OK, I’m planning to upgrade to the new 3.5.3. I have boxee installed, and all of my content (frontrow and boxee) is on an external drive. My question is this: Is there any reasonably easy way to perform the upgrade without having to re-sync the external drive?
About 6 weeks ago I did the upgrade to 3.5.1, notes here:
http://forum.atvflash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1250
Is there any important fix in 3.5.3? What are the improvements? Anyone would recommend to update from 3.5.1? Tkx
I would love to answer you and give you a 100% okay to upgrade, but I am going to have to let aTV Flash answer this. I don’t have your setup so when I upgrade nothing changes for me, Boxee is still there and works, all other settings are there and still work. I just don’t have an external hard drive hooked up at the moment so I’m not sure if that changes after the update. I would have to say it wouldn’t, but I don’t have any proof to say so. 
Going from 3.5.1 to 3.5.3 shouldn’t cause any compatibility issues, and the new version will not affect your synced media.
As a rule, with the USB drive set as primary storage, upgrading aTV Flash versions will not cause any issues. The only time any issues would arise is when the Apple TV system software is updated.
If you have the external USB drive set as primary storage, and want to upgrade the Apple TV system software follow these steps:
- Reverse the USB primary drive process as described here: http://wiki.atvflash.com/index.php?title=USB_Primary_Storage#Reversing_the_process
- Upgrade the Apple TV software
- Install aTV Flash
- Run Smart Installer to enable USB port
- Go through the USB Primary Storage guide steps, BUT SKIP STEP #4. This will allow you to retain the synced media on the external drive.
Upgrade completed successfully. Everything works as it did before! Is there a list of changes that I can check? I did have to reinstall Launcher 3.0 to get the boxee stuff to be at the top of the main menu…
Many thanks! Now, do I need to run Smart Installer again? I tried to install flash last night and it failed… Will re-running smart installer bork my external drive setup?
Re-running the Smart Installer is only required when updating the Apple TV system software. Simply updating your aTV Flash version will not require re-running the Smart Installer.
Can you re-post the instructions for doing the USB drive switch from the command line? My aTVFlash install is borked at this point and I think I need to start fresh.
OK, I found the old command-line instructions:
http://wiki.atvflash.com/index.php?title=USB_Primary_Storage&oldid=4031