Upgrading Apple TV's hard drive Page 1 of 3

Boosting your Apple TV’s capacity, step-by-step

Likely the most common complaint I’ve heard about the Apple TV in its thus-far-short life is that the included hard drive is too small. With movies from the iTunes Store weighing in at around 1.5GB, and hour-long TV shows around 500MB, the Apple TV’s 40GB hard drive—which gives you only 33GB or so of actual storage space—fills up quickly, especially if you also want to store music and photos on it.

As it turns out, and as I mentioned earlier this week in my Hacking Apple TV article, upgrading the Apple TV’s hard drive isn’t all that difficult—several Web sites had written about the procedure within days of the first units rolling off the assembly lines. The process likely voids your warranty , and requires some hardware disassembly and a few trips through Terminal, but unlike, say, dismantling a MacBook Pro, upgrading the Apple TV’s drive is a reasonable task for most people. (If you aren’t the adventurous type, two companies have already announced for-fee drive-swapping services.)

I had hoped to perform this storage surgery as soon as I received my Apple TV, but when I first opened it up, I discovered that the drive inside wasn’t a 2.5-inch SATA drive, like those used in all recent Apple laptops (and of which I had several sitting around), but rather an ATA drive—making this the only Apple product, other than the 5th-generation iPod, still using ATA. So I had to get a new drive. I ended up ordering a Hitachi Travelstar 5K160, a 160GB drive (5,400-rpm, 8MB cache, as compared to the stock drive’s 4200rpm, 2MB cache) that’s advertised as low-power and cool-running (the latter being a desirable feature given that the Apple TV can get hot while in use). The price was a reasonable $110.

The following how-to assumes your Mac is running Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), as some of the Terminal tools used aren’t present in earlier versions of Mac OS X.

The takeapart

As I noted in my earlier article, Apple hasn’t made it difficult to get inside the unit. The biggest obstacle—and it’s more a psychological one than a physical one—is that the large rubber “foot” that covers the entire bottom of the Apple TV is attached via adhesive; once you remove it, it does’t re-adhere very well, so it will be obvious that you’ve tinkered with your new toy (hence my warning about voiding your warranty, above). Functionally, though, this isn’t much of an issue; when you’re done with the upgrade, the Apple TV rests perfectly on top of the rubber foot, even if it’s not permanently attached. (And if you’re careful, you’ll peel it back only about halfway during the process.)

To perform hard-drive surgery on the Apple TV requires removing eight screws on the bottom of the unit; you’ll need a couple Torx-style screwdrivers to do so. The first four are at the four corners of the base; you simply peel each corner back slightly and then remove each screw with a Torx 10 screwdriver (you can also use the more-common Torx 8 size, necessary for removing the hard drive, in a pinch). This detaches the bottom of the Apple TV from the rest of the unit; if all you want to do is peek inside, you can now lift up the bottom to look. (Two tips: First, put a towel or similarly-soft layer under your Apple TV to avoid damaging the unit’s easily-scratchable top surface. Second, keep track of which screw goes where, since the two closest to the front of the Apple TV are longer than the two near the back.)

To release the hard drive—it’s connected to the base—you’ve got four more screws to remove and, unfortunately, they’re not in the corners—which means peeling back more of the adhesive foot. However, the drive is located flush against the front edge of the Apple TV, so you don’t need to remove the entire foot; just peel it back three inches or so until you see all four hard-drive screws. A Torx 8 screwdriver will let you remove these.

Lift up the bottom of the Apple TV and you’ll find that the hard drive, despite being unscrewed, is still “attached.” That’s because there’s an adhesive pad keeping it in place; a gentle tug should release it.

You’ll also need to remove a small adhesive pad from the front of the drive. Both are reusable, so you can put them on your new drive when you’re ready to install it. Unplug the ATA connector cable from the drive and you’re ready for the next stage.