ok, I have an external harddrive. I currently have it hooked up to my apple tv. Is there a way I can access the external hd plugged into my Apple tv from my laptop? Because it gets annoying that I have to unplug the harddrive from my apple tv and then in my macbook to transfer the files and then plug the harddrive back to the apple tv. So Im trying to transfer my files from my harddrive to the apple tv exteranl harddrive over wifi. so im trying to see if i can get my external hd which is plugged into my apple tv to show up on my mac so I can access it and never have to unplug my HD to transfer files.
So, you do have wifi and therefore a router. If the router has a usb port then you should connect the HDD there so it will become a network drive. That way you can transfer files wirelessly.
As for connecting a HDD to an aTV, I don't think the aTV supports that at all (not sure though if it's an aTV1 or jailbroken aTV2 though).
Edit: so I have read where the aTV1 will support an attached usb HDD but an aTV2, aTV2(jailbroken) and aTV3 will not support an external HDD through their usb port. Do you have an aTV1 then?