Somebody donated an Apple TV to me, and I know nothing about it. I can tell you that right now the thing boots to a question mark and the LED on the front alternates between amber and white. Looks like a bad hard drive.

So if I have a bad HD in this thing and it's gonna need to be replaced, what do I need to know? Any particular brand or size work/not work in this thing? I assume I'm going to need to download an Apple TV image or something to get it to work again like normal....

...But "normal" isn't why I'm here at this site! If you guys were in my shoes, which direction would you go - keeping in mind that I know nothing about this thing? Here's some of the ideas I've come up with:

1. Find out which sectors on the HD are bad and partition around them
2. Replace the HD with a bigger one and restore it back to factory via a downloaded image
3. Replace the HD with a bigger one and install a modified image

Now, as far as hacking it goes, I generally don't veer too far off the stock path; a lot of people already got paid money to figure out how to make this thing the best that they could (with limitations), and I don't think I'm smart enough to reinvent the wheel so that it rolls smoother. So maybe there are a few tweaks that everybody has found extremely useful?

Thanx in advance!

Go for your option 2, if you are sure the HD is the culprtit.
In any case it is nice to replace the stock 40GB with a more spacious 320GB drive, WD has one (it has to be a 2.5 inch IDE)

You will be able to find ways to put back the correct partitions/data doing a search on how to and where to find....
After you have it up and running you can start modding (using a patchstick), but first get it up and running again.

Ciao,