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Update: Thanks to reader Epon, we now have a way to do this without requiring iPartition. So you can now do the upgrade for only the price of your new harddrive.
Here it is, a step by step tutorial on upgrading your Apple TV harddrive. With thanks to Jonathan Bare, the brave soul who worked this out!
It should be noted that this process will almost certainly void your Apple TV’s warranty and you are attempting this upgrade at your own risk.
You can do this via the terminal, or by using some applications (which add $100 to the cost of the process).
What you need:
Hex-bit screwdriver
2.5″ hard drive (we used a Western Digital 120 GB WD1200VE drive)
Wiebetech Forensic DriveDock (optional, but recommended) or any 2.5″ to Firewire bridge
Subrosasoft’s CopyCatX ($49), or be comfy with the terminal
Coriolis’s iPartition ($45), or use the Apple Factory Restore
This process was done on an Intel Mac Pro. Connecting the Apple TV drive to a Power PC Mac might damage the GUID partition, especially for anyone who hasn’t upgraded to Mac OS X 10.4.6 or newer.
You’ve already seen the Apple TV dissected, so we won’t get in to the details of removing the bottom cover and the hard drive. Just note that you need to peel back the rubber covering the bottom of the Apple TV to get to the four screws holding the hard drive to the cover (see
for details).
Once you have the hard drive out, connect it to your handy WiebeTech Forensic DriveDock or other Firewire bridge. We used the Forensic DriveDock to prevent any writing to the original drive, but the Forensic DriveDock is an expensive accessory to just have lying around. Any 2.4″ to Firewire bridge will work just as well.
Two volumes will mount, OSBoot and Media. Looking deeper in to the partition structure with diskutil, you can see the addition critical partitions on the drive:
/dev/disk5
&& #:&&&&type name&&&&&&&&&&size&&&&&&identifier
&& 0:&&&&GUID_partition_scheme&&&&&&*37.3 GB&&&&disk5
&& 1:&&&&EFI&&&&&&&&&&&&&&34.0 MB&&&&disk5s1
&& 2:&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&400.0 MB&&&&disk5s2
&& 3:&&&&Apple_HFS OSBoot&&&&&&&&900.0 MB&&&&disk5s3
&& 4:&&&&Apple_HFS Media&&&&&&&&36.0 GB&&&&disk5s4
Step 2 – Using the Terminal
Note: If you have already installed some extras on your Apple TV harddrive, doing a ‘factory restore’ will remove these. If you don’t want that, then after copying the contents of the drive over via the terminal, use the iPartition method below rather than ‘factory restore’ to free up the additional space on the drive.
To begin, we need to make an image of the original harddrive. This can be done using dd to make an image file (ensuring you reference the correct disk, here it is ‘disk5’):
dd if=/dev/disk5 of=/Users/tom/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img bs=1024k
Next we must use this image to recreate the contents on the new drive. Disconnect the original drive, and connect your new drive to. Then use this command to restore the contents of the image to the drive (again ensure you use the correct drive number):
dd if=/Users/tom/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img of=/dev/disk5 bs=1024k
Finally, connect this drive back to the Apple TV, and do a ‘factory restore’; this will free up all the additional space on the new drive.
Step 2 – Using Applications
Using CopyCatX, you must duplicate the drive to a disk image.
The 400 MB unlabelled partition is used if you do a factory restore, the OS is restored from this partition.
Next we connected the new Western Digital drive to a regular WiebeTech ComboDock and used CopyCatX to duplicate the disk image to the drive. Creating the disk image first meant that we no longer needed to keep the original drive connected and we could repeat the restore process to the new drive when we inevitably screwed it up.
Once the the disk image was restored, we had the exact same partition map as the original drive, except now there was 70+ GB of unused, unpartitioned free space on the drive. At this point, you should test the new drive by connecting it to the Apple TV. It should boot normally and show the old capacity of around 40 GB.
Disconnecting and going back to your Mac, with the help of iPartition, you must increase the block size of the Media partition to use the full space of the drive. The key here is not destroying the existing EFI or 400 MB unlabeled partitions. So far we have been unable to resize this volume with any utility, including diskutil and Subrosasoft’s VolumeWorks without breaking other partitions.
Now reconnect the drive to the Apple TV and plug in the power.
The resulting capacity should be 107 GB (or more/less depending on your replacement drive), as seen here:
Note: It seems the built in Fujitsu drive was probably chosen for it’s low power consumption, and its probably lower heat output. Keep this in mind when selecting a replacement drive.
That’s it you are done, and you should now be able to fit that many more episodes of ‘Lost’ on to your Apple TV! Good luck!
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Most PopularGroupon Review: Worst Marketing For Your Local Business- Case Study
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Attract, Close & Delight Your Customers
Groupon Review: Worst Marketing For Your Local Business- Case Study
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[This is an excerpt from my ebook, ]
Just because millions of merchants have fallen under the spell of Groupon, a PR juggernaut, and their like, it doesn't mean you should. It's a killer alright, a profit-killer.
And while I'll give you my opinions afterwards, here is an actual Groupon merchant story not glowing with anything but red ink.
Meet Kim, Owner of a parent teacher store. I met Kim at a conference and she joined my
page awhile ago. Here is her Groupon story:
The Background "First off, let me say that 2009 was a bad year for me. It was my first full year in business after buying the store in 2008 from an owner who had it for 28 years and was letting the store go out of business.
So, in 2010 I was in transition, making changes to cut out all the loss I had in 2009. An employee came to me and said we should talk to Groupon. I liked using it as a customer but I put it off for months.
Finally I decided to make the call. It seemed like a good deal, I had to do virtually nothing and they would send me a check, plus I would get my name out to tons of people. I agreed to do it. My offer? $40 worth of merch for $20. We thought maybe, if we were lucky, we'd sell 150.
One thing I didn't think about was timing- July and August are my busiest times of year. Plus it is the time of year I need the most cash flow since all the bills are due Sept 1.
Our Groupon hit on July 21st. I woke up at 7am and the deal had already tipped at over 50, making it active. 20 minutes later there were over 100 sold.
I started to panic...
Help! I tried to call Groupon in Chicago and of course they weren't open yet. People were buying 5, one for them, and then 1 for each of their 4 kids. The fine print was ALL WRONG. It should have been 1 per person, per household and that they could buy 1 for a gift.
Plus all the people I saw first on the list that were buying were current customers!
By the time I talked to Groupon almost 400 were sold under the wrong terms and they said I HAD to honor them.
Luckily they agreed to change the fine print, but still made it that you could buy 2 as gifts. At this time I asked them to cut it off at 500 and they wouldn't.
By the end of the promotion we sold 1158, the most "successful" retail Groupon in the reta the first independent retail store to sell over 1000. Yay me :(
That's $46,320 of merch at retail or roughly $23,160 at cost...of that I get around $10,000 because of course I only get 50% of the deal minus credit card fees (ugh!) Groupon gets their 50%.
Groupon told us to strictly enforce the 1 per household rule, unless they were one of the first 400 to buy.
A lot of people have been very kind and gracious. We are very grateful for our current and new customers that purchased more than $40 and will shop with us in the future.
Redemption Redemption is a nightmare! We have a huge binder filled with over 1000 names and so many people bought multiples. They get so nasty when you ask for ID and when we tried to enforce the 1 per household/person rule they made a scene...so we ended up taking it anyway.
Groupon said they will refund anyone who bought multiples and tries to use more than one, but I think they just hand it to a friend and have them buy the merch anyway. Many only spend $40 to the penny and we can tell they will never be back.
I ran my numbers for July and August so far and was happy to see we were up, until I saw it was the exact amount spent on Groupons redeemed so far.
There's more... Groupon doesn't send you the money they send it to you in 3 installments over the life of your Groupon.
And even more bad news... They don't expire until January...about 700 more are still out there! Yikes!!"
The Retail Doctor's Take & The Real Costs We are so fortunate that Kim would allow us to share her cautionary tale to all of you ready to join the Groupon bandwagon. I mean with all the press this site has gotten, it would be easy to look past the real costs of these promotions.
But that's usually what you find like this quote in the NYT article from April 13,2011 , "Our life changed after Groupon — we would do it again,” said Michele Casadei Massari, 35, an owner of two Piccolo Cafes in Manhattan. Groupon sells its online coupons for half their food value and then Groupon takes an additional 50 percent of the discount sales. On March 1, in a timed deal, Piccolo Cafe sold 1,142 coupons for $14 worth of food in 24 hours.“You don’t make money on the deal,” Mr. Massari acknowledged, “but in the end we are even.”
Reality Check As I cover in my book,
(Wiley), the average American business makes about three cents on the dollar in profit. Yes, that is a really good business in average times.
In Mr. Massari's example Groupon collected $7994 for what normally would have been $15,998. That means after clearing the cc fees, he gets about $3677. If food costs are the standard 30% in a restaurant that would make it $4799 or a real loss of about a dollar a customer - that's just in food costs. Far from being even.
Kim will gift her customers $46,320 worth of merchandise. Groupon will receive about $11,530 Kim will receive net around $10,000
She has to come up with $11,530 to pay the bill on the first class merchandise that is leaving her store. For her to make that back, she would have to sell nearly $400,000.
As a business model for Groupon, it is a great way to get 50% of the revenue off a website while providing none of the fulfillment.
For her store's employees, it is bound to make them uncomfortable when they find "one of those people." Especially if they are now battle-scarred from the first 400 customers. (Remember less than 1/2 of those issued have been redeemed).
Is that how you want your employees to feel? I don't think so. I doubt Kim gave it any thought in the beginning either. I doubt anyone else considers that while reading about the "crush of customers" businesses receive.
This promotion also stole sales from regular customers who would have bought more later in the year impacting her bottom line during the crucial bill-paying month of September.
And can you blame them? $20 for $40 worth of merchandise? Why not buy 5 and plan your holiday shopping? As we've seen Groupons can be great if you are the buyer but terrible if you are the business.
Yeah Buts Those of you saying, "What about the incremental sales?" She has reported ZIP. Coupons clippers are notoriously thrifty. They chase the "deal of the day" not you.
Those of you saying, "What about all that great exposure to those millions of people? Isn't that worth something?"
For the amount of money Kim is losing, she could have gifted 600 customers walking through her doors with a $20 and received probably as great a word-of-mouth.
You don't need millions to make you money, you need your local trading area of 5-10 miles, people that will drive past a competitor because you are such a great business.
Those of you saying, "Yeah but if she'd created the offer better it wouldn't have been so bad." I'll give you it could have been tightened up but the main point is who you are attracting are not lifetime premium customers but discount lifestyle customers. Those people could just as easily been attracted by a 50% off sale without having given an additional 50% of Kim's needed money to Groupon.
Those of you saying, "How about all those raves from other businesses?" Look deeper, it is rare for anyone to mention hard numbers of the costs of the promos.
GAP is freely mining the discount bin. Those of you touting that even the GAP recently used Groupon should bear this from venerable blogger , "... with sales of around 300,000 Groupons, Gap lost $7.5 million in revenue on the pay $25-get-$50 coupon deal." Since then they updated the post to 441,000 Groupons sold for more than $11 million.
GAP made headlines earlier this week too when it announced a 25% discount for Foursquare users who checked in at one of its retail locations in the U.S. or Canada.
I'm sure they will move a lot of product but are they cannibalizing their target market, acquiring unprofitable customers and training them to look for the deal? I think so.
[Update April 13, 2011] -
in part because, “We think Gap overall has ramped up its promotional cadence in recent months to move merchandise and if this is sustained, places risk to consensus EPS estimates."
Is that who you want to model your business after?
Final thought Just because you see lemmings, doesn't mean its a good idea to follow them off the cliff.
You've been warned...
[Update April 26, 2011- This blog started a quest to help businesses of all sorts find out what the perils were to using these online discount sites. That's why I created a new e-book .]
This is an 11-part series on Groupons and their ilk, discounting and couponing in general and why they are all so damaging to your business. That's whether you are a large brand like GAP or a regional chain or local independent retailer. Here are the balance of the posts in case you missed them:
[Update 11-4-11 Checkout my new post ? ]
Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor(R), has helped hundreds of businesses in every major industry, including hospitality, manufacturing, service, restaurant and retail. He is a nationally recognized expert on, customer service, sales, and marketing. With over thirty years experience beginning in the trenches of retail and extending to senior management positions, he has been a corporate officer, franchisor and entrepreneur.
Learn how to improve your retail sales with Bob Phibbs the expert .
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