Apple TV – the upgrade is coming…
I knew this day would come eventually, I’m a little surprised it lasted this long, but the tiny 40G HD in our Apple TV has to go. Initially it wasn’t a big deal, I could keep nearly everything we wanted on the Apple TV with no swapping of content. Then slowly I started putting more HD tv shows on and then Rosie discovered purchasing movies directly from iTunes and the final straw was Isaac and his Disney movies. We have started just purchasing Isaac movies either directly form iTunes or buying the DVD’s with the digital copies on them. (I’m requiring DVD’s with digital copies) This means that the poor little 40G HD in the Apple TV is maxed out and there isn’t room for my shows on it now.
So I did some quick research on the web. The upgrade process is about what I thought it was and doing the extraction of the disk is actually easier then I remembered. I’ve done HD swap on so many Mac’s now, the disk cloning process is well understood and I have all the various drive shells required. (The Apple TV is still using IDE rather then SATA) So after a quick search on Amazon, I found a 320GB drive replacement for around $80 and ordered it. I’m figuring this is about a two hour job, with most of that being the waiting for the drive cloning to happen. The bonus is that I’ll walk away with a disk image that can be stuck aside to be used when the new drive eventually dies. (Hard disks always die in the end)
The big question is if I should actually buy two HD’s now? I realized when I went through this process with the Tivo that eventually I won’t be able to find a IDE HD to replace the ones that die. It was down right difficult finding a 3.5 IDE drive at Fry’s, I had to eventually mail order it. Will I be able to get a 2.5 IDE drive in three years? Media that spins is no longer cool…..