For my appletv to be a success in the home (i.e. to be used by my wife and daughter) it really needs to be really simple. They are used to watching movies under the normal Movies menu of the Apple TV menu and as hard as I try to encourage them to use Boxee it’s just a step too far away.
So I was eager to try and use my external Hard drive to store all movies and make it the Primary Storage so that I can sync with iTunes normally and all of the movies show up under the normal Movies menu heading.
I’ve read and digested the link on aTV describing how to enable the USB Primary Storage and in principle understand it. I’ve also read and understood everythign about the SSH so feel well prepared.
I should add that I’m a Windows user and the Hard Drive is a 1TB Toshiba drive that is connected successfully to the Apple TV as additional storage used in Boxee as already mentioned.
I have two fundamental questions though…
will enabling this hard drive do as expected and let me see all my Movies under My Movies Apple TV menu?
In the “USB Primary Storage” instruction it stipulates that I need a USB Hard drive , Format Mac OS Extended (Journaled). After a bit of googling I understand this can be done usign Disk utility using a Mac but being a Windows user I’m a bit stuck. How can I format the USB drive for it to work as Primary Storage if I’ve only got Windows?
Any additional points of advice would be greatly appreciated.
will enabling this hard drive do as expected and let me see all my Movies under My Movies Apple TV menu?
Yes, following the wiki instructions should be a smooth transition using your external USB as primary. I was able to do this successfully using a 1.5 TB external. All my original media (movies, music, pictures, TV shows) was moved.
In the “USB Primary Storage” instruction it stipulates that I need a USB Hard drive , Format Mac OS Extended (Journaled). After a bit of googling I understand this can be done usign Disk utility using a Mac but being a Windows user I’m a bit stuck. How can I format the USB drive for it to work as Primary Storage if I’ve only got Windows?
You have 2 options, either format it to FAT32 or use a Windows utility called MacDrive to format to HSF+. I’m using Vista and personally prefer using Macdrive. The only problem I had after the whole process was FTP’ng my movies to the /Movies folder. When you are copying to your ATV via FTP you would still be in your ATV’s original drive so your would need to SSH and create a shortcut/link inside your /Movies folder that would point to your USB external mounted drive.
This is the only thing the wiki missed mentioning and hope they will add this step so users wont be surprised FTP’ng and getting an error that the device is full eventhough you have more than 1TB free space reported by your ATV :lol:
Thanks for the advice. On the face of it, this seems like a real possibility now. Going to have a try over the next couple of days. Will report back with my findings. God I wish Apple sorted something out and just made it Plug n Play easy. I’d gladly pay for the extra hardware or whatever it is that’s needed just make it simple and robust (tall order huh?).