

The Amazon Fire TV’s 8GB internal storage fills up quickly, especially if you’re installing a lot of games or have a large XBMC library. I’ve written about a partial solution in the past which moves some files from the Fire TV’s internal storage to a connected USB drive. This guide will walk you through a much better solution, created by XDA-Developers member jmandawg, that uses a USB drive as a complete replacement for the Fire TV’s internal storage.

Important Information

There are pros and cons to following this guide. The pros are obvious; your Fire TV storage capacity will be larger. The primary con is that your Fire TV will run slower because it cannot access files on a USB drive as fast as it can access files on its internal 8GB storage. The amount of slowness will greatly depend on the performance of the USB drive you use for this guide. A solid state external hard drive will perform best. Next best is a spinning external hard drive. Poorest results will come from a USB thumb/flash drive. The slowness will cause apps to launch a little slower and you may see a bit of stuttering when navigating around the Fire TV menus. This guide is completely reversible, so if the slowness bothers you enough, you can revert back to using your Fire TV’s internal storage for everything. Instructions to revert this process can be found at the bottom of this guide.

It is also important to at least somewhat understand what this process does so that you know how it affects future modifications you may do to your Fire TV. This guide will copy certain directories (including /sdcard) to the attached USB drive and tell the Fire TV to look for those directories on the USB drive. If the Fire TV can’t find the directories on the USB drive, it will automatically revert to using the original directories on the internal storage and try to re-copy the directories to the USB drive if a USB drive is found. This behavior is important to know because, at the time this guide is being written, ClockworkMod cannot mount EXT4 USB drives (which is what this guide must use). This means that, if you use ADB to push a file to /sdcard, ClockworkMod will not be able to access the pushed file. In order for ClockworkMod to see a file in /sdcard, the file must be copied to /data_fire/media/0. An example of this process can be seen in steps 4 thru 6 in the revert instructions found at the bottom of this guide.

Additionally, you will need to redo steps 7 thru 14 anytime you flash a new software update within ClockworkMod. More information can be found at this XDA post.

Prerequisites

Your Fire TV must be rooted.

Your Fire TV must be running ClockworkMod Custom Recovery

Your USB drive must have only 1 partition formated using the EXT4 file system. NTFS, FAT, FAT32, exFAT will not work. Search Google for instructions on how to format a drive with EXT4 as it is not covered in this guide.

Optional, but recommended – Perform a factory reset before following this guide. Some have run into issues by not first performing a factory reset.

Instructions

Optional, but recommended. Backup your important data and factory reset your Fire TV. Format your USB drive with a single EXT4 partition. Search Google for instructions on how to do this. Mac users can try FUSE-EXT2 or ExtFS for Mac. Windows users can try PartitionWizard or ExtFS for Windows. Download the latest setup script zip file labeled “MountDataToUSB” from the bottom of this XDA post. Power on your Fire TV (if it’s off) and plug your USB drive into the Fire TV’s USB port.

(Note: You will soon need to control ClockworkMod. It is recommended that you control ClockworkMod remotely over the network so that the USB drive can be connected directly to the Fire TV. However, if you need to use a USB keyboard and USB hub instead, you should connect those now.) Connect to your Fire TV via ADB. Transfer the zip file you downloaded in step 3 to the Fire TV’s /sdcard directory by running the following command:

adb push MountDataToUSB_v2.5.zip /sdcard/

(Note: Replace “ MountDataToUSB_v2.5.zip ” in the above command with the full path to the file you downloaded if the file is not in the same directory as ADB, or if the filename is different.) Run the following command to reboot into ClockworkMod:

adb reboot recovery Once in ClockworkMod, select “install zip”. Select “choose zip from /sdcard” Select “0/” Select the file you transferred in step 6 Select “Yes – Install [FILENAME].zip” Wait for the message “Install complete!” to appear.

(Note: Do not be alarmed if you see red text saying “Amazon kernel detected: not patching”. This is unrelated and normal behavior for ClockworkMod) Go back to the ClockworkMod main menu and select “reboot system now” The Fire TV will reboot. It may take a long time to reboot. BE PATIENT and do not power off or restart the Fire TV. It is setting up the USB drive. You may see strange static/pixelation appear on your TV. That is fine. Just let it do its thing and wait for the Fire TV home screen to completely load. Head on over to Settings > System > About to verify that your storage capacity has changed.

How to Revert back to using Internal Storage

Download the revert script zip file from the bottom of this XDA post Connect to your Fire TV via ADB. Transfer the zip file you downloaded in step 1 to the Fire TV’s /sdcard directory by running the following command:

adb push REVERT_MountSDCARDtoUSB.zip /sdcard/

(Note: Replace “ REVERT_MountSDCARDtoUSB.zip ” in the above command with the full path to the file you downloaded if the file is not in the same directory as ADB, or if the filename is different.) Run the following command:

adb shell Run the following command:

su Run the following command:

cp /sdcard/REVERT_MountSDCARDtoUSB.zip /data_fire/media/0/

(Note: Change “ REVERT_MountSDCARDtoUSB.zip ” if the file you downloaded in step 1 has a different filename.) Run the command:

rm -f /sdcard/REVERT_MountSDCARDtoUSB.zip

(Note: Change “ REVERT_MountSDCARDtoUSB.zip ” if the file you downloaded in step 1 has a different filename.) Run the following command to reboot into ClockworkMod:

adb reboot recovery Once in ClockworkMod, select “install zip”. Select “choose zip from /sdcard” Select “0/” Select the file you transferred in step 3 Select “Yes – Install [FILENAME].zip” Wait for the message “Install complete!” to appear.

(Note: Do not be alarmed if you see red text saying “Amazon kernel detected: not patching”. This is unrelated and normal behavior for ClockworkMod) Go back to the ClockworkMod main menu and select “reboot system now” Your Fire TV will restart and once again be set to use its internal storage instead of the USB drive.

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