How to upgrade external storage w/o reformatting

Apologies if this topic has been addressed elsewhere, but I’m trying to avoid what I went through going from Apple TV 2.4 to Apple TV 3.0. ATV Flash 4.0 insisted on reformatting my external USB drive when I turned on external storage, which meant that I had to resync about 100GB of data. What is the proper procedure so that I can simply plug that external drive back in and have it run when I update to Apple TV 3.0.1 and whatever version of ATV Flash supports that minor bug fix?

All help is much appreciated.

According to the info at the link below, you will not need to resync…
http://wiki.atvflash.com/index.php?title=USB_Storage#Reversing_the_process

Hi there, so did u finally manage to switch to primary external drive w/out having to reformat the drive ?

Many tnks beforehands.

And what about if the external drive was used as primary drive under previous ATV version, say 2 or 2.4 ?

The media will be retained on the external drive. When you go to setup the drive as primary under 3.0.1, the format and copy steps will be skipped.

Tnks guardianmax, so media will be retained. Even if the system says “the external drive will be reformatted…” I just proceed ? I’d like to be absolutely sure as have no space elsewhere to save the media, and wd be painful to loose the entire content. Brgds.

No, if it alerts you that the drive will be formatted, IT WILL BE FORMATTED!

Was the drive previously setup with the automated option in the Maintenance > Settings menu, or was it done manually?

If your drive has previously been used with an Apple TV before the process is fairly simple WITHOUT the need for a reformat.

You can use a USB stick to perform the reformat function. The USB stick will be wiped. You can then use disk utility with your main drive connected to your mac to change your drive to the identical name as the USB stick.

Turn off the Apple TV and put the main drive in. All should work as normal with your old files and iTunes sync settings.

If your drive has not been used with an Apple TV before you should copy the files from the USB stick to the main drive and move your media to the appropriate locations for your direct access applications such as Boxee & The Files Menu, do not do this for iTunes synced content.