Update: Thanks to reader Epon, we now have a way to do this without requiring iPartition. So you can now do the upgrade for only the price of your new harddrive.
Here it is, a step by step tutorial on upgrading your Apple TV harddrive. With thanks to Jonathan Bare, the brave soul who worked this out!
It should be noted that this process will almost certainly void your Apple TV’s warranty and you are attempting this upgrade at your own risk.
You can do this via the terminal, or by using some applications (which add $100 to the cost of the process).
What you need:
Hex-bit screwdriver
2.5″ hard drive (we used a Western Digital 120 GB WD1200VE drive)
Wiebetech Forensic DriveDock (optional, but recommended) or any 2.5″ to Firewire bridge
Subrosasoft’s CopyCatX ($49), or be comfy with the terminal
Coriolis’s iPartition ($45), or use the Apple Factory Restore
This process was done on an Intel Mac Pro. Connecting the Apple TV drive to a Power PC Mac might damage the GUID partition, especially for anyone who hasn’t upgraded to Mac OS X 10.4.6 or newer.
Step 1
You’ve already seen the Apple TV dissected, so we won’t get in to the details of removing the bottom cover and the hard drive. Just note that you need to peel back the rubber covering the bottom of the Apple TV to get to the four screws holding the hard drive to the cover (see here for details).
Once you have the hard drive out, connect it to your handy WiebeTech Forensic DriveDock or other Firewire bridge. We used the Forensic DriveDock to prevent any writing to the original drive, but the Forensic DriveDock is an expensive accessory to just have lying around. Any 2.4″ to Firewire bridge will work just as well.
Two volumes will mount, OSBoot and Media. Looking deeper in to the partition structure with diskutil, you can see the addition critical partitions on the drive:
/dev/disk5
#: type name size identifier
0: GUID_partition_scheme *37.3 GB disk5
1: EFI 34.0 MB disk5s1
2: 400.0 MB disk5s2
3: Apple_HFS OSBoot 900.0 MB disk5s3
4: Apple_HFS Media 36.0 GB disk5s4
Step 2 – Using the Terminal
Note: If you have already installed some extras on your Apple TV harddrive, doing a ‘factory restore’ will remove these. If you don’t want that, then after copying the contents of the drive over via the terminal, use the iPartition method below rather than ‘factory restore’ to free up the additional space on the drive.
To begin, we need to make an image of the original harddrive. This can be done using dd to make an image file (ensuring you reference the correct disk, here it is ‘disk5′):
dd if=/dev/disk5 of=/Users/tom/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img bs=1024k
Next we must use this image to recreate the contents on the new drive. Disconnect the original drive, and connect your new drive to. Then use this command to restore the contents of the image to the drive (again ensure you use the correct drive number):
dd if=/Users/tom/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img of=/dev/disk5 bs=1024k
Finally, connect this drive back to the Apple TV, and do a ‘factory restore’; this will free up all the additional space on the new drive.
Step 2 – Using Applications
Using CopyCatX, you must duplicate the drive to a disk image.
The 400 MB unlabelled partition is used if you do a factory restore, the OS is restored from this partition.
Next we connected the new Western Digital drive to a regular WiebeTech ComboDock and used CopyCatX to duplicate the disk image to the drive. Creating the disk image first meant that we no longer needed to keep the original drive connected and we could repeat the restore process to the new drive when we inevitably screwed it up.
Once the the disk image was restored, we had the exact same partition map as the original drive, except now there was 70+ GB of unused, unpartitioned free space on the drive. At this point, you should test the new drive by connecting it to the Apple TV. It should boot normally and show the old capacity of around 40 GB.
Disconnecting and going back to your Mac, with the help of iPartition, you must increase the block size of the Media partition to use the full space of the drive. The key here is not destroying the existing EFI or 400 MB unlabeled partitions. So far we have been unable to resize this volume with any utility, including diskutil and Subrosasoft’s VolumeWorks without breaking other partitions.
Now reconnect the drive to the Apple TV and plug in the power.
All done!
The resulting capacity should be 107 GB (or more/less depending on your replacement drive), as seen here:
Note: It seems the built in Fujitsu drive was probably chosen for it’s low power consumption, and its probably lower heat output. Keep this in mind when selecting a replacement drive.
That’s it you are done, and you should now be able to fit that many more episodes of ‘Lost’ on to your Apple TV! Good luck!
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So that’s why the bitch didn’t show up for work until 2pm today. Mutha!
I pity the fool that pays $49 for a program that does “dd if=/dev/diskx bs=1M | gzip > /path/to/image.gz”.
Yeah, I tried dd initially but I wasn’t getting a mountable disk image, though I was not trying to pipe it to gzip, just make a DMG with dd.
I’ve been digging around the OSBoot volume today.
The interface that runs Apple TV is, in part at least, apparently called BackRow and can be found in the OSBoot/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework. All of the imagery and the Intro.mov startup movie for the Apple TV can be found in the Resources directory at that location.
You can also find the background logo for the boot at OSBoot/System/Library/BootLogo.png.
I’m intrigued by the inclusion of the ARDAgent and SSH binaries on the OSBoot volume. It seems like it should be possible to “kickstart” ARD if I can access the Apple TV with SSH.
Fascinating the presence of the ARD agent and SSH. Nice write-up. I did find myself having to look up the hard drive model number from the screenshot to verify the connector type: Serial-ATA a.k.a. SATA. Makes sense with this ultra-modern device. Draft 802.11n (backwards compatible with A/B/G) is a dream. But what version of HDMI does it support, ahem, Apple?
Someone apparently got SSH to work:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2391956&perpage=40&pagenumber=6
Jonathan, congrats on getting this done and thanks for the guide. One concern for a drive upgrade would be increased heat dissipation. The original Fujitsu 40GB 4200 rpm drive (MHW2040AT) has lower power consumption/dissipation than the WD 5400 rpm drive you installed:
read/write: Fujitsu 1.5W, WD 2.5W
idle: Fujitsu 0.5W, WD 2.0W
sleep: Fujitsu 0.1W, WD 0.19W
Maybe the difference is peanuts, but some have reported the unit getting very hot even before modifications are made. Someone should push the envelope and put a 7200 rpm drive in there!
I just ordered a Hitachi 160GB 0A28419 5400RPM 8MB ATA Notebook Hard Drive for upgrade purposes. Is there any reason that just using SuperDuper with my MacBook to clone the original AppleTV drive onto the new 160GB drive won’t work?
No Name Steak Sauce wrote:
“I did find myself having to look up the hard drive model number from the screenshot to verify the connector type: Serial-ATA a.k.a. SATA.”
The CopyCatX screenshot is a little deceiving as it shows the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro, not the Apple TV drive. When I took the screenshot, I no longer had the original Apple TV drive connected. The Apple TV drive is a Fujitsu MHW2040AT, a parallel ATA drive.
http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/v3__product.asp?pid=531&inf=fsp&wg=13
Bjorn:
Yes, there’s a good risk that using a drive that’s too hot will do bad things to the Apple TV. That bit of info should probably be included as a warning in the how-to. I’m not sure where the line is though.
The power loads are interesting to note. Thanks for posting those. I’m sure the Fujitsu drive was chosen for its low power consumption and likely lower heat output.
Mike:
From my understanding, SuperDuper is pretty much just an rsync front end. It will only do a volume-to-volume copy of the data. For relatively cheaply, you can follow the how-to and substitute “dd” for CopyCatX.
So far, I haven’t seen anyone who can get the partition resized without iPartition.
On another note, /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder is the interface you are using when you run the Apple TV. They replaced the Mac OS X Finder with a new application.
/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 10 jlb jlb 340 Mar 14 23:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 15 00:43 ..
-rw-r–r– 1 jlb jlb 770 Mar 14 22:55 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 MacOS
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 Patches
-rw-r–r– 1 jlb jlb 8 Mar 14 22:55 PkgInfo
drwxr-xr-x 9 jlb jlb 306 Mar 14 23:32 PlugIns
drwxr-xr-x 19 jlb jlb 646 Mar 15 00:42 Resources
drwxr-xr-x 5 jlb jlb 170 Mar 14 23:32 Screen Savers
-rw-r–r– 1 jlb jlb 455 Mar 14 23:32 version.plist
/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents//Patches:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 jlb jlb 340 Mar 14 23:32 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 ITVSignal.plugin
/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents//PlugIns:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 9 jlb jlb 306 Mar 14 23:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 jlb jlb 340 Mar 14 23:32 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 Movies.frappliance
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 Music.frappliance
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 Photos.frappliance
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 Podcasts.frappliance
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 Settings.frappliance
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 Streaming.frappliance
drwxr-xr-x 3 jlb jlb 102 Mar 14 23:32 TV.frappliance
I’ve added a not to the tutorial to warn about thinking about heat output when selecting a drive.
Also, Engadget have posted another tutorial on upgrading the Apple TV drive. It follows the basic same process as this tutorial.
The 400mb partition consists of the following:
Boot.efi
BootLogo.png (Apple logo at boot)
com.apple.Boot.plist (Boot prefs)
mach_kernel.prelink (Firmware software to restore image from)
OS.dmg (Disk image of the base Apple TV OS install)
I have the OS.img if anyone is interested.
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 remove -i 4 /dev/disk2
sudo gpt add -s 75408042
where partition 4 is the media partition and 75408042 is the size of the new partition in sectors.
You then need to format the new partition with journaled HFS+.
Epon, can you torrent it??
Hei Epon! Please make a torrent out of that “OS.img”. Post it on demonoid.com, mininova.org and piratebay.org
Many people would be appreciated!
Thanks!
I’ve seen a few of these tutorials but this is the first that shows it using a Mac to do the copy/setup.
Jonathan,
Does the OS still use launchd? If so the ssh can probably be started by copying the ssh.plist from the standard install into /System/Library/LaunchDaemons. This would then give ssh access.
Do you know at this point if launchd is used?
The problem with recommending a command line is that a typo can really cause problems. Also, the documentation for those commands generally seem written by people that don’t know how to do normal social interaction.
This appears to be a good alternative Hard Drive…the power consumption, and resulting heat output is close to the orginal drive:
http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/v3__product.asp?pid=472&inf=fsp&wg=13
Scott,
I have Jon’s disc image. Here’s what you are looking for
/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
.DS_Store
bootps.plist
com.apple.atrun.plist
com.apple.KernelEventAgent.plist
com.apple.listen_kdb.plist
com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
com.apple.nibindd.plist
com.apple.portmap.plist
com.apple.syslogd.plist
comsat.plist
eppc.plist
exec.plist
finger.plist
http://ftp.plist
login.plist
ntalk.plist
org.isc.named.plist
org.postfix.master.plist
org.xinetd.xinetd.plist
printer.plist
shell.plist
ssh.plist
telnet.plist
tftp.plist
———————
contents of ssh.plist
———————–
this is the conects on my MacBook Pro
Disabled
Label
com.apple.rshd
ProgramArguments
/usr/libexec/rshd
inetdCompatibility
Wait
Sockets
Listeners
SockServiceName
shell
Jonathan,
I interest the image. Have you share it?
Nice work.
Funny we both used the same method.
It would be nice if there was a way to non-destructively expand the partition with having to buy iPartition.
I also tried to use gpt to expand the partition and while the partition was expanded non destructively and I could see the data on the new expanded partition, OS X still recognized it as the original size. I am sure there is a way to reconfigure the partition table, other than reformatting of course.
I’m also intrested in the image. Should be nice to see if it could work on my macbook (or mini G4)
Or if you just can share Backrow.app to test the interface!
In theory, you can replace the 2.5″ HD with a large capacity 3.5″ driver by using a 2.5 to 3.5 convert cable and mount the drive outside of the AppleTV box.
Great job on the HD upgrade!
I’ve ordered, not received, my AppleTV – but I’m considering returning it because of the lack of space. My library is 95gb and growing.
Any chance of upgrading a few ATVs and selling them? or taking mine and upgrading it for me. Let me know, I’ll pay, as long as it doesn’t involve me doing anything technical. Just reading the above guide went over my head. LOL
I have thought about the possibility of someone selling upgraded Apple TVs, but since I’m already busy enough with my regular job, I’m not sure it’s going to be me. I also have no idea what the legalities of pursuing such an endeavor would be.
Speaking of legalities. Those asking about the disk image should note that any distribution of the image will likely get the owners of this site and probably myself a cease and desist letter from Apple in a blink of an eye. I don’t have the resources to fight a lawsuit from Apple and I would not want to bring one down upon anyone else either. I respectfully request that you not ask me for the image.
The best way to get your own copy of the Apple TV OS is to buy an Apple TV and follow the instructions for making an image in this how-to.
I had already thought about the idea of upgrading Apple TV’s and selling them also. They would cost significantly more (purchase the HD, pay for the upgrade), and would have no warranty. I just don’t see it being profitable except as a hobby.
In addition, as Jonathan mentioned – distributing the Apple TV OS would be legal suicide. Whilst we are keen to find many different ways to hack and extend the Apple TV, we won’t be distributing the OS. Sorry!
did you try using diskutil to expand the drive? kind of the way that bootcamp does it?
“diskutil resizeVolume
Disk Utility Tool
Usage: diskutil resizeVolume [Mount Point|Disk Identifier|Device Node] size
…
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.
Ownership of the affected disk is required.
Valid partition sizes are in the format of .
Valid sizes are B(ytes), K(ilobytes), M(egabytes), G(igabytes), T(erabytes)
Example: 10G (10 gigabytes), 4.23T (4.23 terabytes), 5M (5 megabytes)
resizeVolume is only supported on GPT media with a Journaled HFS+ filesystem.
A size of “limits” will print the range of valid values for the current filesystem.
Example: diskutil resizeVolume disk1s3 10G
JHFS+ HDX1 5G MS-DOS HDX2 5G
Valid filesystems: “Case-sensitive HFS+” “Journaled HFS+” “Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+” “HFS+” “HFS” “MS-DOS FAT32″ “MS-DOS FAT16″ “MS-DOS” “MS-DOS FAT12″ “UFS” “Linux” “Swap” “
What about booting your Mac with a version of Ubuntu linux, which has the QTParted tool, and using that to dynamically resize the partition. It’s free, and should do the trick. It works on other HFS+ volumes, so no reason why it would not work here.
My AppleTV not here yet, so I cannot test…
keytohwy
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
That is a link to a live cd partition tool that you might be able to use. It is a much smaller download then ubuntu but it supports HSF+ Volumes and would save you about 45 dollars. And for those of you without macs you should use ubuntu or Knoppix since it has “dd” built in. I also hear there is a port for “dd” for windows for those who are a bit of risk takers.
Nathan wrote:
“did you try using diskutil to expand the drive? kind of the way that bootcamp does it?”
Yes, I did try that. Unfortunately, diskutil does not seem to be able to resize beyond the value of the original partition map.
Not sure how much of this has been posted elsewhere… but system_profiler is on the drive, so why not?
Probably the two most interesting things here are:
System Version: Apple TV OS 10.4.7 (8N5107)
Kernel Version: Darwin 8.8.2
===
-bash-2.05b$ system_profiler
Hardware:
Hardware Overview:
Machine Name: Mac
Machine Model: AppleTV1,1
Processor Speed: 1 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 1
Memory: 256 MB
Bus Speed: 400 MHz
Boot ROM Version: ATV11.00D9.B00
Serial Number: [redacted]
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Network:
Built-in Ethernet:
Type: Ethernet
Hardware: Ethernet
BSD Device Name: en0
Has IP Assigned: Yes
IPv4 Addresses: [redacted]
IPv4:
Addresses: [redacted]
Configuration Method: DHCP
Interface Name: en0
Router: [redacted]
Subnet Masks: 255.255.255.0
IPv6:
Configuration Method: Automatic
DNS:
Domain Name: [redacted].
Server Addresses: [redacted], [redacted], [redacted]
DHCP Server Responses:
Domain Name: [redacted].
Domain Name Servers: [redacted]
Lease Duration (seconds): 0
DHCP Message Type: 0×05
Routers: [redacted]
Server Identifier: [redacted]
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Proxies:
FTP Proxy Enabled: No
FTP Passive Mode: Yes
Gopher Proxy Enabled: No
HTTP Proxy Enabled: No
HTTPS Proxy Enabled: No
RTSP Proxy Enabled: No
SOCKS Proxy Enabled: No
Ethernet:
MAC Address: [redacted]
Media Options: Full Duplex, flow-control
Media Subtype: 100baseTX
Type: AirPort
Hardware: AirPort
BSD Device Name: en1
Has IP Assigned: No
IPv4:
Configuration Method: DHCP
Ethernet:
MAC Address: [redacted]
Media Options:
Media Subtype: autoselect
Software:
System Software Overview:
System Version: Apple TV OS 10.4.7 (8N5107)
Kernel Version: Darwin 8.8.2
Boot Volume: OSBoot
Computer Name: AppleTV
User Name: frontrow (frontrow)
ATA:
ATA Bus:
WDC WD1200VE-00KWT0:
Capacity: 111.79 GB
Model: WDC WD1200VE-00KWT0
Revision: 01.03K01
Serial Number: WD-[redacted]
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
Low Power Polling: No
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
OSBoot:
Capacity: 900 MB
Available: 421.76 MB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s3
Mount Point: /
Media:
Capacity: 110.36 GB
Available: 81.7 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s4
Mount Point: /mnt
Volumes:
disk0s3:
Capacity: 900 MB
Available: 421.76 MB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
disk0s4:
Capacity: 110.36 GB
Available: 81.7 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
Audio (Built In):
Intel High Definition Audio:
Available Devices:
Line Out:
Connection: RCA
S/P-DIF Out:
Connection: Optical
Diagnostics:
Power On Self-Test:
Last Run: 3/25/07 3:09 AM
Result: Passed
FireWire:
Graphics/Displays:
GeForce Go 7300:
Chipset Model: GeForce Go 7300
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
VRAM (Total): 64 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x01d7
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3144
Displays:
SAMSUNG:
Resolution: 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Core Image: Supported
Interlaced: Yes
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Not Supported
Rotation: Supported
Television: Yes
Memory:
BANK 0/DIMM0:
Size: 256 MB
Type: DDR2 SDRAM
Speed: 400 MHz
Status: OK
BANK 1/DIMM1:
Size: Empty
Type: Empty
Speed: Empty
Status: Empty
Power:
System Power Settings:
AC Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 0
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 0
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 0
Sleep On Power Button: No
Automatic Restart On Power Loss: Yes
USB:
USB High-Speed Bus:
Host Controller Location: Built In USB
Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBEHCI
PCI Device ID: 0x27cc
PCI Revision ID: 0×0002
PCI Vendor ID: 0×8086
Bus Number: 0xfd
USB Bus:
Host Controller Location: Built In USB
Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBUHCI
PCI Device ID: 0x27c8
PCI Revision ID: 0×0002
PCI Vendor ID: 0×8086
Bus Number: 0x1d
IR Receiver:
Version: 2.42
Bus Power (mA): 500
Speed: Up to 1.5 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Apple Computer, Inc.
Product ID: 0×8241
Vendor ID: 0x05ac (Apple Computer, Inc.)
AirPort Card:
AirPort Card Information:
Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0×87)
Wireless Card Locale: USA
Wireless Card Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (4.80.79.1)
Current Wireless Network: AirPort is currently turned off
Locations:
Automatic:
Active Location: Yes
Services:
Built-in Ethernet:
Type: Ethernet
BSD Device Name: en0
Hardware (MAC) Address: [redacted]
IPv4:
Configuration Method: DHCP
IPv6:
Configuration Method: Automatic
AppleTalk:
Configuration Method: Node
Proxies:
FTP Proxy Enabled: 0
FTP Passive Mode: 1
Gopher Proxy Enabled: 0
HTTP Proxy Enabled: 0
HTTPS Proxy Enabled: 0
RTSP Proxy Enabled: 0
SOCKS Proxy Enabled: 0
Type: IEEE80211
BSD Device Name: en1
Hardware (MAC) Address: [redacted]
IPv4:
Configuration Method: DHCP
IEEE80211:
AllowNetCreation: 1
JoinMode: Automatic
MAC Address: [redacted]
I started to order the replacement drive and at that point I noticed the terminology describing the interface for these 2.5″ drives is very varied. So just to help everyone else the original drive inside AppleTV has interface of type ATA-7. This means it’s parallel ATA (PATA) and more specifically it’s Ultra-ATA/133.
Also you should look for a drive that doesn’t use a lot more power than the original Fujitsu drive (as Bjorn points out in his post) to avoid overheating you AppleTV.
I’m still comparing the drives conveniently available at local web stores. If I find a good match I’ll post it here. I’m looking for 160Gb drives, but it looks like I have to be satisfied with an 120Gb or 100Gb one.
> The problem with recommending a command line is that a typo can really cause problems.
> Also, the documentation for those commands generally seem written by people that don’t
> know how to do normal social interaction.
Actually, a command line can be directly pasted (and thus guaranteeing no errors) whereas a graphical explanation (screenshots) or explanation of how to use a graphical interface is far more open to interpretation, and could far more easily result in either failure of the task at hand, or even worse.
Aside from that, normal social interaction involves a dialog of words, and a commandline is simply a dialog of (sometimes technical) words represented as text. Unless your “normal” social interaction involves prodding people with a pointing stick, a command line is more “normal” than a graphical interface.
SO… why don’t they have a decent GPU in the Mac mini again?
I rec’d my AppleTV on Friday. I’ve been so happy with it, I may get a second for the bedroom TV.
I’m syncing my with the library on my wife’s MacBook (so that we can watch her stuff even if the computer is asleep), but streaming from my Power Mac, and from an older G4 I set up in the basement with a few BIG hard disks installed as sort of an iTunes server. Streaming over my switched 100BaseT network seems to be more than adequate.
Neil wrote:
“This appears to be a good alternative Hard Drive…the power consumption, and resulting heat output is close to the orginal drive:”
Thanks for looking that up. I went ahead and ordered a Fujitsu MHV2120AT 120 GB drive from Buy.com to replace the Western Digital drive I used originally.
As you seemingly have gotten ssh to work, how about Terminal and a keyboard?
Has anyone tried to connect a keyboard to that USB-port on the back?
(Sorry, I can’t try myself, it’s just curiosity.)
Has anyone yet tested if putting in an Ultra-ATA/100 (100Mbits/s) drive degrades the performance of HD playback?
The original drive is Ultra-ATA/133 (133Mbits/s). The drive recommended by Neil (Fujitsu MHV2120AT 120 GB) is Ultra-ATA/100, so if anyone has received that drive yet, could you please test video playback and if possible 720p playback.
I’m interested. How can I get it.
Hey all. Great news!!
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 (Copy image to new larger drive)
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.
Enjoy!!
I have not attemped this upgrade yet, but I only have a Power PC Mac. It has the latest OS version. Will this damage the GUID? This was mentioned at the top, but I was just trying to verify before I bricked anything.
Epon wrote:
“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.”
Excellent find, Epon. Wish I had thought to try that.
Has anyone tried this with a USB -> ATA drive adapter – or is everyone just using Firewire so far?
I think the ability to upgrade the hard drive is great but I am surprised know one is thinking outside the box…
Just an idea for someone with more time than I, figure out how to use the USB port to add the necessary apps e.g. telnet or script that enables and external harddrive to be hooked up without even touching the box it self. Then you can just hook up a 500 hundred giger and all is good in the world.
The telnet addition through usb thumb drive would make it nice and easy to add other apps.
I live the non-invasive approach.
Just a thought…
Seems to me that it would be nice to be able to attach a USB hard drive to it and have expandable storage. Hopefully that would not void the warranty.
Hi All,
Just a quick check here…..
So, I can order the 120Gb Fujitsu drive quoted earlier, unpack it, unplug the drive from the AppleTv, plug in the new one… then power up and AppleTv will give me the option to do a factory restore. Then, I have a shiny new clean AppleTv with a huge drive ???
Tell me it isn’t this easy ???
Matt
Matt,
It isn’t this easy.
The factory restore as well as the entire OS is on the harddrive so just replacing it with a bigger blank harddrive won’t work. You have to basically copy all that stuff to the new harddrive and then let factory restore change the settings to recognize the whole drive.
Read all the above messages about drive enclosures and terminal commands.
Doug
Can someone provide us with the drive model number number. I’m away from my appleTV right now.
I’d like to research the power requirements and heat so we can suggest a “Best Fit” replacement drive that will not put too much strain on the AppleTV heat or power wise. We want as BIG as it gets without causing damage!
Fujitsu MHW2040AT
Now off to find similar heat, power requirements, and fastest speed, largest size avail! Will report back.
What does everyone think of the Hitachi Travelstar 4K120?
120GB
PATA ATA-7
4200 RPM
Dissipation (Typical)
Startup (peak, max.) 4.5W Seek 1.7W
Read (avg.) 1.4W Write (avg.) 1.4W
Performance idle (avg.) 1.25W
Active idle (avg.) 0.65W
Low power idle (avg.) 0.45W
Standby (avg.) 0.15W Sleep 0.1W
Seems to have similar power requirement to the Fujitsu MHW2040AT drive that comes inside…
I don’t want to get a drive that’s gunna fry my AppleTv…
“Factory Restore” didn’t work for me. The disk was still stuck at 30+GB. Maybe I used the wrong restore? I went into “Reset Settings” and did it there. I’ll try the other way next…
Tried “Factory Restore” again and the disk size is stuck at 32.96GB, even though the disk is 120GB. Any ideas?
Has anyone tried to mount an external USB drive partition to the media mount point?
Hi. I may have missed it but who makes the original harddrive that ships with Apple TV?
What’s the supposed disadvantage to using the Fujitsu MHV2200BT? According to Fujitsu’s site it’s nearly identical to the MHW2040AT that Epon said was the stock HD; only differences I see is that it’s 200GB, it’s a couple mm taller, and the standby is 0.13 W vs 0.1W…
Thoughts?
Factory restore doesn’t work to catch free space.
“Tried “Factory Restore†again and the disk size is stuck at 32.96GB, even though the disk is 120GB. Any ideas?”
Does the restore partition do it from a disk image of some kind? Is it possible it just restores itself to a set size stored somewhere in whatever recovery script/program does the work? Perhaps it can be corrected by resizing a disk image from 40 GB to 200 GB by adding blank space as you can in Disk Utility? Or changing some configuration file that says “The OSBoot partition is 40 GB when restored”.
Hm…
My Samsung HM160JC 160 GB is on its way
Spin Up Current (max.) – 4.5 W
Read/Write On-Track(typ.) – 2.0 W
Seek(typ.) – 2.1 W
Low power Idle (typ.) – 0.60 W
Standby(typ.) – 0.25 W
Sleep(typ.) – 0.10 W
Was $105 (with coupon) from eWiz. Slightly higher power consumption than the original Fujitsu (well, that was a 4200 rpm anyhow), but probably best $/GB deal – 0.65$/GB (Toshiba 200GB 4200rpm is above 1$/GB…).
Can someone post streamlined NEW instructions now that the AppleTV OS.dmg is readily available, with EPON’s trick? I think it is easier to get lost between the terminal commands. Something like: start with an AppleTVOS.dmg and an empty drive (as most of us will do) and bullet in the steps.
Thank you, BinB
Nice manual! Too bad I don’t quite care about the iTV. I don’t really understand its purpose when you’re unable to make TV recordings.
And above all, I’m saving up to buy me a big iMac
Please don’t forget the price of the CAD $500 “Wiebetech Forensic DriveDock” when you say the cost will be of the new hard drive only! Or perhaps you can provide some cheaper suggestions?
Where can I find the Apple TV OS image ? I’d save time to download it rather than create it from my disk. Thank you
I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that….
Just kidding.. How ’bout this? $25
http://www.newertech.com/products/usb2_adapt.php
Hi guys, i have an issue with the upgrade process: I made the image with CarbonCopyX and then put the new drive into the appletv, but i can only see the apple boot logo and then a questionmark and a harddrive – so it looks like that the new drive wasn’t found correctly.
I also checked for Spotlight folders – but no help.
The original drive is still working fine.
Any ideas ?
to KingMooCow
the Fujitsu MHW2040AT is a Serial ATA or SATA. You need a different interface: Parallel ATA or PATA
highest capacity PATA currently on the market is 160GB
Hey! Wanted to thank everyone (esp. Jonathan) for contributing. I used a Samsung 120GB drive @ 5400rpm w/ a IDE-to-USB adapter and got everything transferred just fine. I did use COpyCat and iPartition hwoever as I couldn’t seem to get the terminal commands working. Everything was smooth, easy, completely functional and I now have a little over 100GB free for storage as opposed to the paltry 36GB or so form before. The one thing I was hesitant about with the ATV was the small drive and the lack of an optical drive, but I had the spare 120 and this ended up being an easy and very affordable upgrade. Now if someone (or Apple) can get an optical drive connected…
True about the 160GB – max PATA so far.
Offerings
Seagate ST9160821A – about 125$ shipped
Fujitsu – max offering 120GB (according to their website)
Samsung HM160JC – about 110$ shipped
Anyone can chip in?
So does the “Factory Restore” option actually work? There seems to be a few people that tried this and still have only stock amount of hard drive space left…
I’ve downloaded the AppleTVOS.dmg from Bittorrent (about 200GB)… is it enough to setup a new drive ? I mean, can I avoid to create a disk image of the original APpleTV drive and just put the new OS in the new one ?
Easiest way is still to create the image from the original drive, after a factory restore.
Using terminal with the original drive connected:
dd if=/dev/disk# of=/Users/youruser/AppleTV.img bs=1024k (Copy original AppleTV HD to image)
When completed, disconnect the drive, connect the new one. Issue the command in terminal again:
dd if=/Users/youruser/AppleTV.img of=/dev/disk# bs=1024k (Copy image to new larger drive)
You can get the disk number by issuing the command: diskutil list and looking for the drive number that has the OSBoot, Media, Recovery, BootEFI partitions.
Place the new drive in the apple tv and boot, then do a factory restore.
I also have found that not all times does the factory restore reclaim all unused space. I haven’t worked out the exact set of variables that it works with.
I just received a Hitachi 160GB Drive, model: HTS541616J9AT00
This drive is extremely similar to the factory drive for interface, power, and heat, it’s however a bit faster than the 4200 Fujitsu.
Will be replacing this tonight, so I’ll let you know how the factory restore goes. I really have to get this thing into the living room though before my S.O. kills me.
I tried grabbing just the first 1.3Gigs , as previously suggested, but it failed every time and I ended up with a non-functional box.
dave wrote:
“Please don’t forget the price of the CAD $500 “Wiebetech Forensic DriveDock†when you say the cost will be of the new hard drive only! Or perhaps you can provide some cheaper suggestions?”
The forensic drive dock is entirely optional. I used it originally because I knew that I was one of the first people attempting the upgrade and I was paranoid about destroying my drive.
Writable USB or Firewire docks, or just a disassembled 2.5″ drive enclosure, would work fine.
steve wote:
“Hey! Wanted to thank everyone (esp. Jonathan) for contributing.”
Thank you… It’s been tough to keep up with this topic of late, seeing as, for some crazy reason, they want me to do work during the day and not think endlessly about hacks for the Apple TV.
The command-line upgrade with “dd” should work fine. Since I ran in to a problem with dd initially, I went with the GUI option of CopyCatX without giving dd a second chance.
Hi, Guys! for us with a PC running on XP, how can we do the trick!
Because some may be faint-of-heart at opening up their new Apple TVs or want to keep a 1yr warranty, my company is selling pre-upgraded Apple TVs. I put a little info article up on our site. http://www.powermax.com/appletv-take-apart.php This could also be a good option for the Windows users, provided they have not already purchased an Apple TV. Thanks to everyone who is contributing to the rapid enhancement of this new Apple device. The Apple TV is already much more fun to hack then an iPod.
Hi, I’ve upgraded my AppleTV with an Hitachi 160Go Travelstar 5K160 ATA.
Process was done thanks to your tutorial with a PowerMac Dual G5, with an 2.5″/usb external adapter. Btw, Factory restory hasn’t been enough to resize the Media partition, so I used iPartition.
Next I’ve enabled sshd & AFP.
You can take a look at photos here :
http://web.mac.com/tazintosh/iWeb/Technologies/
Thanks again.
Can anyone point me toward a Linux &/or Windows tutorial for upgrading the hard drive?
Thanks,
Mike
If Factory Restore isn’t resizing your Media partition and you don’t have (or want to buy) iPartition, try this procedure:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/23/how-to-upgrade-the-drive-in-your-apple-tv/
It uses the gpt command line utility to set the partition size. I successfully upgraded to a 160 GB Hitachi drive using this technique.
Oh, and let me share a dumb user moment. I wasted two hours trying to figure out why all my iTunes music wasn’t syncing to Apple TV. It turns out that only selected songs in the library sync. You need to Command-click on one of the checkboxes in the leftmost column to select all songs in the library.
-Jim
Hi Jim,
I have used the same technique for resizing for AppleTV HD, and I have done every step but until this one,
Last, we format the drive.
diskutil eraseVolume “Journaled HFS+” Media /dev/disk2s4
The new HD just halt and the terminal has no respond too. Can you tell me what was the command that you enter? I really want make it work.
I tired Factory Restore, iPartition, and the command line, and still no succeed work from my AppleTV at all.
Please help!
Hey Ken,
Two things to check. First, make sure you’re referencing the right disk. The AppleTV HD won’t necessarily be “disk2″ when connected to your system. For example, it mounts as “disk1″ on my MacBook Pro (“disk0″ is the built-in hard disk). When following the procedure, replace all references to “disk2″ with the specific disk number used by your system.
Second, make sure you’re giving the diskutil eraseVolume command enough time to work. This command will take a few minutes to run and doesn’t give any kind of progress indication until it’s finished.
Also, make sure you replace “3141672″ and “disk2″as relevant to your system when you run this command:
gpt add -b 3141672 -i 4 -t hfs /dev/disk2
Hope that helps!
-Jim
Anyone tried to hookup an external DVD player?
Stuck. Copied 40 gb image onto new 120 gb drive. Did factory reset. No change in available capacity. Using Windows/Linux. Can anyone recommend a linux repartitioning utility or set of commands? qtparted has NOT worked.
Thanks,
Mike
I’ve given up and am going to try iPartition, now that I’ve been paid! The command line and factory restore didn’t work for me.
It finally works. Thanks Jim and all people help here!!
Works without buying the software:
dd if=/dev/disk1 of=/Volumes/MacBook/AppleTV.img bs=1024k
dd if=/Volumes/MacBook/AppleTV.img of=/dev/disk1 bs=1024k
diskutil list
diskutil eject disk1
gpt recover disk1
diskutil eject disk1
gpt remove -i 4 disk1
diskutil eject disk1
gpt show disk1
diskutil eject disk1
gpt add -b 2732016 -i 4 -t hfs /dev/disk1
diskutil eject disk1
Disconnect HD, connect back to AppleTV
Starts AppleTV, go “Reset Setting”, do “Factory Restore”
Done!
$20 plus postage to anyone who can expand the media partition on my 120 gb Apple TV. I don’t have a Mac and haven’t found a way to expand that partition that will work in Linux. Be my hero.
Thanks,
Mike
appletvhacks@michaelbliss.com
Ken,
I had the same problem you did with the eraseVolume command. After 3 failed attempts I broke down and bought iPartion.
What did you do differently to get it to work? I upgraded to a 160GB Hitachi drive. iPartition worked in seconds. I wished that I’d bought it earlier.
After Reading Kens post it seems so simple, but I have repeated the image restore to a new 120GB drive and no matter what I try even though I follow all the instructions to the letter, can not get AppleTV to recognize the new drive size, after a Factory restore!!
I think I am on my 15th attempt and am about to just go out and buy iPartition!
Cause I have no hair left, so nice post from everyone saying it’s simple but it ain’t workin for me!
Gary, I had the same result. This tutorial might work for you:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/23/how-to-upgrade-the-drive-in-your-apple-tv/
I might have to get an AppleTV to see if my Clonetool Hatchery software can make an image of the drive. I will have to save up and get one. Very interesting about running OSX on an AppleTV.
gt
Under Linux you’d use dd just like on Apple in command line. Obviously, you’d use /dev/hdx or /dev/sdx instead of /dev/diskx, depending on how your drive is attached to the box. Anyone using Linux should be familiar with drive naming.
To change partition size you could use pdisk. I haven’t tried this myself, as I don’t have ATV, but I used pdisk to alter partitions on Mac drives numerous times using both Intel PCs running Linux and Macs running Linux.
I’m interested in upgrading the hard drive in my apple TV but just need to know which would be the best to use. I’ve seen a few recomendations but could someone compile a list of the best drives to use. Ideally, the bigger and the cooler the better. Which type of drive is it? I’ve seen people say it is PATA, SATA, PATA-6, PATA-7, can someone please clear this up?
Thanks
just did the hard drive upgrade today. i followed the instructions and connected the new drive to the Apple TV. even after 3 factory restores, it still shows only 32GB drive space avaiable. I’m gonna try to let it boot up all the way, go to setting, and from there do the factory restore. here’s hoping this works.
Tried to use a 3.5″ drive external. Got it to work once, but the streaming was choppy. It always locks up during the “factory restore”. I used an adapter cable and external porew source.
Any thoughts on why the 3.5″ drive would be any different than the 2.5s? I am able to put my spare 80GB 2.5 in without a problem. The 3.5 (250GB) done up the same way gets to factory restore and can’t get through it. Examining the drive afterwards, the boot partition has lost it’s name.
Ron
Hello, I have a problem with my Apple TV. It wont startup, the light on the apple tv flash white and orange. and on the screen i see a apple tv with a ?
I delete de OSBoot and install a new OSBoot. But it’s stil not working.
Can someone help me please, maybe it’s a stupid question.
Regards Jack
after several factory restores with no luck. I used iPartition and opened up the media partition. I now have 88.25GB of media storage with a 100Gb Seagate drive (ST9100828A) it took 4 hours to download 21GB of Media over to the drive compared with 8 hours with the stock apple tv drive. overall, I’m pretty happy with the new drive + the heat seems to be the same to me so i won’t worry too much about that.
thanks to everyone that helped figure out how upgrade the hard drive on the apple TV.
Help!! I tried to upgrade the HD, but I used a defective USB/IDE interface and distroyed the original HD.
Can anyone pls make an image and upload it on a ftp?
Thanks a thousand times!
Tony
I tried to get an external 250 (via ribbon cable) to work with limited success. The “factory restore†kills it off.
Does anyone has the Apple TV image made with CopyCatX?
My HD is damaged and need the full image with partitions.
Thanks.
Hi Tony and everyone! HELP
Curious what happened to your drive. I followed these instructions to the letter but I couldn’t get the new drive (160gig) to boot on the Apple TV. So I decided to put the old one back in for now, but alas…it doesn’t work either!!!! Black screen and then a flashing question mark. They both mount fine on the Mac Pro but neither will do anthing now on the Apple TV. I used an old Lacie 2.5 20 gig Drive case to mount each one. I wonder if this has somehow caused some problem.
I guess I could use the same thing as you.
Thx
WS
Hi Walter,
My guess is that when connected through the USB interface, Mac wrote some instructions on the AppleTV drive and thus made it useless.
I bought a new AppleTV and this time will make a duplicate image with CopyCatX, using a FW400 interface.
If it works, will post a copy.
Until then, good luck!
Tony
if your using a mac, make sure that you put both partitions (OS BOOT and Media) in the privacy section of spotlight. I made sure I did that before I did anything else. You have to do that for both the stock drive from the apple TV and the new drive once you transfer the image over.
here’s a link to the macworld how to:
http://www.macworld.com/2007/03/secrets/appletvharddrive/index.php
Here is an issue, I have upgraded the harddrive and it runs fine for a few days without any issues then, the ATV crashes. When I reboot the ATV I get a flashing ‘?’ and a drive pict. So I open the case and viola everything works again. I do not actually do anything to the drive, just open the case and restart the ATV. I close the case and again the ATV works for a few days and this happens again. Anyone else have a similar experience?
Thoughts?
Gusimer,
check the cable connections between the hard drive and the logic board of the apple TV. either of the connections might be loose.
I upgraded my Apple TV finally with a 160 GB Samsung Harddrive (Samsung SpinPoint HM160JC) – allthough i use the Apple TV mostly for streaming.
(http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/SpinPointMSeries/HardDiskDrive_SpinPointMSeries_HM160JC.asp)
Unfortunately the Terminal-only-Solution didnt worked for me. After the Restore, the Space on the HD stayed putt at the 40GB. So it didnt worked without iPartition.
So, well done Guys
Mycintosh: 5 days have passed since you posted you success in installing the 160GB drive in your ATV. Have you experienced any reliability problems with it so far? I’m seriously considering this upgrade mysef.
I’m not familiar with iPartition or CopyCatX, but am wondering why Carbon Copy Cloner and Disk Utility can’t be used in place of these? Couldn’t you use Disk Utility to partition the new drive, then use CCC to copy the disk images off of the original Apple TV drive, then back onto the new drive?
Thanks,
Zig
Also, is there any reason why partitions 1-4 of the Apple TV drive can’t be burned to a DVD for archival purposes?
Does anyone know if a 4200RPM drive will work well with the AppleTV?
I have one handy – 80Gig and I would love to try that out first before I plunk down a bit more money for another drive.
I am sure it will work. By my question, will the slower spindle speed hurt playback performance?
Or should I just shell out abit more money and get a 7200?
Thanks!
Anyone tried a 250GB drive yet like that new WD one?
BZ
Hi Epon, e.a.
Upgrading hdd 40 -> 160 project:
I used dd for win, it works fine. Use … bs=1M –size –progress.
The factory restore did not work for me to enlarge the Media partition.
I borrowed a 10.4.8 JaS MacOSX dvd to do the commandline scenario on my AMD64 3400 VIA AGP PC mainboard. Remove all other hdd’s, just connect the 160GB 2.5″ to the primary ATA (so it will be disk0) , and the DVD drive of course. Boot from the DVD.
I used the DVD as sort of MacOSX live cd, do not run the install, just run the utilities. There is a bash terminal to help you.
Do not use “diskutil eraseVolume ..” but use
newfs_hfs -v Media /dev/disk0/s4.
Reiterate: Do not use graphical tools, use command line from the bash shell.
When running bash shell from the install environment Spotlight is not present, so no worries here.
Now my ATV with 160GB is running fine, with the help from OSX86!
Hope this helps, cheers.
Typo:
“newfs_hfs -v Media /dev/disk0/s4″ is wrong, should read:
“newfs_hfs -v Media /dev/disk0s4″
I Installed a 160gb drive a day after the Apple TV was released.
So far no crashing, heat issues etc… works perfect with 120 gb used so far!
Hey has anyone used the WD1600BEVS
It is a 160GB 5400 Western Digital? I just saw apple is releasing the 160 model tomorrow, and I want to upgrade to a 160GB drive, which one is everyone using? Thanks guys!!
@145
there is no 250 GB drive available for IDE, max size is 160GB afaik.
since IDE is dead, I have doubts that capacity will further increase.
Zig -
CCC and DiskUtillity aren’t block-level copiers, they are volume levels copiers, so you don’t actually get an exact copy of everything including the non-mounted weird-o custom partitions.
I’m in the middle of copying the original 40GB to a disk image with dd right now, using an external bus powered 2.5″ USB2 enclosure. I’d rather have gone with firewire, but I was impatient and took what they had at a local store rather than getting something over the internet and waiting for shipment. It’s taking FOREVER to copy the drive to an image. Not sure what’s up. It’s been at least 2 or 3 hours now, and the image has only grown to 9.8GB so far. System profiler shows the enclosure running in high speed mode, 480Mb/sec, not 12Mb/sec or 1.5Mb.sec. (had a problem earlier with a powered USB2 hub shoving everything down to USB 1.1 speeds for some reason, so now the USB enclosure is plugged directly into the front USB port of my G5 tower) I’d better watch out for any spotlight indexing funny business before I put anything back into the AppleTV unit.
My replacement drive is a Seagate 160GB, ST9160821A. I hope it’s not going to be too hot and fry the thing!
– JonYo
Any word yet on what drive is in the new Apple TV’s? I am looking to get the exact same drive to replace my 40GB!!
+1
I was also trying to find out what the new drive is in the apple TV, I want to order the same one!
Just in case you still want to upgrade the HD… there’s a cheaper connector for connecting your HD to your computer. It’s actually not a lot cheaper then a normal 2.5″ casing, but in this case you can literally connect everything to it (2.5″, 3.5″ and IDE devices).
Might be handy to some of yall
http://www.newertech.com/products/usb2_adapt.php
Does anyone have their dd linux style image of the appletv os availible?
My unit’s hard drive is badly corrupted(thank you macdrive!!) and I need to perform the restore and then the factory restore.
I’ve been through plenty of stuff on piratebay/demonoid etc over the last few weeks but nothing seems to be an original image or workable.
I can supply an upload location if needs be and from their torrent it in some way to other people like me who would rather not have to buy another unit!
I release it may well be a 40gb image but I’m also assuming that seeing as 1.2gb of it acutally useful it will zip down quite nicely.(lets hope
Didn’t realise there was a limit to comments.
(lets hope it’s
I just got a 40gb apple tv off of my local craigslist for $175 (If any of you guys want one, you may want to do the same thing…test it out if yr worried about it working) What I want to do is equip it with the largest hard drive I possibly can to shove in my movies (90Gb) and music (90Gb). What brand/size/form(ide, eide, ata, sata, pata, etc) can I use?
Sitting idly, its already kinda warm…so the last thing I want to do is test its limits with a 7200rpm, or a 10k rpm hard drive.
Any suggestions.
Thanks guys!
Woah!
Where can i find the Inter version of Mac OS X? >:-(
Hi – Can anyone provide recommendations for 160GB drives that won’t run too hot?
Thanks,
Tim
Hi guys,
I had all my photos and music on my Apple TV and then my Hard Drive on my Macbook pro died big time. Now I have a new hard drive with no photos or music….how can I retrieve all the photos/music off the Apple TV and back onto my Macbook Pro?
Please help…I just can’t afford to lose all the photos of my kids!!!
Zom, the easiest way to do this is to pry your Apple TV open as mentioned in this article and then put the drive in an enclosure. Connect the enclosure to your mac and copy the files off it.
ok so I’ve gone for it and attached a 3.5 hdd, tranfered the with copycat and booted just fine & played video. I did this with a basic converter cable as a temp but would like to find a 2.5 female to 3.5 male cable to clean up the convertion and be able to close the case. mounted the hd in a case and plan to hide it behind the tv, HOW do I allow the apple tv to talk to the hd? I want to power it with an external power source and tie into the logic circuits of the apple tv motherboard (but how to do this safely????) h e l p
Hi guys,
anyone knows where I could find an image of the ATV HD -> I removed the Recovery partition
and I don’t have a backup … I’m only able to restore OSBoot.
Thanks
Grenoble
Thanks Luck…I’ve ordered a 2.5″ enclosure and will attempt it. But is it really that simple? Just plug the HDD in the enclosure then connect via USB to my laptop and when i open up the ext hdd icon on my desktop everything will be on there ready to copy over? No other geeky stuff?
Also, Since Ive learnt my lesson about backing up the hard way…what is everyones choice on the best way/program for backing up. I now have a 320gb Ext HDD with Firewire.
Thanks all
Zom
Has anyone tried this with a WD Scorpio 250GB 5400RPM drive?
I had the exact same problems that some of you seem to be facing i.e. process dies at the eraseVolume step.
If you’re already stuck at the eraseVolume step, you’ll need to start over at the step where you copy over the .img to the new drive.
Doing a Disk Utility “repair” on the media partition on the new drive before the gpt remove and gpt add steps seems to fix it. After the repair, use “gpt show diskx” – the block start and size numbers for the media partition should be different than before the repair. Use the new numbers.
After that eraseVolume works fine. eraseVolume should give you IMMEDIATE feedback that it’s erasing the partition – if it just sits there with the block cursor, something isn’t right.
-out
attached a 750 gb 3.5″ hd, works great! put it with external power and it’s own case 693 gb cap. on apple tv!!!!!!!
Ken
hello this is ken from ULTIMATE PC & Mac Gallery apple reseller all the way in Hong kong
HEY I NEED YOUR HELP HERE IF POSSIBLE i recently try to upgrade the HDD of
a apple tv in our shop so i open it up i remove the small 40 GB hdd with out doin any thing
expect that i plug it in to a mac pro as a Firewire drive to restore it to a 60GB HDD
then i screw it all up… it doest work 60GB after i plug the power back on it appear there is no drive at all
and even i swap the 40 GB back in it still dont work… is there any thing i can do here =.=……
Hi!
I just want to know if someone tried to plug to P-ATA drives to the appleTV? I plan to add a 3,5″ P-ATA extern like i read above! But it would be superior if i just could add 2 P-ATA drives. I think if it’s a normal ATA Controller id should be possible but I don’t know a lot about hardware =)
@hawk717
does appleTV send the 3,5″ drive to sleep mode without problems? or is it moving all the time? what’s about power consuming?
@hawk717
I like to know if in your 3.5″ setup the aTV sends the disk to sleepmode? or is it running all the time? Whats about energy consuming? Do you mesaure anything?
ergh!
I’ve restored my appletv(using copycatx) from a backed up dd dump but when I boot my appletv just blinks amber for a while, then starts blinking amber and white.
any suggestions welcome.
thanks!
OK. This all sounds great. But for those uf us Mac challanged are there any third parties out there that perform the heavy lifting as a service. I’m ready to shiop it out..
Regards,
Lou
Can i use a 2.5″ usb Drive enclosure to connect the apple TV hard disk to a macbook pro?
i’m planning to use the disk of my LaCIE Mobile Drive in the Apple TV.
It should work?
thanks
yes!!, i have been running a 3.5 750 gb hard drive for a month now with external fans on drive and apple tv. It is working awesome marjo go for it… a word of warning syncing large ammounts take a long time to begin with
When I try to get the Apple TV software upgrade it downloads but then the upgrade fails to install. I have seen a few posts in other places that this failure to upgrade is because I and others have upgraded their hard disks. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a work around besides reinstalling the original disks, upgrading, and going through this upgrade process again?
Interesting… I’m seeing the same problem with the software upgrade not working on an appleTV i’ve upgraded to 160gb.
My own unit is already 1.1 -> did the update before the 160gb install. And I don’t remember doing a restore. My friend’s unit was 1.1; did the upgrade to 160gb; did the restore, which somehow brought it back to 1.0 and thereafter system update doesn’t work.
So now I’m guessing my own unit won’t be able to update to 1.2 etc. I’ll have to wait and see.
So I guess I need to keep the 40gb around and do a 1.2 update on THAT and then copy over the new files to the 160gb? That’s going to be a pain.
ALSO – it may the case that the original instructions here work for the 1.0 unit and not the 1.1 unit; that may be why some of us have problems following all the instructions on the net.
So future 1.x updates are going to involve a whole lot of trial and error again.
hawk717
what case did you use ?? and HD
A CHEAPO CASE FROM MICROCENTER AND MOUNTED EXTRA FANS AND DRILLED AIR HOLES ALSO A 750 SEAGATE IDE DRIVE WITH ADAPTER CABLE 2.5 TO 3.5
A MICRO CENTER POWERSPEC CASE WITH EXTRA HOLES DRILLED IN IT AND A 750 SEAGATE PATA HD
Has anyone had luck using AppleTV with a network storage unit such as the Synology DS-207?
http://www.synology.com/enu/products/DS207/index.php
Synology claims the DS-207 is compatible with any UPnP-compatible Digital Media Adapter. Does AppleTV qualify?
I have a 100GB SATA drive that I would like to put in my Apple TV (currently 40GB). I have access to a drive duplicator and I was wondering if I get the hard drive out of the Apple TV and copy from 40GB HD to 100GB HD if I would have any issues?
Please help
Followed the hack but neither the org. or the new HD will boot in Apple TV.
Flashing question mark. Any advise ??
Do I need a new image and if so, anybody who will help ??
Best Regards
Kejser
I used SubRosaSoft.com’s CopyCatX to duplicate the drive and then used their VolumeWorks to dynamically expand the partition without erasing the data on the drive. Worked great. Thanks for the great tutorial.
I successfully upgrade to 160GB using Seagate HD. However in the about menu it only showed capacity of 145GB… What gives?
After a few tries, I was able to upgrade my 40 GB to 250 GB (228 usable) with a Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVE 250GB.
Here’s what worked:
I used a Ubuntu box for the imaging and transfer. As I don’t have access to a Mac, I used a bootable Darwin CD to delete the 30+ GB Media partition and create a larger 228 GB partition.
Darwin 8.01 (Mac OS X 10.4) is here: http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
Unfortunately, I could not find Apple’s diskutil on the Darwin CD, so I only did these gpt steps
gpt show disk0
gpt recover disk0
gpt remove -i 4 disk0
gpt add -b 3141672 -i 4 -t hfs /dev/disk0
from this tutorial: http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/23/how-to-upgrade-the-drive-in-your-apple-tv/
Put the larger drive into the AppleTV, ran Menu (-) and system restore, and it showed all 228 GB available.
Without diskutil, I was unable to name or format the new, larger media partition, but AppleTV did not seem to have a problem with it – perhaps because it started at the expected block.
On further note: I did set the acoustics on the Western Digital drive to 128using the Hitachi disk tool. I’ve found the 2.5 drives run cooler and use less power (as measured in battery life) in quiet mode, so I figured it would be a good idea for the aTV.
Hope this help folks without a mac or considering the new WD.
Does anyone have apple tv disk image. I lost mine and now my apple tv is dead. After messing up the HD upgrade.
/niklas
I’m trying to upgrade to the WD2500BEVE 250Gb drive. So far I’ve successfully dd’ed the standard 40Gb drive to an image on my Mac, dd’ed it back onto the new drive, installed in back in the ATV and started up. As expected the ATV fired up perfectly and reported the exact same drive size as before.
So on to the ‘factory restore’ to liberate all those juicy extra gigabytes… the ATV went through the whole process as normal and then… still 40Gb!
I tried running the restore a couple more times, but it made no difference. I’ve still got a 40Gb ATV.
So does this approach actually work? Or have I missed something crucial?
Any suggestions would be gratefully received, otherwise I’ll have to resort to reconnecting to the Mac and messing about with increasing the size of the Media partition.
Bauchan:
Simply restoring will not work with the 250 GB drive. You need to increase the size of your media partition from your mac either using a 3rd part app or the command line and diskutil.
Details are here: http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/23/how-to-upgrade-the-drive-in-your-apple-tv/
Since I did not have a Mac, I used the command line form a Darwin boot cd to delete the media partition, then create a new larger one.
When I restored the AppleTV, the new larger partion was formatted and I had access to the full 250 GB.
It’s alos a good idea to set the acoustics on the WD drive to 128 so it runs cooler and uses less power.
UrbanVoyer:
Many thanks for your comments; I had reached the same conclusion myself. The factory restore method described above does not work.
The best web tutorial I’ve found is this one: -
http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Prepare_a_Hard_Drive
It takes less than 30 minutes, worked first time for me and released the full 228Gb of the WD2500BEVE.
2 questions
Has anyone succeeded in doing this with MS-Windows based PC ?
I had “hoped” that I could attached an “external drive” using the USB port, I as I have done on one of my other media HDDs – I note this port is tagged by apple as being for diagnostics, has anyone used it?
I would like to thank all the contributers to this forum, I was able to upgrade my ATV with an Hitachi HTS541616J9AT00 160GB hard disk using a USB2 cheap and cheerful external disk unit, and using terminal and iPartition (which I use anyway). It worked fine although copying and creating the disk image took hours. I now have an available capacity of 144.63 GB – much more like it. The temperature of the unit appears to be no different than before although I have added some stick on supports for each corner to raise the unit slightly to provide a better airflow. This helps…
Thanks again the info provided, much appreciated.
Happy Tony.
I couldnt get these steps to work, partition 1 kept popping up all by itself.
These are my sequence of steps..
747 gpt destroy /dev/disk4
748 gpt create /dev/disk4
749 gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 69632 -t efi /dev/disk4
750 gpt add -b 69672 -i 2 -s 819200 -t 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk4
751 gpt add -b 888872 -i 3 -s 1843200 -t hfs /dev/disk4
752 gpt add -b 2732072 -i 4 -s 309849703 -t hfs /dev/disk4
753 diskutil eject disk4
754 gpt add -b 2732072 -i 4 -s 309849703 -t hfs /dev/disk4
755 diskutil eraseVolume “Journaled HFS+” Media /dev/disk4s4
756 diskutil eraseVolume “Journaled HFS+” OSBoot /dev/disk4s3
757 diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4
758 dd if=efi.dmg of=/dev/disk4s1 bs=1m
759 dd if=recovery.dmg of=/dev/disk4s2 bs=1m
760 diskutil eject disk4
After i put it back together and turned it on, it worked just fine. using a Seagate st9160821a. All space shows up in itunes.
does anyone live in the new york area that can help me do this ill pay them??? email me please
can anyone from new york help me with this project
i will pay
æƒå¨åœ¨èŒç ”修网
http://www.qvedu.com
Hallo,
is it possible to change to a 160gb Harddrive. I copied the complete stuff and see only a question mark on the TV. If i make a reset it will be the same sign. Any Ideas ?
Frank
Hi Gang,
I’m having problems with a WDScorpio WD2500BEVE 250GB drive.
I can get it to factory restore but not upgrade. And my gpt table keeps switching the order of the tables around.
This is what I end up at after most direction’s I’ve found:
ticonderoga:AppleTV jwellner$ gpt show /dev/disk1 start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 69638
69672 819200 1 GPT part – 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
888872 1843200 2 GPT part – 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
2732072 409600 3 GPT part – C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
3141672 484993312 4 GPT part – 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
488134984 262151
488397135 32 Sec GPT table
488397167 1 Sec GPT header
@EJA
Hi mate,
thanks a lot for your tip. I’ve tried hour after hour the various ways described and not described but never got it working.
Then I “downgraded” the original HDD to v1.0, dd’ed it and then unsed your newfs-command instead of the eraseVolume (which every time screwed up anything).
Now my old iBook-120GB-HDD rests peacefully in my (not yet fully reassembled) Apple TV
You’re my daysaver!
So once again, thank you.
Sushii
Hi everyone, I’ve been trying to get this to work for the past couple of hours and have come to the following conundrum:
after i put the image on the new 160gig hard drive, i connected it back to the apple tv and attempted to perform a factory reset, but kept getting errors.
here’s how it looks in diskutil:
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *149.1 Gi disk1
1: EFI 34.0 Mi disk1s1
2: Apple_Recovery 400.0 Mi disk1s2
3: Apple_HFS OSBoot 900.0 Mi disk1s3
and if i look at it with gpt show disk1:
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 309849759
312581775 32 Sec GPT table
312581807 1 Sec GPT header
- this looks as if there’s only 31 gigs free instead of around 150 that should be…
I’m really confused by this point so if anyone could help me out in any way, i’d really appreciate it!!!
@dontfighthelogic / Jeremy and all the others failing in partitioning the new HD.
I was finally able to install my new WD Scorpio WD2500BEVE 250GB.
The critical part is the last one when you have to resize the Media partition the command line progs are not working because are making confusion in the partition table. The only solution I’ve found is the external application iPartition. First copy the old HD image on a diskimg file with DD. The copy the image to the new HD with DD. Now adjust the size of the Media partition with iPartition. It couldn’t be more easy !
“Update: Thanks to reader Epon, we now have a way to do this without requiring iPartition”
Ok – great – is it a secret? or am I missing the actual presentation of this New Way?
I’m thinking about buying an APPLE TV. Will it accept a 750GB upgrade and will the unit still allow future software upgrades after installing a differnet HD?? Are the 40 GB and 160GB models the same when it comes to upgrading?
Thanks,
ED
Chub,
I’m still working on mine, but there are two pay-for-service sites. I’m so tired from doing this all night that I can’t seem to find the links. If you’re interested, especially if you don’t have the hard drive, let me know, and I’ll post them.
The HD should be a 2.5″ P-ATA Max size is therefore 250 GB (Maybe 320 GB soon). No problems anyhow with future SW upgrades.
Bye
C.
Tried the procedure on a Windows XP system using a Windows port of dd and a IDE-to-USB adapter with less than spectacular results. As a couple of others have reported, my atv will not boot off either the new or original drive now (flashing question mark). I gave both drives to a friend with a Mac Mini. He fixed the new drive’s partition table and “blessed” the MBR – still won’t boot. He checked out the original 40G drive, too, and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. He suggested that it could be a bad IDE cable so I’m going to check that out. I guess it could also be something in the hdd that isn’t being detected by whatever tools he’s using, but I’m concerned that I’ve somehow damaged the actual atv.
At any rate, as others have asked, is there a good dd image available for download somewhere? I don’t know for sure that my original drive is still good or that my dd image is good and I’m going through the process of elimination.
Thanks.
I am thinking of getting Apple TV, but I have 2TB of audio and video content, and 160gb does not do it for me.
I read that it is possible to run full Mac OS on Apple TV – which I assume means using external USB drives, etc.
If anyone has tried it or has information on pay-for-services which can do that – please post it.
Just tried the procedure complete with the system restore. It did not work. I have the three partitions on the new drive but the Media partition is only 32gb. Help?
Upgrading Hard Disk drive in Apple TV Using PC!!!
I do not have access to a Mac. Does anybody know if it is possible to upgrade an Apple TV hard disk using a PC with windows XP? If so, can someone point me to a website where there are comprehensice instructions on how to do it.
If a hard disk cannot be upgraded on a PC then is anyone prepared to setup a new HDD if I were to send both the original drive and a replacemenet (larger) drive?
Thanks
Hi I want to recommend you very useful rapidshare search http://loadingvault.com. You can find there a lot of new movies, games and music. Enjoy it!
Cool website. I’m 1/2 way through an upgrade to 250GB… Will let you know how it turns out!
Wow! 228.46 GB Capacity! Took a little longer than planned. I was going the “no new software” route. ATV started up fine (with thirty-something GB), but the Factory Reset step did nothing – no luck in two tries.
Bought iPartition (web download), stretched the “Media” partition in one quick step. Started up the ATV, and Bingo! No reset or factory reset required. Started with ATV at version 2.0 and its still at 2.0. 250GB was the largest IDE notebook drive I could find on the web. Wish ATV used SATA – there’s a 320GB WD model!
Upgrade Computer: Apple iMac 24″, Intel 2.4GHz, OS 10.5.2
New ATV Disk – Western Digital 250GB Scorpio EIDE Notebook Hard Drive, WD2500BEVE, purchased at PC Connection for US$140.44
Accessories: Cables to Go – USB to IDE Serial ATA Drive Adaptor, PC Connection part 7902058, US$28.44
Software: Coriolis Systems Limited – iPartition, US$49.95
Other Notes: Disk drive runs very cool – barely warm to the touch; Really need to transfer an image of the original disk first, then stretch the Media partition. The recovery partition is non-standard (“Apple_Recovery”) and, at 399.98MB, can’t be set up with the Apple Disk Utility.
Good luck!
Update: Apple TV still going strong. A factory reset was, in the end, required. After re-associating the ATV with my Mac, I found that the Music, Podcasts, and Photos tabs in the Apple TV iTunes window were missing. The reset, followed by S/W update (from the ATV) cured that problem.
Tonight, I rented and watched a movie via ATV with no problems encountered. 195 GB of Free Space remains. Woo Hoo!
I tried the terminal method, but everytime when its time to copy back to the new harddrive it says busy. How do I fix it?
WAG: Did you unmount the original disk before disconnecting it (prior to plugging in the new disk)?
Another idea, see if the *new* disk shows up in disk utility. Assuming it does, try to format it. That would check if you can successfully write to it.
Another WAG: let the disk format completely, then do the dd to copy the disk image to it.
-L
I figured out a way easier way to upgrade the hard drives on this without using terminal and only using disk utility and drive Genius. I have made 3 disk images and one folder from the 160GB Apple TV original hard disk.
These are the names and sizes of the images. Again Media is not worth bothering with as we will cut and paste the two folders called scrath and media in it later.
1) Recovery 400MB
2) OSBoot 900MB
3) disk1s2 339.98MB
Make 4 partions on a new hard disk. One for each of my image files to later be restored to.
1) Recovery 400MB
2) OSBoot 900MB
3) disk1s2 400MB
4) Media (no image needed, use remainder of disk space to size this partition.)
After each partition is made you take each of the respective image files and use Disk Utility to restore each partition to its same named image file.
Once you are done, take the two Media folders (scratch and Media) and paste them into the partition called Media.
When all is said and done, eject the new disk, pop it into your apple TV, boot up, do the upgrade and your golden with 2.0
Works everytime.
If you need these RAW files I can FTP them for $50 paypal.
Mike your method seems to make sense. The only thing is I already have the update on my atv and now wanted to try your method to put in a larger drive. I assume the partitions are the same after the update, have you looked at the partitions since updating?
I was wondering, would the apple TV perform better if I were to say drop a SSD [Solid State Drive] in it? or would that be a waste of cash?
This is with an already updated Apple TV Take 2. Even though the update has been made on the source disk files, it is required you do an update with the newly made drive once installed. I was able to do this with 80, 160, and 250GB disks without any issues.
Cool thanks mike, I am going to try it tonight. I have a 100gb drive I was using for backups in an external case. I am dumping that backup data onto another hd as we speak so I can try it. If it works(which I am assuming it will) I am going to drop in on a 250gb from new egg.
Hey all,
My 40 GB drive died. Can anyone upload an image of their drive so I can build a new one? I have managed to find the AppleTV restore image, but have not had much luck in using it to fix my ATV.
please email me if you can help at ben at noloco dot com
Thanks much,
Ben
I’m having some trouble backup up my AppleTV drive. I took it out and have it hooked to the USB hub on my computer.
When I use the terminal command:
“dd if=dev/disk4 of=/Users/Nick/AppltTV.img bs=1024k”
I get
“dd: dev/disk4: Input/output error
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes transferred in 2.402428 secs (0 bytes/sec)”
If it matters, my diskUtil output is:
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *233.8 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 233.4 Gi disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *149.1 Gi disk1
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk1s1
2: Apple_HFS Time Machine Backups 148.7 Gi disk1s2
/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *74.3 Gi disk3
1: Apple_partition_map 248.0 Ki disk3s1
2: Apple_HFS Wendy’s Ipod 74.3 Gi disk3s2
/dev/disk4
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *37.3 Gi disk4
1: EFI 34.0 Mi disk4s1
2: Apple_Recovery 400.0 Mi disk4s2
3: Apple_HFS 900.0 Mi disk4s3
4: Apple_HFS 35.8 Gi disk4s4
Any ideas why it isn’t working?
Be,
I have the 40GB image if you need it. Both version 1.0 and 2.0 pre Patched sticked with SSH and AFP on.
Let me know if I can help
Lenny
Hi,
I would like to increase the size of the harddrive of my AppleTV.
Can this be done in Windows or only in Mac?
Thanks
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I followed Engadget’s and appletvhacks instructions to copy the appletv’s hd using dd. Everything went well except the ending…flashing question mark (?) and no startup…Any help would be appreciated…
Hell yeah Lenny!
I NEED it!
Add me on msn at miflover@hotmail.com
I kind of erased my harddrive
elite
It cannot be done in Windows AFAIK. But I don’t have a Mac either, so I did mine in Linux and Darwin, both are free and both can be run completely from CD’s without installing any software or disturbing an existing windows installation.
Linux makes the imaging easy, but you can get dd for windows and do it in XP. Darwin has the tools to delete the existing small media partition and make a larger one.
Hi Lenny, any chance I can get one the 2.0 prep patched image from you?
Brandon
bscinc@gmail.com
you have the drive images? mine got wiped out
So I am looking for someone that is successful in replacing the drive without using a Mac. If anyone can help, I will put together instructions to post online. I have the replacement drive and enclosure, drive is out of the AppleTV, so now looking for next step.
I would like to do this using boot discs only as to not load the drive in XP/Vista and mess up the MBR. dave a t segura d o t org
So I’m somewhat a noob at the command line. My question is why, when I try to copy the image to the new HD it says that that resource is busy?
dd: /dev/disk3: Resource busy
any thoughts,
thanks
William
Just got my Take 2 40GB upgraded to 160GB in XP / Boot CD’s. No Mac needed. Just ran the update to 2.0.1 and working fine. I will work on some instructions as it appears that the Take 2 needs to be done differently from the original ones.
william before you can cop the image to the new drive you have to eject it using this
diskutil eject disk?
where ? is the drive number
Lenny,
Dude, I need that image.
eanania@ambitintl.com
Did you unmount it ?
“diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3″
I am trying to upgrade the internal disk to a 160GB disk and
I don’t know what I messed up. I have detached the disk and attached to my iMac using an USB adopter and try to make an image file of the original disk, I re-attached the original disk back to the ATV and try to re-start again and didn’t work, all I got is a disk logo with a question mark. What went wrong? How can I fix it? Can anyone help?
Thanks
Can someone kindly share the ATV image file so I can restore my Apple TV?
Is this thread and Blog still active? The instructions seem to need an update after the Take 2? I’ve tried over and over with a Momentus 160gb Seagate, but to no avail.
i removed my 40 gig hd, but i restored it 5 min later without touching it. Now i have a black screen and my status light is blinking amber/white.
Remote control does not respond. Does ATV have a secret protection or something? what can i do now?
Would love to know if i can upgrade my previously modded 120gb HDD from perma v1.0 to latest ATV version 2.XX
please email erin@freeformed.com
Lenny,
I am trying to replace an out of warranty DEAD hard drive. Obviously I cant copy the image off of it. Do you mind sharing your image with me as well?
Many thanks,
Bob
rmm2007@comcast.net
Hi, I am trying to replace an out of warranty dead hard drive in my Apple TV. I cant mount it let alone image it. Do you mind sharing your image with me as well or tell me where i can get it? Thanks, Matt
I managed to upgrade my HD to a Samsung 120GB PATA. The procedure that worked for me was the same as published by Ken (posting #113, above).
A few comments:
- Although Ken’s posting is quite simple, it took me many hours to figure out that his sequence was the one that would work for me. I used a combination of three tutorials:
1) http://www.appletvhacks.net/?p=17&cp=all#comments
2) http://www.macworld.com/article/57079-3/2007/03/appletvharddrive.html
3) http://img.engadget.com/2007/03/23/how-to-upgrade-the-drive-in-your-apple-tv/
- I did not use CopyCatX and iPartition
- I did not do a factory restore before beginning the whole process and my Apple TV was running Take 2 with only a few MB of empty space. I suggest, however, that you do a factory restore before starting (see below).
- I installed Spotless after Spotlight had indexed my original HD, but before I duplicated its image. Spotless deleted the indexing files from my original HD and was active throughout the whole process.
- As happened to someone in this forum, Apple TV did not recognize my original 40GB HD when I tried to put it back after duplicating its image (it would blink white and amber and show a question mark on the screen). I don’t know if that was related to Spotlight modifications that Spotless wasn’t able to fix. Eventually, Apple TV recognized it again when I copied its own duplicated image back to it.
- Factory restore did not automatically free up the additional space after I copied the duplicated image to my new HD (perhaps because the Media partition was not empty, since I did not do a factory restore in the beginning of the process). It did free up additional space, however, after the step “gpt add -b 2732016 -i 4 -t hfs /dev/disk#”. That is, I did not have to format my increased Media partition–Apple TV factory restore did it for me. In previous attempts, I had tried to format the Media partition as suggested in some tutorials (by running “diskutil eraseVolume “Journaled HFS+†Media /dev/disk#s4″), but that completely destroyed all of my partitions — I ended up with only one partition of 120GB. I am not sure if that was due to not ejecting between “gpt add…” and “diskutil eraseVolume…”.
- My only additions to Ken’s sequence would be doing a factory restore and stalling Spotless before attaching the original HD to the Mac.
Dan
Worded grate I installed a 160 GB hard drive on my ATV came with only a 40 GB
I hooked up the ATV drive to my Mac with a 2.5 Inch ATA USB drive bay
it mounted the OSBoot & Media Partitions ” I unmounted them and then”
opened a Terminal type or paste
dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/Users/fss/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img bs=1024k
//^ This is the disk make sure you change the number to whatever your drive number is for your ATV
Also
dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/Users/fss/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img bs=1024k
// ^ Change to your login name
Then hit enter note it takes a bit of time for the img to copy so do not mess with anything to you see the Terminal window go from
dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/Users/fss/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img bs=1024k
[] fsss-imac-2:~ fss$ []
Then disconnect the ATV drive and hookup the new drive ,check Disk Utility to see what drive number the new disk is
FUJITSU MHW2040AT Media
Dish2s2
Worded grate I installed a 160 GB hard drive on my ATV came with only a 40 GB
I hooked up the ATV drive to my Mac with a 2.5 Inch ATA USB drive bay
it mounted the OSBoot & Media Partitions ” I unmounted them and then”
opened a Terminal type or paste
dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/Users/fss/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img bs=1024k
Then hit enter note it takes a bit of time for the img to copy about 30 mins
Then disconnect the ATV drive and hookup the new drive ,check Disk Utility to see what drive number the new disk is
FUJITSU MHW2040AT Media
Dish2s2
Worded grate I installed a 160 GB hard drive on my ATV came with only a 40 GB
I hooked up the ATV drive to my Mac with a 2.5 Inch ATA USB drive bay
it mounted the OSBoot & Media Partitions ” I unmounted them and then”
opened a Terminal type or paste
dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/Users/fss/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img bs=1024k
Then hit enter note it takes a bit of time for the img to copy about 30 mins
Then disconnect the ATV drive and hookup the new drive ,check Disk Utility to see what drive number the new disk is
FUJITSU MHW2040AT Media
Dish2s2
Sorry about the spam post I was just trying to get what I typed to show up and show up right
fssalaska
I tried the dd commands twice – even did factory restore twice. Failed. 33.7Gb shows up as free space.
Going to try this next.
http://www.macworld.com/article/57079-3/2007/03/appletvharddrive.html
I just upgrade my 40GB to a 160GB with a Samsung 160GB 5400rpm drive. Everything went smoothly until i did a factory restore and then afterwards the apple TV would keep on restarting over and over again. I would get the menu for a few seconds and then it would restart to the apple screen again… any ideas?
This is the combination of steps that worked for me.
http://diyspirit.com/?p=3
After doing the upgrade everything works fine EXCEPT syncing iTunes purchased content. I can buy content from my ATV but I can not sync the any purchased content. The message that iTunes gives me is that it is unable to validate/authenticate with the itunes store on that ATV. My connection with the iTunes store is working from my ATV.
Does anyone has a tip to fix this??
Thanks for your help..
Regards,
TV
I used the following Tutorial (based on the above one)
http://diyspirit.com/?p=3
to Install a 250gig WD 5400 HD into my 1.0 40g apple TV
)
using Leopard (with all latest updates) on a Intel 24 ‘Alu iMac
I had no Major issues and didn’t need iPartition (i.e. it was a free upgrade
Works Great!
the only typo I found was the following line :
gpt add –b 3141672 –I 4 –s 74998455 –t hfs /dev/disk1
Should be a small -i Line should be :
gpt add –b 3141672 –i 4 –s 74998455 –t hfs /dev/disk1
I’ve informed the Guy and it’s probably been amended by now …
thanks You all for your help
u72
Hi,
is it possible to find the images from the efi and recovery partition anywhere ?
I have a harddisk crash and lost all data …
Now I will recover my ATV with a new harddrive but haven’t the needed data …
Thanks in advance.
Alex
re:
TV Says:
June 12th, 2008 at 11:14 am
After doing the upgrade everything works fine EXCEPT syncing iTunes purchased content. I can buy content from my ATV but I can not sync the any purchased content. The message that iTunes gives me is that it is unable to validate/authenticate with the itunes store on that ATV. My connection with the iTunes store is working from my ATV.
I got the same message after doing mine to the 250 WD, you just need to authorize your computer with itunes. Then it syncs it all over.
good job
if you authorize your account for itunes again all your stuff will sync over. I just did mine with the wd 250 and had the same issue at the end.
any clues on being able to update to the 2.0 software? did the install and everything is perfect, but won’t update to the 2.0 software update.
Also, is there any reason why partitions 1-4 of the Apple TV drive can’t be burned to a DVD for archival purposes?
i’ve successfully upgraded from 1.0 to 2.1 (the version that allows you to use airtunes with your iPhone/Ipod Touch as a ’sonos type’ remote with the apple TV) and it works perfectly – Also the Finder Crashing bug with version 1.0 is now fixed and doesn’t affect new installs of v1.0 ( see my comment here http://diyspirit.com/?p=3 )
I started with a 40 gig v1.0 AppleTV and upgraded to a 250 gig WD hard disk and have had no issues upgrading, you should be able to ‘burn’ the files to a DVD for archival purposes I can’t see why you would have a problem with this?
u72
To David Segura:
Saw your post about the Take2 upgrade using XP/Boot CD’s. You mentioned working on some instructions, would love to see those if you have them.
Thanks.
i installed the new 250gb hard drive and everything went well. one problem on my itunes it still says capacity 32gb and also on apple tv it still showing the original hard drive. is that going to effect how much stuff i can sync? is there a way to change that?
Ðœery pleased article. Thank you very much !
can anyone help me please with my last messege. i put in a 250gb hd but my apple tv still recognizes the 40gb not the 250. everything works fine just that. so it only thinks i have 40gb to work with for saving. how do i fix that????
where can i get a copy of that apple tv disk image. my drive died!
tia,
-lyle
lyle at inch dot com
What is the max size drive that Apple TV will recognize?
hi. very much need to get a copy of the apple disk image. can anyone please help?
lyle@inch.com
My Appletv lost its network connection during an upgrade to 2.0 and now will not boot and cannot be set to factory restore. The hard drive seems OK but the partition table is corrupted. Can anyone tell me where I can send the hard drive to have it reinstalled. Apple is of no help.
Thanks.
HEY I HAVE A 750 GB RUNNING ON MINE BUT HAD TO BY THE PARTITION SOFTWARE NOTED ABOVE TO STRETCH THE DATA PARTION OTHERWISE I COULD NOT GET IT TO RECOGNIZE ANYTHING OVER IT’S STOCK 40 GB SIZE -GOOD LUCK AND WELCOME TO THE NEW APPLE INFINI-TV AS I CALL IT
HEY THE 2.1 UPGRADE LOCKED ME OUT, THE PARENTAL CODE WAS TURNED ON AND I DON’T HAVE A CODE IT JUST DID IT WITH THE UPGRADE HELP I HAVE THE 750 GB DRIVE AND RESTORING AND RESYNCING TOOK 4 DAYS LAST TIME AROUND …REALLY WANT TO AVOID THAT!!
The tutorial here is missing some hard facts and so far – at least for me – did not work at all. More, I tried and repeated a couple of times over two days and failed. My ATV did not allow me to do a factory install (endless boot loop) nor could I get over the 40 GB Limit on my new 250 WD HD. I went over to engadget and tried their terminal-solution and it is also not working and missing facts (the resizing part of the media partition does not work and gives an error, I do not know anymore.)
What did not work for me: If ATV does a restore it does not free the extra capacity on the new drive after the clone. (You have to do it manually via terminal or a helper app like iParition.)
There is no word (except one picture) that a successful HD change will start with software 1.0 on the ATV. I tried numerous times with 2.1 and it failed. Only the screenshot of the ATV here and the date of the article made me wonder and try with 1.0 – it worked.
But after all I am happy, because I found in the forum here a post which made my ATV working with the 250 WD HD like a charme and the whole process a walktrough easy as cutting a piece of cake. It is here. Thanks to Waroth.K:
http://appletvhacks.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=66#p188
But big thanks to the geniusses who made it possible that we can change our HD anyway…
A new 250gb HDD.
with “DriveGenius” i duplicate it, then i used “iPartition”, thats it!!
it works perfect!!
greets
can we use a bigger hd capacity like 32 gb maybe ?
i mean 320 gb..
danuputra, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to. And with 320gb 2.5″ drives available for $100, you can get the 40gb Apple TV and upgrade to 320gb for the price of a 160gb Apple TV. You’d have twice the storage and a spare 40gb drive left over.
I have a serious problem.
I tried to upgrade my drive but I lost the original copy of my base atv drive.
Would it be possible for anyone to upload a copy of the dmg for me to restore?
Now that Intel Macs can boot from USB attached devices, is it necessary to use a firewire connector in step one?
Hey All,
I’ve a 40GB Apple tv and managed to loose my efi.img partition.
Please could someone help with this…. please…
vincekruger@gmail.com
Regards
Vince
I tried to copy the disk image to my new Fujitsu 160GB drive but get a message saying ‘resource busy’. I can see the drive in my list of devices on my mac. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to proceed.
Jim, just unmount the volume using disk utility (don’t eject it). Now to my problem. When I run the diskutil list command the partitions on the apple tv hard drive don’t include the media partition, yet the drive functions correctly in the apple tv. I tried a factory restore of the drive but still there’s no media partition. When I copy what is there over to a new drive it runs but I only get the restart, run diagnostics, factory restore screen. That’s great if it would let me do a factory restore, but it won’t, it fails and tells me I should contact Apple. Any suggestions.
Good site for download video, i found yesterday
Hey guys,
I want to upgrade my AppleTV’s HDD as well. I have the 160GB version at the moment, but it’s relly not enough for me. The maximum of 250GB still seems to be not enough. So my idea is to use a 2.5″ SATA to IDE (44pin) adapter and install a 500GB 2.5″ SATA HDD into the AppleTV.
big thanks goes to everybody who helped making this tutorial and other good stuff for AppleTV Hacking
The needed items:
Adapter
http://cooldrives.stores.yahoo.net/2sahadrtoide.html
HDD (Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB SATA II WD5000BEVT)
http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a365722.html
Do you think the adapter will fit into the aTV case? More important is to know if this adapter works in combination with a 2.5″ SATA 500GB HDD, but who knows?
If there is anybody who could help me with this ideo, please answer here. Maybe there is someone who had the same idea and checked this before?
Greetings from Germany
Chris
Chris, I just ordered the cooldrives adapter. I am concerned about it fitting…. I thought it was worth the small price to see if this works. If so, then now we are able to upgrade to a 2.5″ 500GB SATA drive.
Mark, Chris
Please let us know how this works. I’ve been looking for an adapter like this for ages. The space in there is so tight that only a sata to 44 pin will fit, and this looks like it will do the trick.
Will update all with the details. The adapter should arrive UPS at my house tomorrow. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that it will fit!!! If so, this really make upgrading to larger internal 2.5″ drives a reality.
The adapter will only work if you remove the hollow vent on the right side that the fan blows air into. This is the only way to make it work. Not really sure how to remove that piece. Will look online for some pics that might help.
Having only a PowerPC computer, I was forced to use the DD method above. It worked fine, except that the computer thought that the Media partition was still 32 GB with no free space. I couldn’t fix it with Disk Utility, iPartition, or command line tools.
A few hours of research later, and it’s working. HTH:
Original 40 GB Apple TV hard drive GUID partition map (after using dd to copy to 250 GB hdd):
~: gpt -v -v -v -v -v show -l /dev/disk2
gpt show: /dev/disk2: mediasize=250059350016; sectorsize=512; blocks=488397168
gpt show: /dev/disk2: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk2: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk2: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=69632
gpt show: /dev/disk2: GPT partition: type=5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=69672, size=819152
gpt show: /dev/disk2: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=888824, size=1843192
gpt show: /dev/disk2: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=2732016, size=40642608
gpt show: /dev/disk2: Sec GPT at sector 488397167
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
40 69632 1 GPT part – “EFI”
69672 819152 2 GPT part – “Recovery”
888824 1843192 3 GPT part – “OSBoot”
2732016 40642608 4 GPT part – “Media”
43374624 445022511
488397135 32 Sec GPT table
488397167 1 Sec GPT header
I tried deleting and re-adding the “Media” partition, but I kept running into errors.
I fixed this by partitioning the drive in Disk Utility with 1 partition (Free Space) and GUID as the partition type.
At this point, the partition map looked like this:
~: gpt -v -v -v -v -v show -l /dev/disk2
gpt show: /dev/disk2: mediasize=250059350016; sectorsize=512; blocks=488397168
gpt show: /dev/disk2: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk2: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk2: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=409600
gpt show: /dev/disk2: Sec GPT at sector 488397167
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 409600 1 GPT part – “EFI System Partition”
409640 487987495
488397135 32 Sec GPT table
488397167 1 Sec GPT header
Next, I deleted the “EFI System Partition” since it was the wrong size, and re-created it:
~: gpt remove -i 1 /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s1 removed
~: gpt add -b 2732016 -i 4 -s 485664919 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s1 added
Adding labels as I went along:
~: gpt label -i 1 -l “EFI” /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s1 labeled
Add the Recovery partition:
~: gpt add -b 69672 -i 2 -s 819152 -t 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s2 added
~:gpt label -i 2 -l “Recovery” /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s2 labeled
Add the OSBoot partition:
~: gpt add -b 888824 -i 3 -s 1843192 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s3 added
~: gpt label -i 3 -l “OSBoot” /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2s3 labeled
At this point the safest point is to go back to Disk Utility. Go to the partitions tab, click on the (+), and made a new HFS+ (Journaled) partition named “Media”
P.S. All uses of /dev/disk2 above are specific to my system. To get the disk number, use Disk Utility or System Profiler.
P.P.S. gpt won’t read or write any data if any volumes from the disk are mounted. I had to go back to the Finder and unmount OSBoot and Media before each step.
Just got an Ebay Apple TV. How do I update to Mac..Point me to what’s next and what was not included and where do I get this software like on Subsystem youtube or is your way better? What about basic cost outlay..Thanks in advance.
Steve
Using the IDE to SATA adapter works fine as long as you don’t need to close the case…LOL. Too tight inside. Oh well, I guess an IDE 250GB is the way to go…
Mark
Is there any chance that the adapter could be trimmed or shaved down to make it fit?
Just won an ebay Apple TV. Now could you give me a basic list of things I need to do? I’ll check out those websites for info . There was supposed to be a great article on this. Where is it and did Apple pull it? Any problems in doing this? I have another Mac tower with ide drives so I should be good there. I’ll have to save my bucks for os 10.4 to run it on. I have your kernal and the movies..What else. Can I use a mouse or connect a cd-rom drive to this new mac?
Thanks in advance. I hope I didn’t make a mistake in buying the $200 Apple TV console.
Steve
Hi Mark and of course everybody else here,
thank You for trying the IDE-to-SATA-Adapter. I wasn’t sure if it would fit into the aTV, but as You tested this adapter seems to be too tight. But I have found another one. This adapter is very flat but longer. Maybe it is possible to turn the hdd about 180°, because on the other side is much more space for doing so. But I don’t know if there is space enough when You close the aTV case, I guess it could fit. But here is the size of the other adapter: 53mm (width) x 25mm (lenght). The hight seems to be less than 8mm on the pictures.
I will order the new flat adapter and tell You guys if I was right or not. It is really a pity that we are still limited to 250GB internal HDD because Apple decided to use crap IDE instead of the newer and faster SATA, but never mind. I will try to give my best. The adapter will arrive at October 3rd and I will start “changing” the hdd than.
Kind Regards
Chris
That’s me again
it makes no sence to order the other adapter beause it won’t fit like the first one. There is not enough space, dammed! I opend my aTV today and searched for space, but no chance.
@ Mark: Could You sell me Your adapter? So You would have Your money back and I can ask a friend if he could built an adapter like the one from CoolDrives but smaller, so it could fit into the case. But for that I need one. I am from Germany and CoolDrives won’t ship to Europe. I can pay with paypal immediately, even shipping costs. Please let me know if You are interessted. This is my ICQ-No.: 88961136
Greetings from Germany
Chris
P.S. This project really waked up my interest and I hope You will help me. If me and my friend will get this running than we will share our success with the aTV-Community!
dude i cant afford this stuff so just send it all to me at 1324w. wichita street… brenda
hi ,
i took my atv to an authorized technician to upgrade the HDD to 250G . he replaced it , but restored the atv also . now all my contents are gone . i retype all my login and account name and can connect it back with itunes , but when i click the atv icon on the source list , all i can fine is only 4 lines : apple tv , 238 GB , SW version2.2 , and serial number . i cannot find the sync to apple tv key .
now , how can i sync my content back to the atv .
please help . thanks .
regards
david
Well, i’ve followed all the steps here, and on Engadget, and on the AkwardTV site, and I end up the same way: 250GB drive installed, factory restore either won’t start, or it completes, but the drive is still 40GB in size. I do have 2.2 aTV software, so that’s the only thing I can think of causing it. Any ideas??
I have just done this and i can no longer get my apple tv to work. It will turn on but i dont think it is booting from the harddrive. Its as if it is shorting out. All i get on screen is a apple tv icon with a flashing question mark. The hard drive appears to be in working order when plugged into the Mac. All files are there and it boots up.
Any one have any idea’s or help?
Here is how I upgraded my apple TV from 40G to 250G.
I had a few problems creating the new Media partition.
it seemed like “diskutil erase volume” kept clobbering my EFI disk partition.
So I decided to figure out the correct size for my disk and use factory default to init the Media partition for me.
Equipment used:
Apple MA711LLA TV Receiver 40GB HDD Wireless HDMI MAC
PPC powerBook G4 with USB 2 ports running OS-X 10.5
Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVE 250GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive – OEM
USB2.0 To IDE/ Serial ATA Adapter:FUBCP
Process used,(I would guess that some steps could be optimized, but I have included everything because the result was good):
factory default apple tv
dd backup of 40G disk
init of 250G disk
dd restore of 40G image onto 250G disk
figure out a good size for the new media partition
Leave the 7 blocks of unallocated space after media partition
(I Don’t know if it was required, but it made it look a bit more like the original 40G disk)
ignore the fact that the media partition is now listed at the top of the diskutil list because the disk1s4 identifier is correct
install the disk without initializing the new media partition
boot up the apple tv with the new drive
run factory default.
Apple TV now shows > 200G of available space
update apple TV software over the internet
reboot apple TV
start the big sync
Try to teach wife how to use new toy
Here are the commands and the output,
Note /dev/disk1 might be different on your system and if commands do not seem to work, remember to eject the disk after just about every step…
192-168-0-57:chein root# dd if=/dev/disk1 of=/Users/chein/AppleTV.img bs=1024k
38154+1 records in
38154+1 records out
40007761920 bytes transferred in 8858.532983 secs (4516297 bytes/sec)
gpt destroy /dev/disk1
diskutil eject disk1
gpt create /dev/disk1
diskutil eject disk1
192-168-0-57:chein root# dd of=/dev/disk1 if=/Users/chein/AppleTV.img bs=1024k
38154+1 records in
38154+1 records out
40007761920 bytes transferred in 5487.351963 secs (7290905 bytes/sec)
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil eject disk1
Disk disk1 ejected
# having a look at the new disk image after doing the dd restore
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *111.8 Gi disk0
1: Apple_partition_map 31.5 Ki disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Untitled 111.7 Gi disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *232.9 Gi disk1
1: EFI 34.0 Mi disk1s1
2: Apple_Recovery 400.0 Mi disk1s2
3: Apple_HFS OSBoot 900.0 Mi disk1s3
4: Apple_HFS Media 36.0 Gi disk1s4
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil eject disk1
Disk disk1 ejected
# having a different look at the disk after doing the dd restore so I can figure out the new block size of the media partition
# I used the start of the “Sec GPT table” 488397135 – the start of the Media partition 2732072 – 7 blocks of padding = 485665056
192-168-0-57:chein root# gpt -v -v -v -v -v show -l /dev/disk1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=250059350016; sectorsize=512; blocks=488397168
gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=69632
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=69672, size=819200
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=888872, size=1843200
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=2732072, size=75408048
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 488397167
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 69632 1 GPT part – “EFI System Partition”
69672 819200 2 GPT part – “Apple_HFS_Untitled_1″
888872 1843200 3 GPT part – “Apple_HFS_Untitled_2″
2732072 75408048 4 GPT part – “Customer”
78140120 410257015
488397135 32 Sec GPT table
488397167 1 Sec GPT header
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil eject disk1
Disk disk1 ejected
# remove the small parttition
192-168-0-57:chein root# gpt remove -i 4 /dev/disk1
/dev/disk1s4 removed
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil eject disk1
Disk disk1 ejected
# having another look at the disk after removing the Media partition
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *111.8 Gi disk0
1: Apple_partition_map 31.5 Ki disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Untitled 111.7 Gi disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *232.9 Gi disk1
1: EFI 34.0 Mi disk1s1
2: Apple_Recovery 400.0 Mi disk1s2
3: Apple_HFS OSBoot 900.0 Mi disk1s3
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil eject disk1
Disk disk1 ejected
# having another look at all that free space
# new size could just be 485665063 – 7 now …
192-168-0-57:chein root# gpt -v -v -v -v -v show -l /dev/disk1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=250059350016; sectorsize=512; blocks=488397168
gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=69632
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=69672, size=819200
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=888872, size=1843200
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 488397167
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 69632 1 GPT part – “EFI System Partition”
69672 819200 2 GPT part – “Apple_HFS_Untitled_1″
888872 1843200 3 GPT part – “Apple_HFS_Untitled_2″
2732072 485665063
488397135 32 Sec GPT table
488397167 1 Sec GPT header
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil eject disk1
Disk disk1 ejected
# create new parttition
192-168-0-57:chein root# gpt add -b 2732072 -i 4 -s 485665056 -t hfs /dev/disk1
/dev/disk1s4 added
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil eject disk1
Disk disk1 ejected
# taking yet another look at the disk after the new hfs Media partition has been created
192-168-0-57:chein root# gpt -v -v -v -v -v show -l /dev/disk1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=250059350016; sectorsize=512; blocks=488397168
gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=69632
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=69672, size=819200
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=888872, size=1843200
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=2732072, size=485665056
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 488397167
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 69632 1 GPT part – “EFI System Partition”
69672 819200 2 GPT part – “Apple_HFS_Untitled_1″
888872 1843200 3 GPT part – “Apple_HFS_Untitled_2″
2732072 485665056 4 GPT part – “Customer”
488397128 7
488397135 32 Sec GPT table
488397167 1 Sec GPT header
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil eject disk1
Disk disk1 ejected
# ignoring the fact that the Media partition is now listed at 1: because the disk1s4 identifier is correct
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *111.8 Gi disk0
1: Apple_partition_map 31.5 Ki disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Untitled 111.7 Gi disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *232.9 Gi disk1
1: Apple_HFS Media 231.6 Gi disk1s4
2: EFI 34.0 Mi disk1s1
3: Apple_Recovery 400.0 Mi disk1s2
4: Apple_HFS OSBoot 900.0 Mi disk1s3
192-168-0-57:chein root# diskutil eject disk1
Disk disk1 ejected
# install the disk into apple tv, boot up, to the factory reset thing.
# have fun with new toy while reading about doing the 2T USB thing without even opening up the apple TV in the first place
# As I can not afford the 2T of disk space at the moment, I will just be happy with my minor victory for now
–
Good luck
Chuck
KC6SOZ
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
kaylee
http://www.thinkpadonline.info
i cannot find the sync to apple tv key .
Hi I want to recommend you very useful rapidshare search http://4rapidsearch.com You can find there a lot of new movies, games and music. try this
@chris
I think the adapter is sold in Germany by Wintech Computer. See http://www.wintech-computer.de/index.php?seite=detail&id=118
I also had the idea of installing my 160GB SATA drive formerly used in my MacBook Pro and now replaced by a WD 500GB drive.
Thank you so much for this helpful tutorial. I followed other how-to’s which focused on the terminal method, but I got stuck in the resizing part. iPartition 3.0 SOLVED my resizing problem, and now my Apple TV is 250GB
Again, thanks.
My original AppleTV HD crashed. I purchased a 250 Gig WD2500BEV. Read all the different site about the upgrade. Lot of good stuff on all. I got the new drive working in my ATV. Before I did, I ran into a problem which may help others who are stuck. I got my new HD into the ATV and it booted but when I tried to restore it, it would start and then say that the restore failed. I had not formatted the new larger empty partition so it could not restore to it. I’m not saying I found something new here, I’m just saying if you follow the above tutorial, it will work, BUT if you run into this problem of not able to restore, you now know what part to go back and re-read. Then read all of the comments to the tutorial. The answers are in there. The original tutorial has some stuff that isn’t applicable now.
I upgraded as it says up top, without purchasing any other software. I just purchased the new HD and got it going with my Mac. I did use the terminal commands from the Engadget site http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/23/how-to-upgrade-the-drive-in-your-apple-tv/ infact this is where I learned about deleting the 32G partition creating the larger partition THEN formatting that partition. I did not find that the method listed above automatically gave me all the drive space available until I did that. I think most of this was also covered in the comments here.
Good work, good people. Thanks for your help.
Is there anything stopping me from putting my Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320gig drive, currently running my Macbook Pro, into my new apple TV?
Hi,
I use the dd command in the terminal to copy the dmg to the new drive
but it keep comes up “”"Resources busy”"‘
How Come????
Paul, your Seagate Macbook Pro drive will not work because it is a SATA drive. The ATV only takes PATA/IDE drives, of which the largest capacity is the WD 250GB mentioned by Ferd Berferd. There are a number of 160GB PATA 2.5″ drives out there from the main brands.
I found that Drive Genius worked perfectly for me from beginning to end process.
I have an appleTV purchased 1.5 yrs ago, did use it for 5-6 times until one day the flashing question mark appeared upon booting indicating hard disk failure.
I have visited the Apple store and since my product was out of warranty the offer was to replace the product with a brand new one at the price of 109GBP, due to the fact that service-repair is not offered on appleTVs.
I have not tried to open the product.
Is it possible to change my HD with a new one and fix the problem myself? I can not duplicate the driver since my HD is corupted, is there a way to work though that?
This is all good stuff. … But has anyone been able to do this without a MAC?
I’ve tried windows, I’ve tried (Unix Live CD) still no joy.
Hi people,
First off, great work. I recently rang my local apple store and asked if they would be able to upgrade my apple tv to which they replied yes. They then asked to what size hardrive to which i asked what size can i get, he replied 1 Tbite at a cost of 350 Euro. Now i am confused. How can they do that???
Some tips:
I bought a 40gb model and tried to copy the image BEFORE even powering on the AppleTV — it didn’t work; the factory restore failed, perhaps I had made other mistakes, but things went smoothly after allowing the AppleTV to do its initial boot and config. – I did not connect to iTunes.
Anyway this made me think these Appletvhacks instructions were incorrect and I foolishly followed engadget site.
The problem for me at least was in the quite unnecessary
diskutil eraseVolume “Journaled HFS+” Media /dev/diskXs4
step, which did nothing more than corrupt my new 320gb ATA drive over and over, as Chuck mentioned last year.
A factory restore after rebuilding the partition table was enough for me… and I am not even certain I needed to rebuild the partition table, but its a very short step.
So from my experience.
Make sure you have the right disk, my /dev/disk# number changed when I chose a different USB port on.
Eject the disk after every step, if you see a busy message – either you have the wrong disk or it mounted
Don’t do the fast DD
dd if=/Users/Engadget/AppleTV.img count=1335 of=/dev/disk# bs=1024k
Do make a complete copy – much longer but it works
dd if=/Users/Someone/AppleTV.img of=/dev/disk# bs=1024k
Don’t
diskutil eraseVolume “Journaled HFS+” Media /dev/disk#s4
Do the factory restore
I have followed the above steps using terminal to upgrade my appletv to a 250GB western digital drive. the backup and transfer to the new drive went well and i put the new 250gb drive back into the apple tv. it booted up and i did a factory restore to try to free up the additional space, but it still says only 32GB available. What am I doing wrong? How can i free up the additional space? Thanks
can i use a 500gb seagate ?
I upgraded the boot disk of my mac pro by just using utils/Disk Utility.app
It copied everything, system partition, boot partition, data partition
and the new disk was bootable (upgraded from 250GB to 1TB) and
the new disk was sized as 1TB (I don’t think ‘dd’ will update the size
in the partition table!)
Wouldn’t the same work for the ATV? Just use it to copy the whole
disk? Can someone please try?
-Michael
Can an external hard drive be connected to the Apple TV and if so what is it.
Alan
Also has or can this be done
In theory, you can replace the 2.5″ HD with a large capacity 3.5″ driver by using a 2.5 to 3.5 convert cable and mount the drive outside of the AppleTV box.
Alan
As FRED said two months ago, don't use the “count=1335″ switch … even if it takes a very very very long time to achieve copying (15 hours for me, dubbing a 160Go original ATV HDD to a newer 250Go … and, i must say a disk-to-disk copy, using two PATA/IDE – USB2 adapters …).
When dubbing with the “count=1335″ switch, the ATV (with new new HDD) booted … but suggest immediately a “restart”, “reset” or “factory restore” … but all of these options failed (as said by numerous of users in comments, including on engadget.com website about the same topic).
Concerning the expansion of the Media partition, i didn't try a factory restore, nor the terminal method described above… but bought ipartition beacuse i didn't wanted to lose the benefit of using an old (and obsolete) atvflash usbstick.
One more thing, i've executed the command lines concerning .spolight-v100 files.
I just upgraded my ATV drive from 40 – 320GB. It is a WD 320 Scorpio. I understand this drive and a Samsung drive do not take a “Factory Restore” after it has been transferred. Is anyone out there who had the same problem or know how to resolve it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Hello Kontrabasci, In fact I used the same drive a WD 320 Scorpio. I am facing the same problem that the Appletv wont perform a Software update (from 2.02 to 2.4 and also will not perform a factory restore.
It also will not install ATV flash. I don't think – but I am not shure that this is related to the Harddisk. From where did you get this information? I believe there is another problem. I resized the media partition to fill the available space on the disk. Maybee the tool messed up something there. I used drive genius….
I've been trying to upgrade the original 30GB to a Samsung 160GB with no success. I've been using exclusively the terminal option. I even followed Ken's (2 years ago) additional instructions.
Upon booting the AppleTV I get the logo with the flashing “question mark” on top. The HD is rightly plugged. Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks
Is there a way to format a new HD without the old HD? My content was wiped out by the new ATV update and I need to keep my old HD pristine until I get a good file recovery utility. I would just like to create a new “factory fresh” format on a spare HD and get the ATV up and running again. I'll use the old one to get as much of my content recovered. Thanks!
The flashing ? mark is probably just the connector not seated fully on the hard drive. you can try to hook it up without the bottom on to see.
I have the same problem, have got an upgraded apple tv box and when plug it in an go to hdmi on tv just shows the box with a flashing question mark over it and the apple box is flashing orange and white on the status light. Any ideas what I could do. Have tried both hdmi ports on back of tv but no change. thanks
Hope this tutorial will be help of many other people. Thanks for informative sharing.
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Apple stuff is really expensive, i'm going for the new google tv hope it is as good as it sounds
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This is the best guide on upgrading apple HD, great for ones who want to replace a bigger HD. It's better to follow the tutorial after warranty expires, so you have nothing to worry about
I accept followed the aloft accomplish application terminal to advancement my appletv to a 250GB western agenda drive. the advancement and alteration to the new drive went able-bodied and i put the new 250gb drive aback into the angel tv. it booted up and i did a branch restore to try to chargeless up the added space, but it still says alone 32GB available. What am I accomplishing wrong? How can i chargeless up the added space? Thanks
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Didn't even knew this was possible, does sound interesting and I think I'll give it a try later this week.
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