I have way too much stuff to fit on the apple tv as it is currently, and I've spent hours googling this a few times at work, and I see so many different methods that I can't decide which will work, as I don't want to brick my apple tv, and there are so many articles on this. The only thing is most articles are fairly old and are only detailing the installation of much smaller drives. It doesn't seem as though there is much point in doubling or quadrupling the hard drive space, as I have well over a TB in media. So, I want to upgrade to a TB or larger, any help, sites, articles, walkthroughs, etc., specific to larger drives would be most appreciated! Thank so much in advance for any advice/help. I just joined today, FYI I'm running 4.0 beta on my iPhone. Pretty buggy, but man is this gonna rock when its finished and all the 3rd party apps get updated. Thanks, sincerely, dj G

I assume you know the ATV uses a PATA drive and that the largest 2.5" PATA drive available is 320GB WD - which leaves you around 240GB for the media

for larger sizes so your choices are:

- try to fit a 2.5" SATA drive plus a IDE-SATA converter internally
- converter with a external SATA drive
- extend the IDE cable to an external drive
- enable the USB port and attach an external USB drive

I've done the last option and its the easiest and cleanest solution IMHO

I've added a 1.5TB drive for just aroud $100

Originally Posted by ral67

I assume you know the ATV uses a PATA drive and that the largest 2.5" PATA drive available is 320GB WD - which leaves you around 240GB for the media

for larger sizes so your choices are:

- try to fit a 2.5" SATA drive plus a IDE-SATA converter internally
- converter with a external SATA drive
- extend the IDE cable to an external drive
- enable the USB port and attach an external USB drive

I've done the last option and its the easiest and cleanest solution IMHO

I've added a 1.5TB drive for just aroud $100

I have definitely been thinking about that option more and more, but I don't want any of this new 3rd party software (boxee, etc.). I simply want to have the same interface and everything, but with more storage, whether that's accomplished internally or externally. Is the external method capable of working like that? Can you set it up where it looks exactly the same, just with the added space since its using the external for storage? Sorry, its late (I work an overnight shift at a radio station), and I'm sort of rambling. But. All the people doing paid upgrades on the internet are charging ridiculous sums for the space they're offering (at various price points). Since I won't settle for doing anything unless its at least a 1 TB upgrade, they aren't much of an option anyways. The other alternative of doing it myself and performing surgery on the Apple TV is frightening (mostly of possibly bricking my $200+ toy). So, I like your suggestion, but can it work in a largely factory-looking way, without all the extras and 3rd party stuff (all my library is already iTunes compatible and quite large so I don't need vob or any other weird file players to make my library work.)??? This ends my stream of thought.

well, you got two choices

if you want to go with totally unmodified software you have to go the hardware route, which would require quite some hw mods like putting in a hole for the cable

I would go with with the USB attached drive
you do need a Patchstick and nitoTV to enable USB support
but after that you can hide it

if you mount the external drive on the location of the media partition you should be able to use it for iTunes content

some Unix/MacOS skills required though

I hope you realize that with stock ATV software you need to sync all content - so you would have to have the same space on your iTune computer

as an alternative you can also hack the ATV and just AFP/NFS/SMB mount your media files

I would suggest to get a small ATV and at least try the addons like XBMC or Saphire - maybe you like it

Use nitoTV to enable external USB disk support as outlined by the previous poster.

Then follow these steps to move the iTunes media to the external USB drive.
Enable USB Storage on 1.x - AwkwardTV

Make sure you have your mac and ATV connected on the fastest possible network you have (preferably gigabit ethernet) and sync your content to the external drive.

Reports from others like you will struggle with drives bigger than 2TB (mostly these are RAID drives as few single disks are that big)

The message you have entered is too short. Pleas

Originally Posted by JoeBean

It's very simple to buy this and this (anything longer is hard to jam in the case) and this, which is the only 1TB 2.5" drive available. The drive goes reversed. Everything fits inside then, NO OTHER CUTTING/MODDING NECESSARY! The drive is as thick as you could possibly fit what with it being basically 2 500gb's stacked, but it definitely works. I've done it many times, all successfully.

Of course you need to 'clone' the drive for this to work. And yes, you can have this appear stock (other than the larger drive size).

FWIW, awkwardtv has some notes on extra commands (prepping the media partition) needing to be issued along with 2 factory restores (actually, I usually find it takes 3) on larger WD's et al. Follow those directions or it won't boot, or will have odd issues.

You can't get larger than 1TB without going to 3.5" drives, which necessitate externals.

Hey JoeBean-
Do you have a pic of how you crammed all the parts inside your APTV.
I have purchased all of the recommended parts and i have done the formatting.
I am not sure how to get all of the parts to fit?
Thanks for the help.
Tour Tec

Flip the drive backwards, re-route the IDE cable, and it'll go in. I don't know what else to say - if you can't figure it out from that you probably shouldn't be doing it.

I've followed this guide:
Hardmac.com : Le "Macbidouille" in English - EXclusive: 500 GB SATA HD in an Apple TV
With this this hardware:
converter
44 Pin IDE to SATA Motherboard Converter 7 + 15 Pin A30 - eBay (item 200473792116 end time Jun-16-10 23:08:41 PDT)
and this drive
Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10TPVT 1TB 5200 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Works OK and in hindsight I would have taken another route.

@joebean
Just wondering what length sata cable you used since there are a few different ones on that page.