Upgrade Apple Tv Hard Drive to 2TB

[Andy Good]

Upgrade Apple Tv Hard Drive to 2TB

I have just purchased a new apple Tv 160GB and on my first download i filled the hard drive so was wondering if I could use a “WD My Book World Edition II 2TB Hard Drive” (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=587) as remote external Hard drive to stream video to the Apple TV

My Setup
2Ghz, 13” Aluminium Macbook, 4GB Ram, 500GB HD, running Snow Leopard
Network
500GB Time Capsule 802.11n
Airport extreme linked to my hi-fi in a different room 802.11n
Apple Tv 160GB 802.11n
Iphone 3Gs.

So what I was hoping to do is connect the “WD My Book World Edition II 2TB Hard Drive” to my Time Capsule via Ethernet Port and use the integrated iTunes server support within the WD external hard dive to link with my apple TV. This way I could download all my movies onto the “WD My Book World Edition II 2TB external Hard Drive” and just stream them off the external. (Can link my Apple TV with Ethernet cable if needed)

Questions.

Would this work?
Would I have to have my laptop turned on? Or could the Apple Tv access the data saved on the external hard drive.

NB:

I do not want to hack the Apple TV or open it to install a new internal hard drive..

Hope someone can help…

Andy

 

[JonHimself]

I'm not the best resource for this so don't take what I'm saying as the absolute truth.

You will have to have your laptop ON with itunes open to stream content stored on your WD connected to the Time Capsule. The iTunes server option only really works for streaming audio to other iTunes' clients (or something like an xbox) but to stream content to the Apple TV you need to have iTunes running on your computer.

Depending on where your iTunes library is stored, there are a couple of options. You could move the entire library to the WD hard drive but then if you need to sync your iTunes while away from your home network you would be unable to.

One option would be to leave the iTunes library on your laptop, copy the video files to the WD hard drive and then add "links" to them in iTunes. I'm not sure what they're technically called, but if you hold down the option key and drag the video file into iTunes it will show up in the library but the file will remain stored on the WD (ie it will NOT copy into your iTunes library). The problem is that I'm not sure if that content would then be read by the Apple TV so it might not work. If it did, you could keep your music on the laptop, store the video files on the WD and have them linked to your iTunes library. Then as long as the drive was wirelessly mounted on your computer I think it would work.

Anything I've learned has been from spending way too many hours on these forums so I'm just talking off the top of my head. I'd really have to look for the specific answer to be sure.