Apple TV Hard Drive Upgrade

[Turns out that I could have saved myself a lot of work by following these [1] instructions]

I recently upgraded the 40 GB hard drive in my AppleTV to a 250 GB model using instructions from AppleTVHacks[2].

Of use was Apple's tech note TN2166 [3], "Secrets of the GPT". The GPT [4] is a GUID partition table standard that Intel created to support their EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface).

Having only a PowerPC computer, I was forced to use the DD method above. It worked fine, except that the computer thought that the Media partition was still 32 GB with no free space. I couldn't fix it with Disk Utility, iPartition, or command line tools.

A few hours of research later, and it's working. HTH:

Original 40 GB Apple TV hard drive GUID partition map (after using dd to copy to 250 GB hdd):

	~: gpt -v -v -v -v -v show -l /dev/disk2

	gpt show: /dev/disk2: mediasize=250059350016; sectorsize=512; blocks=488397168
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: PMBR at sector 0
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: Pri GPT at sector 1
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=69632
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: GPT partition: type=5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=69672, size=819152
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=888824, size=1843192
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=2732016, size=40642608
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: Sec GPT at sector 488397167
	      start       size  index  contents
	          0          1         PMBR
	          1          1         Pri GPT header
	          2         32         Pri GPT table
	         40      69632      1  GPT part - "EFI"
	      69672     819152      2  GPT part - "Recovery"
	     888824    1843192      3  GPT part - "OSBoot"
	    2732016   40642608      4  GPT part - "Media"
	   43374624  445022511         
	  488397135         32         Sec GPT table
	  488397167          1         Sec GPT header

I tried deleting and re-adding the "Media" partition, but I kept running into errors.

I fixed this by partitioning the drive in Disk Utility with 1 partition (Free Space) and GUID as the partition type.

At this point, the partition map looked like this:

	~: gpt -v -v -v -v -v show -l /dev/disk2

	gpt show: /dev/disk2: mediasize=250059350016; sectorsize=512; blocks=488397168
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: PMBR at sector 0
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: Pri GPT at sector 1
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=409600
	gpt show: /dev/disk2: Sec GPT at sector 488397167
	      start       size  index  contents
	          0          1         PMBR
	          1          1         Pri GPT header
	          2         32         Pri GPT table
	         34          6         
	         40     409600      1  GPT part - "EFI System Partition"
	     409640  487987495         
	  488397135         32         Sec GPT table
	  488397167          1         Sec GPT header

Next, I deleted the "EFI System Partition" since it was the wrong size, and re-created it:

	~: gpt remove -i 1 /dev/disk2

	/dev/disk2s1 removed
	
	~: gpt add -b 2732016 -i 4 -s 485664919 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk2

	/dev/disk2s1 added

Adding labels as I went along:

	~: gpt label -i 1 -l "EFI" /dev/disk2

	/dev/disk2s1 labeled

Add the Recovery partition:

	~: gpt add -b 69672 -i 2 -s 819152 -t 5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk2

	/dev/disk2s2 added

	~:gpt label -i 2 -l "Recovery" /dev/disk2

	/dev/disk2s2 labeled

Add the OSBoot partition:

	~: gpt add -b 888824 -i 3 -s 1843192 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk2

	/dev/disk2s3 added

	~: gpt label -i 3 -l "OSBoot" /dev/disk2

	/dev/disk2s3 labeled

At this point the safest point is to go back to Disk Utility. Go to the partitions tab, click on the (+), and made a new HFS+ (Journaled) partition named "Media"

P.S. All uses of /dev/disk2 above are specific to my system. To get the disk number, use Disk Utility or System Profiler.

P.P.S. gpt won't read or write any data if any volumes from the disk are mounted. I had to go back to the Finder and unmount OSBoot and Media before each step.