Apple TV 1 - access hard drive

[mcawinkels]

Dear all,

I just dug an old Apple TV 1 out of the closet, hoping to restore some of the pictures we have lost. The old Apple TV 1 has an internal hard drive with family pictures on it and I am hoping to get access to those.

The thing is however that I lost the remote control of the Apple TV 1 and if I just turn it on, put in an HDMI cable it doesn't give any signal to my TV. At this point I am kind of desperate about getting access to the data on that hard drive. It should still be there.

I am hoping someone is capable of helping me out.

The serial number of the Apple TV 1 is: YM0104XGYSW

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Kind regards,

Michel

 

[Mac... nificent]

What, exactly, do you see when you plug it in?

 

[AndrewHolowaty]

Dear all,

I just dug an old Apple TV 1 out of the closet, hoping to restore some of the pictures we have lost. The old Apple TV 1 has an internal hard drive with family pictures on it and I am hoping to get access to those.

The thing is however that I lost the remote control of the Apple TV 1 and if I just turn it on, put in an HDMI cable it doesn't give any signal to my TV. At this point I am kind of desperate about getting access to the data on that hard drive. It should still be there.

I am hoping someone is capable of helping me out.

The serial number of the Apple TV 1 is: YM0104XGYSW

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Kind regards,

Michel

If you have an external Hard Drive connector you could pull the drive out of the Apple TV and connect it to your computer for recovery. If not, take it to the Apple Store.

 

[Mac... nificent]

As a last resort you could remove the hard drive and access the data that way. The bottom pad comes off and there are four T8 Torx screws beneath.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I third the "remove the hard drive" suggestion. There's the chance that if you get the TV1 working "as is", it might try to sync with your Mac and what is apparently lost photos on your Mac will become lost photos on your TV1 too. So if you remove the hard drive, you'll avoid any such scenario as you'll control what files can go onto and/or come off of the internal drive.

One thing though (and I don't remember this for sure), but I think I recall that the photos synced to that TV are downscaled for display on a HD screen instead of synced at their full size. If they will be your only copies of some particular photos, I hope I'm remembering wrong; else, hopefully they will be good enough downscaled to HDTV resolution and dpi (if that weak memory is right).

 

[Arran]

it might try to sync with your Mac and what is apparently lost photos on your Mac will become lost photos on your TV1 too.

That's a really good point. Be careful OP. Don't let it sync with the Mac.

FWIW, I have an old ATV 40 GB drive handy. I just plugged it into a 2.5" IDE to USB adapter and I was able to browse the disk (It actually mounts as two partitions on my Mac: OS and media)

 

[RHVC59]

Dear all,

I just dug an old Apple TV 1 out of the closet, hoping to restore some of the pictures we have lost. The old Apple TV 1 has an internal hard drive with family pictures on it and I am hoping to get access to those.

The thing is however that I lost the remote control of the Apple TV 1 and if I just turn it on, put in an HDMI cable it doesn't give any signal to my TV. At this point I am kind of desperate about getting access to the data on that hard drive. It should still be there.

I am hoping someone is capable of helping me out.

The serial number of the Apple TV 1 is: YM0104XGYSW

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Kind regards,

Michel

I seem to recall that there is a Apple Remote for the Iphone and IPad in the App Store that would control the appleTV.