Apple TV 250GB Hard Drive Upgrade Success - with instructions

For anyone on the fence, I just upgraded to the 300 club myself and it's well worth it. Streaming is great but I didn't want to have my imac on all the time anymore. Plus, streaming HD can sometimes get slightly choppy. Most of my TV on DVD collection are shows that follow a season or series long plot and really need to be watched in order and the automatic least recent unwatched sync is perfect for that. So in the morning, when I plug in my iphone, iTunes turns on, and whatever shows I watched the day before are removed and the next in line are added to the ATV. SWEET.


P.S. I bought the drive off someone on ebay who pre loads it with the ATV software or code or whatever it is so I just had to open up it up and replace the drive. It's perfect for someone like me who doesn't quite understand all the disk util stuff. (Me wishes me was smarte.) It's about 120 after MS Live cashback. A little pricey but not outrageous considering the drive itself is about 90.

P.P.S. This has really turned into another "I heart my apple tv" post instead of a drive upgrade story. sorry.

Instead of drilling a hole in the ribbon cable, wouldn't it be easier to just clip off the uneeded pin on the adapter?

1.5tb

I have tons and tons of dvds and mp3s that have overun my 320GB HD. So I decided to upgrade up to 1.5tb. Unfortunately I am having problems with preparing the new hard drive.

Trying to format a 1.5tb esata drive and keep coming up with an error at the very end: When I type in "newfs_hfs -J -v Media /dev/disk1s4" I get the following error message "newfs_hfs: /dev/rdisk1s4: partition size not a multiple of 4k."

Does anybody know what to do?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

500GB success also

Thanks denlesko for trying out those different adaptors. I ordered the same one you cite and plugged in a WD 500GB Blue drive, fired it up and all is well! This was a happy second place to my attempt at 1TB eSATA, which was stopped cold by the extension cable. It wouldn't recognize the drive using it so I couldn't close up the case. I had a FrankenATV for about a week with the PATA-SATA bridge and cable sticking straight out of an upside-down ATV.

Although, I did not find it that easy to reclose completely here either (same orientation as your pics). I have mine loosely reassembled (just not screwed full tight), left off the rubber bottom, and put some felt pads on the corners.

iheartappletv said:

I have tons and tons of dvds and mp3s that have overun my 320GB HD. So I decided to upgrade up to 1.5tb. Unfortunately I am having problems with preparing the new hard drive.

Trying to format a 1.5tb esata drive and keep coming up with an error at the very end: When I type in "newfs_hfs -J -v Media /dev/disk1s4" I get the following error message "newfs_hfs: /dev/rdisk1s4: partition size not a multiple of 4k."

Does anybody know what to do?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Click to expand...

I'm having the same issue. Any thoughts? I did some searching and it appeared others are having a similar issue when trying to format 750gb+ hard drives. I've got a 1tb that I'm having issues with.

I'm having the same issue. Any thoughts? I did some searching and it appeared others are having a similar issue when trying to format 750gb+ hard drives. I've got a 1tb that I'm having issues with

Click to expand...

Where did you get your instructions to format? Are you preparing separate images for efi, boot etc. or a single whole disk image?

Personally I tried doing separate images for a 1TB drive following awkward tv's instructions, and although the end result looking at the partition table looked perfect, and everything seemed to be good, it would not factory restore..also resizing the media partition is another factor I couldn't get right.

I went back and made a single disk image of the whole shebang, and resized the media partition with iPartition after factory restore. It was painless.

I actually tried both ways -- a single disk image and separates, both ending with the same problem which is not being able to Factory Restore. I used the instructions on P1 of this thread and just can't seem to get things working correctly.

I think I'm going to try the single image method again to see what happens. Who knows, couldn't hurt trying.

Thanks!

One note: what kind of drive are you guys using ? . I have two 1 TB drives, both wd. One is a Studio Edition (silver) which will not factory restore though works just fine including upating etc. The other is a Home Edition (black) which restores and everything just fine.

I think there is something about the studio edition's firmware which can cause issues. For instance they are known to freeze for some reason when used on mac and the drive goes to sleep. There is an unresolved issue ticket at wd that covers this. There is a also a firmware update for the studio edition though I have not tried it since besides not restoring... it works just fine. Again the Home edition will restore and everything. Exact same formatting for both drives.

Hi Dyna,

I did use a 1TB WD Studio (silver). When i set it up with separate partitions I did this to avoid downtime--I ssh'ed to the ATV to pull boot, efi and prepare the disk ahead of time. It went smooth for the most part, and the drive would recognize, but would not factory restore. That is when I moved to a full disk image and iPartition. That worked only to be stopped by the cable. So now I have a 500GB WD Blue internal instead, but yeah I was able to get it to work eventually with the Studio as far as the formatting itself....and it would restore and update and function for the week I had it set up...didn't know about the firmware.

I'm using a WD Caviar Green 1tb Sata. I'm going to work with it a little bit this weekend to see if I can work through some other suggestions I've received. I'm not sure if it matters, but I did pull it from a WD Elements enclosure.

ATVCloner

I was revisiting an upgrade to the 320Gb drive, when I stumbled upon another post regards ATVCLONER.

I tried it last night with a spare 55Gb laptop drive I already have and it seems to have worked a treat. Took less than 30mins, to pull the old drive, image across and the plunk the larger drive in.

I had to set the wifi up again and re-sync the media, but that's OK.

Will likely order the WD3200BEVE drive and go through the ATVCLONER process again. (Prices have come down since I originally looked at doing this)

Very easy.

320Gb running cooler

Hi all (first post),

Wanted to share my experience, just upgraded to WD 320Gb drive. I initially ran the 40Gb that came with the ATV, then upgraded to the Samsung 160Gb, now to the WD 320Gb. First two were hot as hell, could hardly keep my hand on top of the ATV. The WD is much, much cooler. Besides more space, now I don't have a permanent heating source!

Cheers
Sean

Seanaa said:

Hi all (first post),

Wanted to share my experience, just upgraded to WD 320Gb drive. I initially ran the 40Gb that came with the ATV, then upgraded to the Samsung 160Gb, now to the WD 320Gb. First two were hot as hell, could hardly keep my hand on top of the ATV. The WD is much, much cooler. Besides more space, now I don't have a permanent heating source!

Cheers
Sean

Click to expand...

Are you running an IDE drive or SATA? Just curious, thanks!

IDE. Was hard to find as most stores are now only stocking SATA. I left the ATV on over night, it did get warmer, although not as warm as before.

First off, thanks for the excellent writeup paduck!

Wanted to let you know that I stopped before the final step you took from Waroth.K's guide and I was unable to restore the AppleTV. So I completed the final step and everything worked great!

I have also done some personal research on the best way to get a 2.5" SATA drive to fit inside the ATV, and the best IDE-to-SATA adapter I have found is here. Using it with a 22-pin SATA male-to-female cable (an 8-inch cable can be found here), and the original IDE ribbon cable makes a VERY snug fit inside the ATV, but it is working great with no problems. I now have a 461.46GB (500GB WD Scorpio Blue) ATV, and once the price drops on the new 1TB WD Scorpio Blue drives, I'll be upgrading.

stevietech said:

First off, thanks for the excellent writeup paduck!

Wanted to let you know that I stopped before the final step you took from Waroth.K's guide and I was unable to restore the AppleTV. So I completed the final step and everything worked great!

I have also done some personal research on the best way to get a 2.5" SATA drive to fit inside the ATV, and the best IDE-to-SATA adapter I have found is here. Using it with a 22-pin SATA male-to-female cable (an 8-inch cable can be found here), and the original IDE ribbon cable makes a VERY snug fit inside the ATV, but it is working great with no problems. I now have a 461.46GB (500GB WD Scorpio Blue) ATV, and once the price drops on the new 1TB WD Scorpio Blue drives, I'll be upgrading.

Click to expand...

Hi, i'm quite interested to see you use a 22pin male-to-female cable in your set-up - is the only reason just so you can attach the drive back to the aTV case? I use the same IDE-to-SATA adapter with a 500GB Scorpio Blue and this works fine, however i obviously can't re-attach the drive to the case.
Cheers

320Gb

320Gb drive went in last night and appears to be working well. I haven't seen any noticable difference in heat, but it's running silent. The original 40Gb drive was making all sorts of clicking noises toward the end there.

Hopefully this'll give my Mac Pro a break during the day and simplify the kids movie watching. Although it's still Summer and they should be outside.

Danksi said:

320Gb drive went in last night and appears to be working well.

Click to expand...

Can I ask if you used AtvCloner to prep the new drive ? If so how did it work out for you ?

dynaflash said:

Can I ask if you used AtvCloner to prep the new drive ? If so how did it work out for you ?

Click to expand...

Yes I did. Very straightforward process.

One thing I did notice was that when I used a spare (55Gb) laptop drive last week to try it all out, that spare drive was already initialized and could be selected using the 'choose file' option.

The brand-new drive wasn't initialized, so I had to carefully pick it out from the terminal window e.g. \dev\disk\5

OSX did ask if I wanted to initialize it when it first powered up, but I ignored it. I guess if I had initialized it, it would then be available in ATVCloner, under the 'choose file' option. Not a big deal.

Cool. Yep, if the disk is not initialized first it is not mounted, so you have to grab the /dev/disk1 or whatever but instead of terminal, look in the activity window in AtvCloner ... at launch it gives you all of the diskutil list info for the drives connected to you're computer just like if you do it manually in the terminal.

Basically you shouldn't have to launch terminal at all when using AtvCloner.

Enjoy your new drive.

dynaflash said:

Cool. Yep, if the disk is not initialized first it is not mounted, so you have to grab the /dev/disk1 or whatever but instead of terminal, look in the activity window in AtvCloner ... at launch it gives you all of the diskutil list info for the drives connected to you're computer just like if you do it manually in the terminal.

Basically you shouldn't have to launch terminal at all when using AtvCloner.

Enjoy your new drive.

Click to expand...

To clarify, I did use the activity window in AtvCloner. Very handy. I didn't need Terminal at all.

The only other impact this upgrade has had, is that I now have the ATV wired to the router (had a long Ethernet cable handy). Keeping 320Gb sync'd using a Wireless 'G' connection was going to be tough.

Danksi said:

To clarify, I did use the activity window in AtvCloner. Very handy. I didn't need Terminal at all.

Click to expand...

Good, glad to hear it.

mavis said:

Really? I've read that iTunes will still only sync to the Media partition, and that the external drive is only used by Boxee/XBMC etc ...

Anyway, this great tutorial is simple enough (you basically just copy & paste the terminal commands!), fast enough (twenty minutes, tops), and cheap enough (I picked up my 250GB WD Scorpio WD2500BEVE for less than $90) that it makes sense to just do it.

Click to expand...

If you use ATVFlash to hack your Apple TV, you can install Nito which allows you to add an external USB drive to the ATV. You can then use a few simple commands in terminal to copy all your media to the external drive and get the ATV to think that the external drive is the media partition. It's all in the Wiki at http://www.atvflash.com

I added an external 750gb USB drive and now when I check "About" under "settings" it shows that I have almost 700gb of storage. This is alot easier than opening up the ATV to clone your drive, thus voiding your warranty.

Like all things the usb hack has it's caveats as well ... like the next atv software upgrade wiping out you're software hack. Everything is a compromise.

Dynaflash (and everyone else who worked on this) rocks! I used the newly updated AtvCloner on my WD 1TB Green Caviar sata and everything is working well. Hopefully I won't fill up this drive anytime soon. Thanks again!