Jan27
How to fix an upsized Apple TV stuck in 1.0 software
Some months ago, I swapped some hard drives, and ended up upgrading my Apple TV’s 40GB hard drive. The process was the standard procedure you can find in many sites: back-up the drive, create the correct partition map on the new drive and restore the data into the new drive.
When I upgraded the hard drive, the software version was already 2.x. However, the Apple TV restore partition was still the original 1.0. Here is where the problem started. Whenever new software upgrades were downloaded, they just failed. I’m not sure the upgrades check the hard disk size. Most likely, when restoring into the larger hard drive, some permissions got messed up. A “factory restore” takes the Apple TV back to 1.0 (no YouTube, no Apple Store menus) but once again the upgrades fail.
The process I document here doesn’t require to re-open the Apple TV case. You could go that route, of course, but I think it may even take longer.
You will need:
- External USB drive that can be completely wiped (512MB or more)
- A copy of ATV USB Creator
- A DMG from Apple with the latest firmware. At the time of writing 2Z694-5573-24.dmg. I believe ATV USB Creator tries to download it automatically. However, we’ll need the file for the extra step described here, so you’d be better off by getting the DMG yourself.
