacked devices ever! After all it does need some overhaul'n.
http://www.switchingtomac.com/
I thought this device was for non geeks? Who didn't want a hard setup. Seems like the product can either be:
A) Easy without much use
B) Somewhat useful without ease
I thought the extensive coverage of the iPhone was bad. Engadget, you don't have to post every single little bit about the iTV you can find. This is ridiculous.
I don't know why people keep getting this wrong, but AppleTV does stream, and does it quite well. I have far more than 40GB of content on my Mac Pro and I just sync part of it-- the rest I am able to stream from both it and also from my Macbook Pro.
ok, first, i'm counting the minutes and seconds until the author and engadget get slapped with with a big-apple-legal-death-star™ "cease-and-desist" order on this article, so i've saved it as a *.pdf just in case i ever buy one of these boxes.
#2 - does anyone know if there's a ROM upper limit as to the size of the hard drive built in? i know earlier desktop mac g4's from a couple years ago were crippled with only being able to see 128 gb on an ata drive, even if you bought a 250 gb or bigger. does anyone know if such a limit exists here? because it's easy enough to go out and find a 200gb drive for this puppy, but what if the ROM will see no more than 80 gb of it? i know there are software hacks around this sort of thing, but might be more trouble than it is worth on this kind of closed system.
They were not "crippled" as you say, it was a limitation of the drive controller that was used and it effected many computers of that age and older, not just macs.
Check out this article for the details;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Technology_Attachment
(3rd paragraph up from the bottom of "History"
Basically though, if there is going to be an easily attainable size restriction, it will probably be that same 128GB limit.
After resizing the media partition using gpt or pdisk do a fsck -yp /dev/disk2s4. It will see a lot of unallocated blocks that aren't in the free blocks table and with correct it. That's why you don't usually find a resize up utility on posix/unix/bsd systems. fsck has always had the grow function/assumption built in.
Now I did remember reading somewhere someone had made a high quality dock which was sending 1080p movies to a tv they were playing TOY STORY, it was here, but no release date and no real outcome from that, just someone did it, so I guess somewhat possible.
Course in windows this could be made more easy.
For the image use Norton ghost, for create the image or from a disk to disk copy (be track by track or raw, or other of so many option) and even more easy for the drive resize you would use partition magic or any other partition tool for windows.
Course in this upgrade i would prefer a 7200RPM disk...
Anyway very very cool....
PS . : Norton Ghost & Partition magic has progress indicators...
linux MCE pwns apple tv by a long shot
Thanks obladda,
I just wrote a revision, once I test it I will update the post.
I am still trying to figure out a way to test this without having to start over completely and without buying another drive.
I tried this and just using fsk says it is a bad superblock and no matter what super block I specified it was unsuccessful.
I also tried fsck_hfs -f and it doesn't find any problems, but the volume is still the original size despite the new size of the partition which is recognized in Diskutility.
Thanks
Ben, thanks so much for posting this article in such a timely manner.
First, can you confirm that 128GB is the limit due to the PATA bus so no use putting in any drive bigger than 128GB?
Second, after upgrading the disk, were there any more noise due to more fan use or heat issues?
Third, any hints that Apple will support external USB drive in the next firmware release?
Charles
how long should the Media partition resize take with iPartition ?
There is a much easier way than a long drawn out fsck. Make a sparse disk image backup or a tar backup of the Data partition. Delete and recreate the partition as a larger partition then restore the files from the mounted image or tar file.
wouldnt it be cool if you could have some sort of browser on this hey.. just an idea
Charles,
I don't know of any limit.
I didn't notice any extra noise with the WD 80GB 5400 rpm drive I used.
No idea, but it is certainly possible.
yeah, and you could install if linux and pci devices on it that would be great, maybe even a cheap videocard that actually has versatile (vga and s-video) output, (HDMI somehow doesn't give me the raging boner that it seems to give everyone else) and an os that won't force you into a limited number of file formats, and if it cost half the price, and come with a bigger hd in the first place, with the cutting edge capability to add another one without the above insanity, and on top of all that play games then it would be... My computer. (thrift stores and Craigslist ftw) Sure its uglier, but I'll take 100x more function over trendy form any day.
Aside from the geek-cred (which I appreciate), what the hell is the point of replacing the hard drive (or even having one in the first place)? The AppleTV streams beautifully over wireless G and especially N. NO lag, NO stutter. Why are people so obsessed over the most useless feature of this device? The hard drive just seems like a failsafe for me (should your network or computer go down for some reason).
Seriously, you can remove the hard drive from my AppleTV and I wouldn't even notice. Upgrading the hard drive on these things is like upgrading the spare tire for your car.
James @ Mar 25th 2007 12:44AM
"Aside from the geek-cred (which I appreciate), what the hell is the point of replacing the hard drive (or even having one in the first place)? The AppleTV streams beautifully over wireless G and especially N."
The point? Album art. Streamed music will not show the album covers, a problem for many of us that have >> 32G music.
Not very long at all, almost instantly after you hit the commit button, but a few minutes max.
first time i did it took like 20 hours , and it said it was done , and there were no changes. 2nd time it was instant and it worked fine , and my appletv is running perfect now ... ¿weird?
"We would love to know of a free way to do this."
I would recommmend you try the exceptionally easy to use GParted 0.3.3-1 Which is touted as a GUI for parted ala partition magic.
You can find that on the remarkably small (79MB) but highly functional INSERT LiveCD [Knoppix based]
http://www.inside-security.de/insert_en.html
You could give "diskutil resizeVolume" a try (in Terminal.app of course)... I've used this for something different and it had some limitations, which i can't remember now, but i think in this case it might do the trick. Executing "diskutil resizeVolume" presents some instructions, you'll get it...
And just to prove my theory in theory ;-) here's an excerpt from the instruction:
"Non-destructively resize a disk. You may increase or decrease its size.
When decreasing size, you may optionally supply a list of new partitions to create."
The command would be
diskutil resizeVolume disk2s4 70G
But it doesn't work, it reports it is a invalid size.
Upon further investigation, despite what the help says it can only shrink the main partition and will only accept smaller numbers than the actual size of the volume.
Okay, but album art works just fine while streaming. I have greater than 80 GB of music and have no problems with it. How did you get the idea that album art does not work over streaming?
James @ Mar 25th 2007 2:20PM
"Okay, but album art works just fine while streaming. I have greater than 80 GB of music and have no problems with it. How did you get the idea that album art does not work over streaming?"
Thanks, James. I am now resolved to stop reading the stuff written on bathroom stalls.
I'm really looking forward to the Windows tutorial... Is there any reason I couldn't swap out the hard drives with a new 160GBer, two usb-IDE adapters, and Partition Manager?
Thanks,
Mike
James: My media library and my wife's are on two laptops which are often turned off or out of the house. That's the biggest reason the syncing functionality (and potentially a larger hard disk) appeal to me: streaming is impossible or inconvenient most of the time.
However, it's made a lot less useful because Apple chose to limit syncing to one computer. :(
Monitron: that's the best reason I've heard yet. Still, I have to think that your situation applies to a minority of people. I think you're one of those that would be better served by a dedicated Mac Mini that holds all you and your wife's content. Probably cost the same by the time you upgrade the hard drive on the Apple TV. Perhaps multiple computer syncing will be something Apple adds with time (I can see why they want to avoid it with the iPod, but I think they are safe allowing it with the AppleTV). Either way, good luck.
James @ Mar 25th 2007 2:20PM
"Okay, but album art works just fine while streaming. I have greater than 80 GB of music and have no problems with it. How did you get the idea that album art does not work over streaming?"
I had read one (or more) reports that album art did NOT work when streaming music. If what you say is true, that's great news. Thanks for the info.
Ah, no problem. Sorry you got bad info. For the record: streaming is seriously invisible over wireless G and above. There is a *slight* longer loading delay for large movies (we're talking 1-2 seconds) when streaming. Otherwise, I couldn't tell if the unit was streaming or running off the hard drive in a blind taste test.
I do support this hacking for the fun and for those that need it, but if you have no reason to not stream the default hard drive size is seriously not an issue.
I can confirm for you that there is no 128GB limit. I just got done installing a SeaGate 160GB drive and it's working perfectly. Here's hoping I don't overheat my unit.
Your right, but that will take considerably longer than expanding the partition. I guess it is worth it if you want to save the $45 for iPartition.
You wouldn't have to make another backup, you could just restore the data from the first backup you made with dd.
Interesting point that Alex raised earlier on... Has anyone tried launching anything from the 40GB AppleTV drive? If it is running a reduced MacOSX, can these programs run full MacOSX?
Also people, if you're sick of the AppleTV/iPhone news, DON'T READ IT! Just browse on to the next item, some of us enjoy reading these articles! Thanks Engadget!
Yo! Free way to resize the drive!
Do the copies:
dd if=/dev/disk# of=/Users/you/AppleTV.img bs=1024k (Copy original AppleTV HD to image)
dd if=/Users/you/AppleTV.img of=/dev/disk# bs=1024k
Place the larger drive in the AppleTV as is. Let it boot up, then do a factory restore. It will use all available free space for the Media partition. 8-)
Enjoy!!
Wow, that is a cool trick, does this erase everything you synced already?
If so wouldn't it be faster to tell DD to only copy the other partitions when copying the image to the new drive?
So if gpt show disk2 returned
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 69632 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
69672 819200 2 GPT part - 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
888872 1843200 3 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
2732072 75408048 4 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
78140120 7
78140127 32 Sec GPT table
78140159 1 Sec GPT header
The command to copy everything but the media partition would be.
dd if=/Users/you/AppleTV.img count=2732071 of=/dev/disk# bs=1024k
This would only copy the blocks before the start of the Media parition 4?
Yes, it definitely deletes all media. But it's only a resync. Small price to pay to save $35-$45.
Well, no matter what, on the dd, it has to copy sector for sector, so it will still copy all blocks whether used or empty. Although, if you only had to copy only the first two parts, yeah it would be much faster.
Off to work, but I'll try it tonight. This baby in't going into the living rom till I've maxamized the space, but I will be considering temp and power. So I'm off ot researching the best drive for same temp, power draw, and best speed/size. I'm a bit concerned about faster/larger drives and taking down the lifespan of the AppleTV.
Anyone know what this thing draws for power, and what it has for wattage out? If we conect usb devices eventually, remember that it will take a big power draw as well.
OK, to continue the windows method. Do I need the Linux dixtro? Should I just follow the tutorial? (Replacing where Mac for Win (kind’ a hard!)? Anybody with a tutorial? or knowing of one out there for Win?
Aelg504,
It is basically the same, but you use fdisk -l instead of diskutil to verify the drives and Linux calls the disk /dev/hdb4 instead of /dev/disk2s4
I will test with linux and update the post, as soon as I can.
I'm pretty tired of all these people with the inability to recognize products of different classes and different utility. Apple TV has a defined functionality scope, and Apple has succeeded at not only remaining within that scope, but delivering a near-perfect product within that scope. Apple TV is an elegant solution for those who want to view their iTunes content on their TV.
It means little to say that XMBC and MCE have more features than Apple TV, since they are applications with a broader scope. If someone needs the flexibility that those solutions provide, they should evaluate their options. For those of us that are satisfied with the simple solution to digital entertainment that Apple provides, Apple TV hits the spot.
The only thing that can really still be complained about, if you listen to what I've said here, is that Apple TV's price is too high for it's functionality - but thats really for each of us to decide for ourselves.
First off, does anyone know the partition type of the drive? Is it GUID? Second, knowing the partition type and if you have a spare 3.5" drive already hooked up to your computer, why not use something like carbon copy cloner to clone the ATV drive to the 3.5 inch drive, then clone it back to the new 2.5 inch drive. This way you don't have to worry about partition expansion?
Ken
Hi, i need help in the drive upgrade process: I opened the box, removed the original drive and made the image (via duplicate feature in CarbonCopyX) and then put that image on a WD1200UE (120 GB Western Digital) Drive.
After that i put the drive in the appletv but the only thing that i can see is the Apple Logo, a Question Mark and a Harddrive symbol changing and changing around....
I checked for the spotlight folders - could there any other thing i made wrong ?
The original drive is still working fine.
CarbonCopyX won't copy all the partitions, you have to use dd to get the ones it can't.
That can also be caused from not having the ide cable plugged in all the way. Try to reset it then reboot it again.
Hi, i was using now another image and with that i don't get the questionmark/harddrive symbol but i can only see the apple logo - i waited about a minute, but nothing happened ???
Has anybody attempted this using a PPC Mac? Another site mentions a concern that attaching the AppleTV drive to a PPC Mac could damage the GUID partition. Any comments?
Yes, I actually initially tested the method on a PPC Mac Mini. Didn't have a problem.
Please strike my previous comment. I clicked the wrong link to confirm my comment, which resulted in a duplicate post.
Ben, thanks for replying. This is great news!
You could now go through TechRestore and have them upgrade your Apple TV drive up to 160GB, overnight. :)
http://techrestore.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17964&cat=0&page=1
coool but dont you think apple will upgrade the drives soon to mach up with the demands of HD
Try to reboot again, if that doesn't work, verify your partition table with gpt show disk1. You may need to recreate the partition. Also double check your IDE cable.
OK. I got everything to work until I got to this line:
diskutil eraseVolume "Journaled HFS+" Media /dev/disk2s4
Then it hangs. Sat for three hours waiting. Any ideas? Is this step necessary?
John,
No clue why it would hang like that.
Double check that your disk is disk2.
You can try to kill it (ctrl+c) and try again or just put the disk back in and try it.
I haven't tested it without that step before and some have said that doing a "system reset" will partition the drive automatically so I may just work without it.
Same as John. Erasing the volume with diskutil seems to take forever on my Samsung 120GB HD. Could I use the DiskUtil GUI version instead?
The gui may work, I haven't tried it, if it doesn't; eject the disk again and do another gpt show disk2, then paste the output here so I can verify it.
Interesting some guidelines seems to say that before you do the:
gpt remove -i 4 disk2
You should do:
gpt recover /dev/disk2
That makes sense as we are not writing the whole image back (if using the count=xxx parameter). So recover should fix that. Then we can safely delete the partition 4 and recreate it.
I tried ctrl+C while the diskutil eraseVolume was running. The whole disk was broken. So I'm now copying the image again to the disk with dd. I'll try the repair method and report here how it goes.
Ok here is my gpt show disk2 after adding the partition and before doing eraseVolume:
$ gpt show disk2
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 69632 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
69672 819152 2 GPT part - 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
888824 1843192 3 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
2732016 231709599 4 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
234441615 32 Sec GPT table
234441647 1 Sec GPT header
Again the eraseVolume seems to get stuck (HD led on the USB disk enclosure doesn't blink). CTRL+C to stop the eraseVolume and gpt show disk2 gives:
gpt show: error: bogus map
gpt show: unable to open device '/dev/disk2': No such file or directory
Tried this also with the Disk Utility GUI and the result is the same. Trying to format the partition corrupts the whole drive.
I have exactly the same issue as Jnerd. I've been trying this for like two days now.
I've tried every way but the paid software way to do it. I can take an image of the original drive fine, and i have followed the instructions posted on here to the letter, but it just hangs when running the final diskutil eraseVolume "Journaled HFS+" Media /dev/diskXXXs4 (with XXX being my drive, disk 1 in my case)
I have even tried just copying the drive as shown and then asking the AppleTV to do a factory restore. Still shows the same size.
If it makes any diference, it's an 80G drive pulled out of a mac mini..
Try it without the count= when copying the image back to the disk.
Just to verify, I reran through the directions again and was not able to reproduce your problem.
The count= command tells it not to finish copying the drive and to stop when it finishes the first 3 partitions.
Are either of you on PPC or both intel?
I have tried this on both without issue, with iPartition, but haven't tested the gpt method on my PPC mac.
I have read else where that PPC macs were having issues.
I have the same issue as john and jnerd. Followed the instructions to the letter, substituting the correct drive, and it hangs on the last diskutil command.
I even tried asking the AppleTV to do a factory restore on the new drive and it doesn't expand the drive to fill the free space.
Not that it should make any difference, but it's an old 80G drive out of a mac mini.
let me ask you all this. is there anything to preclude someone from using firewire drive devices? if not, could you not use two firewire sleds and use disk utility'd restore function to duplicate the drive? It is escaping me why this must be so complicated .
Ok now it works. What I did was:
1. Followed the method with count=1335 up to the point when the data is copied to the new drive.
2. gpt recover /dev/disk2 followed with eject.
3. gpt remove -i 4 /dev/disk2 followed with eject.
4. Disconnected HD from my intel Mac mini and connected it to Apple TV.
5. Booted up AppleTV with Menu + minus to do factory reset. Factory reset did something, but reported failure in the end. Did system check, reported no errors. Did reboot and waited until the language selection appeared followed by the recovery menu.
6. Disconnected the drive and connected it back to Mac.
7. Started iPartition. It showed the default 37Gb partition there, but it didn't have the HFS type and couldn't be formatted. Checked with gpt, no partition was visible.
8. Used gpt add -s 231709599 -i 4 /dev/disk2
9. Used iPartition to format the partition.
10. Removed all .Spotlight directories.
11. Connected the drive to Apple TV.
And it worked! I'm not sure which of the steps above actually helped in getting it to work. But I'm describing all of them just in case it matters. I'm suspecting that connecting the drive back to the AppleTV and doing factory reset did something. But I could be wrong. Now I'm just happy it works and I'm not going to reopen the Apple TV for a while. Time to hit the bed...
the first and last time I tried it I didnt use the count= command. The remaining times i did. And the image i took of the original drive id a full image, without the count= command.
I'm using an Intel MacbookPro with a firewire 800 connected external drive.
One thing i have noticed in your directions is that the drive name changes.
Also, In your instructions the gpt show diskX output you post is different than mine and Jnerd's.
The fourth line on ours is:
34 6
Yours is:
34 6938
Well, I have a Samsung 120GB drive also. I'm sure it will work with iPartition, but I was trying to get by without that. Right now, I'm to the point right before the volume format. If I could just find a way to do that, I think I'll be fine...
PS... Here's my current readout:
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 69632 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
69672 819200 2 GPT part - 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
888872 1843200 3 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
2732072 231709543 4 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
234441615 32 Sec GPT table
234441647 1 Sec GPT header