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Apple TV 250GB Hard Drive Upgrade Success - with instructions
- Thread starter paduck
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@dynaflash
any news for an updated version to work under Snow Leopard?
Also, can I restore the image file to an external drive and just plug it to ATV USB port and iTunes will detect it or I really need to physically change the hard drive?
It's difficult to look for a PATA drive here.
any news for an updated version to work under Snow Leopard?
Also, can I restore the image file to an external drive and just plug it to ATV USB port and iTunes will detect it or I really need to physically change the hard drive?
It's difficult to look for a PATA drive here.
No clue, haven't installed snow leopard yet. If the underlying system utilities are in the same place and work the same then there is no reason it wouldn't work just fine. I plan to upgrade this weekend and will report back.
Afaik this does not help with the usb hack. That is done via patchstick and modifying the atv software, which is not my bag (though there is plenty of posts available to help you out).
This works for upgrading the internal drive or performing the eSata upgrade.
It appears atv cloner is borked under Snow Leopard. Working on it now.
Edit: fixed and testing a new version what should work fine on both snow leopard and leopard.
Thanks for the replies. My ATV is hacked for now so i can use the USB, I am still looking around for a 250 or 320 GB PATA since I also want a real hardware upgrade.
...and now the website is working again, but the downloaded version of AtvCloner (no version number in Get Info, but file timestamp is today {30 August 2009} at 12:21 AM) opens and closes again immediately with error in the problem report:
Code:
Date/Time: 2009-08-30 00:21:27.269 -0400
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.7 (9J61)
Report Version: 6
Anonymous UUID: 4D78ACD9-7E50-4C9A-8660-42C02DF1E002
Exception Type: EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 0
Dyld Error Message:
unknown required load command 0x80000022For my last spam to this topic for tonight:
I wasn't able to use AtvCloner, but paduck's instructions worked a treat (even though I tried Engadget's version first, and was not successful). A few minutes ago, i finished doing a factory restore on my version 1 Apple TV and it just applied the 2.4 update and rebooted using an old 120GB drive i had laying around. Now I have 107GB free for my son's Yo Gabba Gabba episodes.
Looking inside the Apple TV and having read some discussion here about adding a bigger SATA drive via an adapter, I thought about and article that I saw years ago, when the Mac mini first came out, about a guy in Australia that wanted to attach full-sized drives to his mini. I bookmakred his site but it's down at this time: AppleTalk - Mac mini in a PC Case.
He made connector adapters, to allow a standard IDE cable to plug into the 2.5 drive headers on the mini's motherboard. I ordered two of these adapters from him, but they are in storage in another state right now. The Apple TV motherboard header appears to be the same. Theoretically, we could use this adapter to attach an IDE cable, fish it outside the Apple TV's case, and then attach a 3.5" IDE drive of whatever capacity (it would need its own power supply of course). This wouldn't be as elegant as squeezing a 2.5 SATA drive inside the Apple TV, but 500GB 3.5 drives are cheaper than 2.5 versions...
I wasn't able to use AtvCloner, but paduck's instructions worked a treat (even though I tried Engadget's version first, and was not successful). A few minutes ago, i finished doing a factory restore on my version 1 Apple TV and it just applied the 2.4 update and rebooted using an old 120GB drive i had laying around. Now I have 107GB free for my son's Yo Gabba Gabba episodes.
Looking inside the Apple TV and having read some discussion here about adding a bigger SATA drive via an adapter, I thought about and article that I saw years ago, when the Mac mini first came out, about a guy in Australia that wanted to attach full-sized drives to his mini. I bookmakred his site but it's down at this time: AppleTalk - Mac mini in a PC Case.
He made connector adapters, to allow a standard IDE cable to plug into the 2.5 drive headers on the mini's motherboard. I ordered two of these adapters from him, but they are in storage in another state right now. The Apple TV motherboard header appears to be the same. Theoretically, we could use this adapter to attach an IDE cable, fish it outside the Apple TV's case, and then attach a 3.5" IDE drive of whatever capacity (it would need its own power supply of course). This wouldn't be as elegant as squeezing a 2.5 SATA drive inside the Apple TV, but 500GB 3.5 drives are cheaper than 2.5 versions...
hrm, so it crashed on 10.5.7 ? Just tested the download on SL and it works fine. Since I do not have a Leopard maching avail anymore I had another dev test it on 10.5.8 and it worked fine. Anyone else verify that the new AtvCloner crashes at launch on Leopard (new version is 0.1.4 btw) ?
Update: Not sure how it happened but somewhow my leopard test results were bogus. Sincere apologies on that, am uploading the last version that worked on leopard now so there will be two downloads, one for Leopard and one for Snow Leopard.
Okay, somehow I got messed up when I had someone verify that AtvCloner 0.1.4 worked on both Snow Leopard and Leopard.
At any rate, now the Leopard version (0.1.4b) and the Snow Leopard version (0.1.4) are posted for download. Did three tests to verify the Leopard version works. Sorry for any inconvenience.
http://dynaflashtech.net/atvcloner/
At any rate, now the Leopard version (0.1.4b) and the Snow Leopard version (0.1.4) are posted for download. Did three tests to verify the Leopard version works. Sorry for any inconvenience.
http://dynaflashtech.net/atvcloner/
I can verify that the Leopard version launches properly on 10.5.7 now. Thank you. When I decide to upgrade the HDD again, I will try it.
On another note, does anyone have experience running the aTV without the wireless daughter card installed? I noticed it looks like the standard Apple riser card (mini-PCIe). Thing is, I've got a netbook that I've hackintoshed and the built-in wireless card is wonky under Mac OS. Since I've got the aTV hooked up via ethernet and don't need the wireless, would it still work if I pulled the wireless riser and put it in my netbook?
First off I'd like to thank dynaflash and his effort and fine software for cloning the apple tv. http://dynaflashtech.net/atvcloner/ It wonderful software program. It just didn't work for me. Been working on this for 3 days and could never get it to work for me correctly. Don't know what I did wrong. I do have to say thanks as it gave me the motivation to get my Apple TV hard drive backed up. I really didn't care how big the HDD was as I stream everything anyway. I tried atvcloner with a 160 gig drive on both my imac and macbook pro. Didn't work for me. I tried doing a 320 gig drive on both the imac and macbook pro didn't work for me. This am I used the below commands and did a disk to disk copy.
dd if=/dev/disk8 of=/Users/"myusername"/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img bs=1024k
Copied all the data to my hdd on my imac. Used the below command and copied all the data to the 160 gig.
dd if=/Users/"myusername"/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img of=/dev/disk8 bs=1024k
Then because I was so not going to get ticked off because it didn't work or was going to have some other problem I bought ipartition this am and moved the media disk to the correct size. Installed the 160 into my appletv and tested it out. Worked just like it was supposed to work.
Then because I had the 320 gig I did the same with it. It's now in my appletv and working great. Didn't have to do a restore and all my data is still there. Best 44.00 investment I ever paid for.
Again. Thanks dynaflash for all your hard work. Again it did motivate me to get this done. I just wanted a backup of my 40 gig so if there was ever a problem I didn't have to junk my apple tv.
Just wanted to let everyone know what worked for me and to say thanks.
dd if=/dev/disk8 of=/Users/"myusername"/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img bs=1024k
Copied all the data to my hdd on my imac. Used the below command and copied all the data to the 160 gig.
dd if=/Users/"myusername"/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img of=/dev/disk8 bs=1024k
Then because I was so not going to get ticked off because it didn't work or was going to have some other problem I bought ipartition this am and moved the media disk to the correct size. Installed the 160 into my appletv and tested it out. Worked just like it was supposed to work.
Then because I had the 320 gig I did the same with it. It's now in my appletv and working great. Didn't have to do a restore and all my data is still there. Best 44.00 investment I ever paid for.
Again. Thanks dynaflash for all your hard work. Again it did motivate me to get this done. I just wanted a backup of my 40 gig so if there was ever a problem I didn't have to junk my apple tv.
Just wanted to let everyone know what worked for me and to say thanks.
Gosh, why hasn't anyone thought of this before?
Do you have a 3.5 sata hooked up? I've got everything hooked up and running just fine with the 3.5 sata, but I'd like to clean it up a little bit so I'm curious what connections everyone is using. Ideally I'd like to be able to close up the AppleTV, with nothing but a ribbon running between the AppleTV and the sata drive. Thoughts/suggestions?
Hard drive stolen
So I have a unusual problem to say the least. I had a friend of mine take my apple tv to install the ATV flash programe. He had the hard drive out of the box in his fancy little case, and it was subsequently stolen along with practically every other piece of gear he had in his apartment, with the exception of my ATV. So i purchased a new hard drive, but I need a disk image of the origional drive in order to be able to proceed, and don't know anyone with an ATV. Any suggestions ?
So I have a unusual problem to say the least. I had a friend of mine take my apple tv to install the ATV flash programe. He had the hard drive out of the box in his fancy little case, and it was subsequently stolen along with practically every other piece of gear he had in his apartment, with the exception of my ATV. So i purchased a new hard drive, but I need a disk image of the origional drive in order to be able to proceed, and don't know anyone with an ATV. Any suggestions ?
eBay for a replacement drive? You can get one pretty cheap with the original software...there is a 40GB version for $25 and various largers for the $100 range. Pretty close to the actual price of the drive, plus saves you a lot of hassle.
Super, glad it worked. I presume you did not need to use the "Large Drive Formatting" option ? That seems to only be needed with some drives > 500 gb.
No need for the Large File Formatting since I swapped both with 320GB drives. Worked like a charm.
Help! 
TV
I upgraded primarily using the Engadget method. My Apple TV works with 1.0. Obviously I want to upgrade to the latest software update. When i download the update and then update, it restarts as it should and gets to the progress bar but then states something about not being able to update and takes me to a screen to either factory restore, reset, or run diagnostics. I've tried doing the factory restore several times and then doing the update, i've tried reset and then doing the update, and the diagnostic says the Apple TV is fine.
What do I need to do to get this software update to apply?
Again, the apple tv works with 1.0 but won't allow me to update.
TVI upgraded primarily using the Engadget method. My Apple TV works with 1.0. Obviously I want to upgrade to the latest software update. When i download the update and then update, it restarts as it should and gets to the progress bar but then states something about not being able to update and takes me to a screen to either factory restore, reset, or run diagnostics. I've tried doing the factory restore several times and then doing the update, i've tried reset and then doing the update, and the diagnostic says the Apple TV is fine.
What do I need to do to get this software update to apply?
Again, the apple tv works with 1.0 but won't allow me to update.
My experience it that the method you use somehow corrupts the update process. What you should do is retrieve the three disk images off of your original ATV an onto your Mac's hard drive ATV Cloner. Then use ATV Cloner to put them onto your new drive. After that your update process should work.