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?
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.
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.