External USB HDD: is there a limit?

Legacy 1st gen Apple TV
1

I just upgraded my ATV with a 300GB external USB HDD and using it as my primary drive. Now I’m considering upgrading my second ATV the same way. I just want to confirm if there is a limit on what drive size I can get. Im using Vista and format the drive with MacDrive 7 utility app. So i would like to know if either the ATV or MacDrive 7 have any maximum limitation on the size of HDD.

thanks

2

To my knowledge the Mac OS and the HFS+ format can go up to like 16TB or something crazy like that. So buying any external drive should work for you. :smiley:

3

I have been trying to upload movie files to my ATV using FTP but Im getting an error saying that the device does not have enough space:

ERROR:> [8/13/2009 7:40:29 PM] Can’t write to data socket. Socket error = #10054.
[8/13/2009 7:40:29 PM] 450-Error during write to file: No space left on device
450 VIDEO_TS.VOB partially uploaded

I verified my ATV and it has 276.44 GB space available. So I deleted 2 movies from my ATV from the /Movies folder and now I am able to upload again. Whats weird is once the “LIMIT” is reached I can successfully sync via iTunes additional files but not via FTP.

My ATV’s original drive is 40GB and upgraded using a 300GB USB external drive. It does seem that the 300GB is being used as the main drive since its recognizing the free space I have. For some reason I can only FTP or hold 4-5 DVD movies in it and if I try to upload more I get an error that i dont have enough space.

This is what I am getting when I did a DF (free disk space):

Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s3 1843192 1301984 522784 71% /
devfs 195 195 0 100% /dev
fdesc 2 2 0 100% /dev
1024 1024 0 100% /.vol
/dev/disk0s4 75146000 74325272 820728 99% /mnt
/dev/disk1s2 586098688 32259848 553838840 6% /mnt/Scratch/Volumes/mydrive

4

I figured this one out. I really wish ATV Flash would have more complete documentation in there wiki. Following the wiki instructions on making your external USB drive as the primary will get you limited FTP to your original drive. You would need to SSH and link the new drive to your /Movies folder.