DynaFlash Tech

AtvCloner 0.1.4 is now available which is compatible with Snow Leopard ( OS X 10.6) . You can find it here .

AtvCloner 0.1.4b is NOT Snow Leopard Compatible. I am currently testing a new version that is compatible with both Leopard and Snow Leopard. I will update here when it is released.

This AtvCloner update addresses the dreaded error:

newfs_hfs: /dev/rdisk2s4: partition size not a multiple of 4K.
accompanied by a failure to properly format the media partition error which is typically seen on drives > 500GB (though may be experienced on smaller drives depending on firmware). You will notice a checkbox next to the “Prepare New Drive” Button for “Large Drive Formatting” ( sue me, I didn’t know what else to call it ). This uses an alternate method of drive formatting which cures my problem child and has worked on a couple other drives with this issue. The caveat is that it creates a media partition approximately 300 mb smaller than the standard AtvCloner method due to diskutil creating 128 mb of free space before and after the media partition. On the other hand it works ( so far ) for those problem drives. I will try to elaborate more later. You can get AtvCloner 0.1.4b here.

Edit: This problem has been solved with AtvCloner 0.1.4b ! Am happily using the problem child and it works perfectly!

Of the six or so drives I have tested and used AtvCloner on, one drive is indeed my problem child. My Western Digital 750GB Studio Edition external triple interface drive has never worked quite right when attached to my atv whether using the old manual command line method or using AtvCloner. Now AtvCloner actually uses the same system utilities that the command line uses so it makes sense that the problem exists with either method. This issue has been experienced by others, I also heard about it in a response to
my eSata AppleTV Mod on the HandBrake forums.

The issue is that the last step of formatting the Media partition in hfs+ and the volume name “Media” fails with this error (note, it shows up manually in terminal with that method as well as in the activity window in AtvCloner) :

newfs_hfs: /dev/rdisk2s4: partition size not a multiple of 4K.

which means that step has failed. This results in a diskutil list like this:

/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *698.6 Gi disk2
1: EFI 34.0 Mi disk2s1
2: Apple_Recovery 400.0 Mi disk2s2
3: Apple_HFS OSBoot 900.0 Mi disk2s3
4: Apple_HFS 697.3 Gi disk2s4

Note that partition index 4 is indeed Apple_HFS but is not correctly named “Media”. The resulting behavior when attached to the Atv is that the drive boots up just fine, works fine and in fact can update its atv software just fine, however a Factory Restore will fail. I have run this drive just fine, but it bugs me that it’s “not quite right” so using a bit of google-fu I found a few items of interest that point to the problem, however nothing as a workaround yet for these problem drives.

Update: A new version of AtvCloner is in testing, it seems to fix this problem as I have successfully restored my problem child and updated it successfully. Its a bit of a kludge but works. More to come …..

Another quick minor update to AtvCloner which adds preferences to scan all disks at launch as well as alert you with a system beep and alert window when it is finished. This update also makes it easier to use as it remembers the last browsed directories instead of always defaulting to the DeskTop. AtvCloner 0.1.3 can be downloaded here.

AtvCloner updated to version 0.1.2.

This minor update just adds “AtvCloner Website” and “AtvCloner User Guide” to the help menu so you can access these resources from within the app. See the change log to review changes.

So, since there have been a few requests trickling in I figured I better put up some kind of a user guide for AtvCloner. It needs some work but should give the basics for anyone that is at all familiar with the old school command line methods for prepping a new drive for use with the AppleTV.

The guide is here but be sure to read the main AtvCloner page if you haven’t and intend to use it since it has a few things about it which are not in the user guide. As well I figured I should post a change log to help keep track of what I changed from rev to rev, even if it’s only for my own benefit.

Note: You can also access any pages via the pages bar at the top of the site.

In an effort to do less and offer more, I have continued on a quest to make WordPress run faster on my server. Hopefully it’s a bit snappier. First I installed WP Super Cache which seems to help quite a bit. The idea is it caches dynamic content into a static html page to be served up to visitors and totally bypassing mySql and php in the process. Of course it comes with it’s own caveats but does seem to help. Second I tweaked Apache’s config file to process more http requests at a time. This also seemed to help some. At any rate … the quest goes on.