ATTENTION: A bug has been found that prevents the HDD install from working correctly. It is being investigated. Stay tuned for updates.
Although the HDD appears to work correctly if you leave the USB stick inserted, one of the partitions will be read only, and will not work correctly.
Hello
I have now added support for hard disk installations. When running the OSMC installer (which runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X), you will see hard disk and USB versions of OSMC available for AppleTV.
When installing to hard drive, it will say that it is installing to a USB stick. Ignore this ā it should be changed to āinternal storageā in the future to avoid confusion.
I installed and got to the home screen - rebooted with the stick removed, and got the ā60 seconds to installā and then āinstallingā screens - as if the USB was still connected and installing for the first time.
In the install options (osx installer) it is not possible to choose where to install OSMC.
Default is SD card but everything is grayed out.
Is it ok?
I had chosen 2015.10.2-USB, will this install OSMC on USB stick regardless the install option?
I have both an HDD install and a USB install running off a Class 10 Lexar MicroSD in a Lexar reader
I store my media on a network shared drive.
The HDD install is faster that my current SDCard+reader.
The HDD is already there so itās free
It doesnāt have the same limitations on how many times you can write to it, as flash card or stick does.
Using internal storage also frees up the USB slot. In my case I donāt need a USB Hub and use it for BT adapter, as long as I can boot off an internal device.
FWIW: As you say, seek times are slow on mechanical drives.
UPDATE: On further investigation the ATV interface is capable of ATA100/ATAPI 6 which has a Max transfer of 100MB/sec. I really should have remembered this since I vaguely remember getting max transfers in the high 50ās with Crystalbuntu.
SDcards have Minimum Speed ratings. 10M Byte/sec minimum for Class 10 cards. 30MB/sec minimum for UHS 3 cards. Thatās a big benefit, since the speed of chips used in USB Flash Drives can vary.
USB flash drives donāt have that MINIMUM rating.
Theroretical speedsā¦
Many new SDcards can far exceed the speed of a USB 2.0 bus, but since we would be Using a USB 2.0 Card reader in the ATV, even at best, with a fast reader, and a UHS3 card, you are still limited to the average USB 2.0 speed of around 35MB/sec
Installed to Msata SSD internal drive, stuck my nose out and took out the USB Flash drive after installing, shut power off and switched back on, of course it refused to install, started over again, this time using a USB Hub with the flash drive remaining in with a bluetooth adapter for the mouse and keyboard, everything now OKI DOKI. First class bit of work off Sam and the other guys who worked on this project, all that remains to be done now is to flush out the bug thats stopping us taking out the flash drive, I bet its done by the morning knowing Sam etc, thanks guys.
Other than the USB issue, works like a dream using the internal msata in my ATV.
Buffering via the network takes 34-5 seconds, and the first 5-6 seconds of the 1080p stream is a little jerky as it finishes buffering, however after that it works perfectly!
Yes that is the problem Iām running into. It was working great until I remove the usb drive. I thought it might have been a bad drive but I see other people are having the same issue. And by the way THANKS SAM, you said that the ATV1 would live a again and it is.
Interestingā¦ so when considering a SSD vs. USB stick/SD install, there is no (or negligible) difference in speed (as the SSD will be limited by PATA, and the USB stick/SD card will be limited by USB 2)?
I suppose in that case the only advantage to installing internally is having the free USB port for something else (e.g. a wifi stick, etc.).
N.B. Given seek times with a HDD, I assume SSD still beats HDD despite the PATA limitation. I am curious about thoughts on the SSD via PATA and SD/USB via USB 2 question though.
So I can see that the internal hdd is mounted, but I donāt have read/write access, is that correct?
I assume that the bug you mentioned is related/ is impacting this?
Yes, Read Only partitions Thatās the problem with the HD install.
When booting the HDD install, itās actually running off both USB stick and HDD.
On installation, /dev/sda1 which is the HFS+ boot partition becomes readonly and prevents changing itās contents. This is because the HFS+ partition is marked as ādirtyā and needs fsck to fix it.
Unfortunately the required HFS support files are not available during installation.
Sam has almost given up on getting it working with the installer. Weāve both been up till all hours of the night, for a week, testing different options to get around the limitation.
Worse case I may end up writing an unofficial tutorial on how to do an HDD install manually.
Iād suggest you guys write a manual procedure, and consider it ādeliveredā and move on. Iām sure it will be enough for the majority of the people here (me included!).
I think I reached the same results with CB: got it installed on the HDD, but everything was read-only. I managed to get that far googling every command and reading around, Iām sure with your indications it will be enough!
Thatās likely how it will go. I have an idea for possible solution for the official installer.
Iām not a dev so I have to run it past Sam. Sam also has some ideas.
If they donāt work Iāll do a manual HDD install and document the steps similar to my old CB2 tutorials.
That way it should be easy to follow. I wonāt say foolproof since some less tech savy users will likely have problems.
I have to hand it to him. Even though supporting the ATV1 isnāt really logical, heās loyal to us users.
