The Apple TV has finally been hacked to use a USB mass storage device, eliminating the need to open it up to install a bigger hard drive.
The hack is pretty straightforward. You’ll need one external USB drive, an Intel Mac or Intel-based Linux/Unix system and also SSH enabled on your Apple TV, so you can “dial in” over the network. After that, you need to install the patch, but that only involves typing one line in the Terminal, the Mac’s Unix command line application.After that, wait for the Apple TV to restart and you’re good to go. Plug in the USB drive and it will now be used as the main storage for music and movies.
Instructions
The patch was written for and, therefore, tested on Apple TV software version 1.0. The patch does not work on 1.1. However, it is possible to reverse Apple TV version 1.1 back to 1.0. You can perform a Factory Restore by holding down Menu and - (minus) for about 6 seconds and wait for the recovery screen to come up. That will get you back to 1.0. You will lose your data by doing this.
What you need:
- An ssh-enabled Apple TV. If you don’t have that enabled yet, you can refer to this post to get it enabled. For instructions on how to enable ssh without opening the case, refer to this wiki page.
- An Intel-Mac or Intel-based *nix. This is needed to run the script to patch the kernel on the Apple TV remotely. It maybe possible to run the install script under Windows using cygwin. However, we have not tried this.
- An installed version of Mac OS X 10.4 Intel. Or a full copy of the contents of the “/System/Library/Extensions” folder from one.
- An original, unmodified copy of the ‘mach_kernel.prelink’ file from the Apple TV. If the kernel on your Apple TV has not been modified yet, you can just tell the script to get it from there.
- An external USB drive formatted using “Journaled HFS+”. This is the format the Apple TV expects.
The Procedure
- Once you have all of the above, extract the zip file and READ THE README file. In it, you’ll find the instructions on how to run the script and what to do get the USB drive to work.
- IMPORTANT: Please please please please back up the content of your Apple TV first before running the patch script. If there is one important step in performing the patch, it is BACKING UP your Apple TV.
- Once you have your Apple TV backed up, run the script “install-atvrhd.sh” and follow the instructions. This process should take you less than 5 minutes. Once the kernel on your Apple TV is patched, the device will reboot.
Using it
- Turn on the Apple TV without the USB drive inserted.
- Wait for the intro sequence (flying TV screens, etc.) and insert the USB drive then.
- Once inserted, the content of the internal hard drive will be copied to the external hard drive. This process can take a very long time. To remedy this, we recommend that you erase the content of your internal hard drive first so that there is no need to copy the content.
- The Apple TV will restart automatically after the content is copied.
- At this point, your Apple TV will use the external drive as its primary storage.
Uninstall
Under Unix or Intel Mac, use “uninstall-atvrhd.sh” to uninstall the patch. It should undo the changes - however, if you get really stuck, use the “Factory Restore” feature on your Apple TV.
Download the Apple TV USB hack.
