1st Generation Apple TV Upgrade Help/Suggestion?

[napoleonesq]

I have an older first generation Apple TV with 160gb hard drive that I really like and use in my motor home for trips, but the drive is too small.

I like that I can store my iTune movies or home movies and access them without the need of internet. However the hard drive is too small, and I want to upgrade to something larger, preferably 500GB. There are websites that show you how, but they seem a bit complicated and I am not sure if I can even go as big as 500GB.

Anyone know of any company that does this type of upgrade for a fee? Any alternatives to Apple TV to store iTunes movies?

Any help would be great!

 

[oneMadRssn]

I have an older first generation Apple TV with 160gb hard drive that I really like and use in my motor home for trips, but the drive is too small.

I like that I can store my iTune movies or home movies and access them without the need of internet. However the hard drive is too small, and I want to upgrade to something larger, preferably 500GB. There are websites that show you how, but they seem a bit complicated and I am not sure if I can even go as big as 500GB.

Anyone know of any company that does this type of upgrade for a fee? Any alternatives to Apple TV to store iTunes movies?

Any help would be great!

You need a 2.5-inch IDE/ATA (PATA) hard drive. They are becoming pretty rare, but you can still find one here and there. I believe 250gb or 320gb or thereabouts is the largest regular spinning hard drive of those that you can get.

This is definately the best guide to follow: http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Tips/appletv/appletv.html

I think OWC can perform the upgrade for you as well, though it looks like they might not have any drives available anymore. Still, giving them a call might be a good resource.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Also, if finding a hard drive is too difficult or too expensive, you can try looking into using eith a CF to IDE adapter, or an SD to IDE adapter. I wouldn't surprised if a 256GB SD card today cost less than an IDE hard drive of the same size.

 

[Intell]

A great alternative is a mSATA to PATA adapter. They work very well and are completely silent. Perks those older Apple TV's up. I think the biggest size currently made is 1TB. Head over to the PowerPC section to see what people have been putting into their old Powerbooks and iBooks. That's the adapter you want for your Apple TV.

 

[rmm805]

There are PATA to SATA adapters that exist. I've had a 1st gen Apple TV that I put a 2.5" 2TB HDD into with the adapter. I'm currently using a 256 GB SATA SSD without issues. There is a support bracket inside you'll have to remove to make it fit though.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

There were "jailbreaks" that made it so that one could attach hard drives via the USB port. I think that allowed at least up to 2TB of storage that could be used of sync.

There's also a commercial option called atvflash: https://firecore.com/atvflash This may be simpler than opening up the "1" and messing around with the internal drive. Along with more storage, it also brings a bunch of other features to the "1"

 

[Tech198]

I have an older first generation Apple TV with 160gb hard drive that I really like and use in my motor home for trips, but the drive is too small.

I like that I can store my iTune movies or home movies and access them without the need of internet. However the hard drive is too small, and I want to upgrade to something larger, preferably 500GB. There are websites that show you how, but they seem a bit complicated and I am not sure if I can even go as big as 500GB.

Anyone know of any company that does this type of upgrade for a fee? Any alternatives to Apple TV to store iTunes movies?

Any help would be great!

ya,, don't sell it... you got a good one limit on storage on 1st gen, and usb is only for service only so u can't even plug drive in to expand storage.