yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Shield Android TV General] slybunda:
I got a Kingston 60gb ssd in mine and it updates fine to 8.2.

The update does take a long time, longer than my 16gb shield tv takes.
[Shield Android TV General] knorran894:
I was just wondering which partion the new SSD (replacement) to be formated before copying the contents as described?
[Shield Android TV General] knorran894:
Just wanted to mention that the original HDD is crashed and cant access anything in it. Just shows a logical drive no partition information etc.

The new one i have partitioned to ext4 and tried but did not work so i supposed there must be different partition. The copying process went well though.
[Shield Android TV General] knorran894:
I found now all the partitions? I wonder if I need to create all this partitions or will it be managed by it self? As i wrote earlier it did not work for me despite i did create a ext4 partition of a full HDD.
[Shield Android TV General] neomesjasz:
Hi, I have problem, my HDD on shield is dying, pretty often shield turn on but doesn't respond (2015 pro 500gb) so I wanted to swap hard drive, bought Samsung Evo 870 500 GB.

Problem is that through usb to SATA cable and through SSD enclosure my windows 10 laptop doesn't see shield hard drive, checked in system and in cloning apps, nothing.

I was initializing SSD and now is visible.

Downloaded adb and recovery os for shield, but don't have usb a to usb a cable.

What I can do
[Shield Android TV General] o-l-a-v:
Have you tried "HDD Raw Copy Tool"?

https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/

Is the shield HDD visible in Windows "Disk Management" (found in Win+X menu/ right click start menu button).

You won't see any partitions in Windows, because Shield uses a file system Windows can't recognize. So be very careful so you won't overwrite/ change anything on the Shield HDD from Windows.

I ended up using following dual bay SATA docking station and duplicator from Orico:

https://www.orico.cc/us/product/detail/3551.html

But "HDD Raw Copy Tool" should work too.
[Shield Android TV General] tonsil1:
By the way, I would like to describe my adventures with replacing the old disk to SSD.

For several weeks I have been watching a large lag that prevents normal operation ....

( nvidia shield pro 2015 version).

I decided to change the old disk to the new SSD Evo 870 -500 GB. I cloned the disk with HDDGURU Raw Copy Too but Shield was not booted. I cloned a few times and got nothing I also tried Tilator solutions without success.

I decided to change my approach to the problem:

1.Reset and return to factory settings.

2.Copy the old drive to an img file using WinHex.

3. Write image using HDDGURU Raw Copy program.

Nvidia Shield has started with the new heart -success
[Shield Android TV General] neomesjasz:
Ok, accidentally I formatted in windows my old shield HDD, now I have 2 empty drives and shield without memory. Old shield HDD was discoverable only on different laptop but could not clone cause of error ( disk is dying)

So could anyone explain step by step how to put recovery or clone files to SSD and what kind of Linux etc unfortunately I am noob
[Shield Android TV General] neomesjasz:
Ok, I try to load files on SSD, after hours to understand commands on Ubuntu, terminals says that files are copied on disk (with DD) but disk is empty, now space taken. SSD is in read only state, was using many commands to change for write permissions but, disk is always read only, formatted in Linux few times, tried change in options and commands but no luck, any tips?
[Shield Android TV General] mprudic0404:
i understand we can upgrade the HDD , and use up to a MAX 2TB SSD.

has anyone tried using anything larger>?

would it be possible to use a 8TB SSD , partition the first 2TB for the SHIELD, and then use the remains, 6TB as secondary storage ? ( would the kernel even see this as storage? )

would it be possible to use a larger drive and have a DUAL BOOT SHIELD TV ? ( load lineage, stock firmware, etc? )
[Shield Android TV General] Bailey75:
Hello folks, In the process of trying to revive a 2015 Shield Pro with no original HDD to clone. I followed the process as described at the start of the thread using a 500gb HDD but before the end binary is copied the HDD seems to run out of space. I'm not sure of what format I should use, First I tried ext4 which after formatting on linux mint had approx 465gb available then tried NTFS but the dd process ends the same way with the no space left on drive message. Am I right in assuming that I have to alter the block number for the end.bin and if so what is the starting reference for the calculation? I'd very appreciate any advice on where I'm going wrong.

BTW kudos to all who contributed in solving the problem initially. Great work all.
[Shield Android TV General] Rayrod21:
Do you still have the img

Do you still have IMG file? Can you please send me a link to download. I have a Similar situation but my SSHD died and I can’t clone it. Thanks
[Shield Android TV General] earickb:
Did you ever get the image file?
[Shield Android TV General] o-l-a-v:
@earickb @Rayrod21

Have you seen this thread?

https://xdaforums.com/t/3440195/

Edit: Also, the torrent for the image, found in post #23, still works. Tried with qBitTorrent just now. See:

https://xdaforums.com/t/nvidia-shield-tv-ssd-done.3402580/page-2#post-67426622
[Shield Android TV General] earickb:
Thanks I will try it
[Shield Android TV General] o-l-a-v:
I created a mega.nz mirror for the images. Compressed with 7-Zip instead, to squeeze out some extra bytes.

https://mega.nz/folder/X45AnbRL#UE9hHpTsjq_AijbO4uUPxA
[Shield Android TV General] earickb:
Thank you!, would I have to edit these?
[Shield Android TV General] o-l-a-v:
Read the guides, I don't know.
[Shield Android TV General] earickb:
Ok I will, thanks
[Shield Android TV General] Rayrod21:
Indeed. Can’t find a solution to my problem. I successfully transfer the files as instructed using Ubuntu 20.04. Start.bin 1892+1 in and out and 7.9 GB, 7.4 Gib copied 66.1268 s. End 198538 +0 in and out 101651456 bytes. All looks perfect. Put the ssd on my disc and turns on. Waited 15 min disconec then try to power on but nothing shows on hdmi. Hdmi is detected on Tv. I plug micro usb on shield and when I look at devices in windows I see APX device. Im not sure if ribbon cable got damage the first time I disconnected it.
[Shield Android TV General] earickb:
I've tried everything I could think of and read but nothing for my as well, hopefully someone make a video
[Shield Android TV General] Rayrod21:
Update:

Finally succeeded:

SSD 500Gb PNY model CS900 2.5 Sata 6Gb/s

Stuff that didn’t work on NSATV Pro 2015:

1) SSD no format/out of box

2) SSD NTFS

3) SSD ext4

In all 3 cases the result was APX mode. Even with 100% file transfer.

What worked?

1) SSD FAT32 format then copy files.

2) Power Shield left it for 30min. Nothing

3) Power shield stayed on boot after nvidia logo

4) Power shield finally booted

The bad: like many others I need to flash an image in order to get out of google sign in problem and after so many attempts handling the ribbon cable now I’m getting intermittent hdmi signal. Will need a new cable in order to finish.
[Shield Android TV General] Rayrod21:
Could be a damage ribbon cable. It happened to me. Is your unit powering on at all without any hdmi image? That cable is really fragile.
[Shield Android TV General] earickb:
I tried different ribbons, and yes it comes on but only in apx mode
[Shield Android TV General] earickb:
I will try this now, so you just formatted the drive to fat32 using gparted and then dd the files needed?
[Shield Android TV General] Rayrod21:
Yes! I wiped the drive several times and every time got same result until last wipe when I formatted to FAT32. It made sense some how to me since all the other formats resulted in APX.

I did everything on Ubuntu 20.04 and used gparted. After the SSD was done then:

sudo dd if=start.bin of=/dev/XXX bs=4M and when it’s done the end.bin

Can you post a link to where you bought the sata header cables?
[Shield Android TV General] earickb:
Ok I'll try that, did you have to change the numbers with the end.bin file?
[Shield Android TV General] Rayrod21:
No. My SSD was A little bit bigger than the one used by Tilator but not big enought to make a difference.

I used the following command:

sudo dd if=end_976574630.bin of=/dev/XXX seek=976574630

Please remember cable link. I remember someone posting a link here but can’t seem to find the thread. It was straight from the manufacturer in China. IMO that ribbon cable is the one flaw on the design. Maybe they where not expecting the quality of the product to be so good.
[Shield Android TV General] earickb:
Thank you, I'll try to buy a few spare ones
[Shield Android TV General] Rayrod21:
Where are you buying them?
[Shield Android TV General] earickb:
Not sure I'm still looking
[Shield Android TV General] Rayrod21:
The partitions are created automatically when you use ”dd“. 2015 or 2017 model? For me it worked formatting the drive to FAT32 after fully erasing it.
[Shield Android TV General] mprudic0404:
ill try asking this again, if anyone has ideas?

the shield TV pro can work up to 2TB. (anything past 2TB wont work according to NVidia )

anyone know if its possible to use a 8tb drive. (2tb would be partitioned to the system, and 6TB would be EXFAT)
[Shield Android TV General] kravish:
Thanks Tilator. if i dont have Linux, can this be done thru Windows?
[Shield Android TV General] kravish:
@Tilator, i have a new 500GB SSD drive and have also downloaded your torrent file. can you guide me on steps to copy and replace the drive pl

I am not an IT guy hence you have to provide steps for windows in possible
[Shield Android TV General] Maverick044:
I did something similar to this, but I cloned my working SSHD to an SSD using a windows program called HDD RAW Copy Tool.. it took (if my memory serves me correctly) a little over an hour to clone the entire SSHD, but once it was done, and the shield was reassembled, it booted on first try, and was far more responsive then it was with the stock drive. I didn't go with a Samsung pro with the drive (I usually do), but due to budget constraints at the time, I opted for an SK Hynix Gold S31 instead.. Couldn't be happier with the end results though.
[Shield Android TV General] madmacc:
As usual , you guys rock, now have 2 shield Pro, with 250Gb, and the other with 1Tb SSD.

Thanks Guys.

MaddMacc

Canada
[Shield Android TV General] banjo88:
ok just done this too thank you i used a samsung evo 870 500gb formatted to fat32

and HDD raw copy tool worked first time awesome
[Shield Android TV General] maddmacc:
Update , Observations,

I have now a 2tb Samsung SSD done, no issues and fast boot , around 24 seconds. The 250 Gb SSD same boot time around 25 Seconds.

However the 1TB ( Kingstone KC400 ) using exact same process, takes a whopping 3.5 minute to load ???

Pics attached
[Shield Android TV General] qxotic:
I have searched the google sign in problem but have not found the solution. My HDD went bad... installed new onto 500 GB Sansung SSD.. can boot into bootloader fine and even adb files from pc... get to the point it makes me sign in on my google account.. and it always says user or password is wrong, even though it is right. I get notices on my account of new login... changed my google settings to allow unknown apps.. but still no joy. What is the workaround on this? I read a post.. even tried pulling and pushing the system file where I changed google sign in to DISABLED, but that did not work. I have the 2017 Nvidia Shield TV Pro. Thanks.
[Shield Android TV General] hero83:
Hello, many thanks Tilator and all the others for this genius Workaround for the shield.

I have already successfully installed the 500 Samsung SSD and my Nvidia Shield Pro 2015 starts fine.

But I cannot login with my Google account.

Which image Version of Shield TV is in Tilators Backup?

How can i upgrade to a newer Version without bridge the device? Which recovery Version works?

Which TWRP Version can i install to this unit at the moment stand?

Thanks and greetz Chris
[Shield Android TV General] defender02:
I tried the swap today, used HDD Raw Copy to a Crucial MX500 and now I don't have any display. Tried going back to the original HDD and still the same thing. Has anyone had this issue? I can hear the original drive spin up and the ribbon cable looks like it's in good shape. Anyone have any ideas?
[Shield Android TV General] jcrendsl:
Hello Rayrod21 were you able to flash the image after getting the new cable, jcrendsl.crenshaw@gmail.com I need help can you help me i have 2015 pro 500gb as well. after new update wreck my unit and now lost drive shutting down.
[Shield Android TV General] qxotic:
I did finally get mine to load last night. After dd the start and end files as in this thread, then on first boot I went into advanced wipe in the TWRP... I think there were 4 things I wiped... the caches..including the dvalik..sp? one and the system... then I used adb and copied over the 6.0 version from Nvidia. It took a long time for the userdata portion.. the rest didn't take too long. I think it got stuck on the nvidia screen the first boot after... left it there for a long time... when I came back and rebooted it let me select language, set up wifi and do the google log in. I have not had time to try to degoogle it yet or update it... or try the Android 8 version from nvidia.. may play around with it some more while I have it set up safe to play with. I have a sata extension cable coming out from under it.. so am currently connected the sata SSD to the end of this extension so can play with it without worrying about breaking that ribbon cable. I'll keep it like this until I've done all the versions I want to try.. and also until I am able to make a back up I can disk copy to restore if ever need be.
[Shield Android TV General] redcorn245:
I have followed this method down to the T. With a 1tb sandisk ssd and also a 1tb pioneer ssd. I've used a usb to sata. And also tried connecting right to sata on my mobo. I've tried the original calculator and the calculator for the 4klastpart.bin. every step was successfully completed.... but it will not display on the screen. The light turns on... and that's about it.. no output to tv... nothing happening... any ideas? I've been trying this for the last 4 days straight and it's starting to aggravate me lol
[Shield Android TV General] ivanovjohn2018:
the reason may be either a loop or a disk, or you could have made a mistake with the commands
[Shield Android TV General] spida_singh:
Please delete
[Shield Android TV General] Synacate:
Not sure where to extract the files to so I can use dd in Linux please help. Dead hdd no backup
[Shield Android TV General] Karnevil:
I bought a PNY 500gig ssd and it works on it, other then it soft bricks the devices on the 9.01 update.???
[Shield Android TV General] DB001:
First thank you for your excellent post,

I just purchased a Samsung EVO 970 500GB and tried this method to install the image onto this EVO (Since my Original HDD in the Shield TV Pro is completely dead). I was able the run the First command which was a sucess, but the Second one gives me an error as follows:

dd if=end_976574630.bin of=/dev/sdb seek=976574630

dd: writing to '/dev/sdb': No space left on device

198535+0 records in

198534+0 records out

101649408 bytes (102 MB, 97 MiB) copied, 27.1625 s, 3.7 MB/s

Is there something I can do to maybe adjust the seek value so that it fits ?
[Shield Android TV General] usamartinez:
Hi

I am trying to replace the Nvidia Shield TV Pro bricked 500 using a 500 HDD .

I am using a USB Ubuntu stick as OS and it says exFat /dev/sdb2

It also has a 210 MB FAT EFI partition.

Should I format the drive including the EFI Partition?

What format should I use before using the DD command? FAT32, exFat?

Thank you

Mario
[Shield Android TV General] usamartinez:
Hi

Has anyone found the Nvidia SHIELD TV 2015 SATA Ribbon Cable replacement?

Thank You

Mario
[Shield Android TV General] usamartinez:
Hi

Did you succeed getting your Shield Pro to work?

I a trying to do the same.

Once you do the "DD" commands, are you able to see if it worked without placing the drive in?

The start command takes 5 minutes and it showed it transfered files but it doesn't show it transfered the whole amount.

Thank You

Mario
[Shield Android TV General] yourotherform:
My drive is dead, and I don't have Linux. Does anyone, or any site, have the clone img/iso file for the 2017 500gb model? I'm pretty sure I'd be able to clone it to my SSD via HDD Raw Copy Tool through Windows.
[Shield Android TV General] BostonDan:
The question is whether you have the keys (first part of the process. I think it was about a Megabyte of data from your hard drive). I tried (unsuccessfully) to use a software image another user provided (since my whole drive was dead), but since the image's keys didn't match my hardware (some type of fingerprinting, I assume) it would install ok but when it installed the updates it soft-bricked on one of the updates (8.3 I believe, iirc).

Cheers,

B.D.
[Shield Android TV General] yourotherform:
I don't believe I have any keys. But now I have another issue. 😂 I installed Linux. I downloaded the torrent from this post. I implemented the the dd commands. But after I implement the command, the drive becomes unreadable. I actually opened the drive as soon as the command started, I was able to see some files, then backed out of the folder, and tried to go back in, and every time, it says unreadable. Doesn't even mount to Linux or anything. Not sure what the issue is.
[Shield Android TV General] yourotherform:
Did you figure out what to do? I bought the same SSD and I'm having the same issue. But when I run the command, the drive becomes inaccessible.

If you capitalize B in sdB you won't receive the no space left on device error, but when I do that, even tho it says it wrote the files, the drive remains empty. I dunno what to do here.
[Shield Android TV General] yourotherform:
My brother has a 2015 model, I have a 2017 model. Would I be able to copy his drive? Or do I need to copy the drive of a 2017 model? My drive is dead.
[Shield Android TV General] BostonDan:
Again, see my post above. Your hardware's specific keys are stored on that drive. If you try to copy another drive it will probably fail to boot/run properly due to keys incompatibility. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Cheers,

B.D.
[Shield Android TV General] yourotherform:
How did you create an img file of the drive? I want to do the same.
[Shield Android TV General] k0d3g3ar:
First, thank you to everyone involved in this post and for being willing to publish discoveries, etc. I'm lucky in that I'm a Linux guy so these instructions were pretty simple to do. And as a result, after taking receipt of a Samsung 850 500GB SSD, I have replaced a dead HDD with SSD and it works.

Well kinda... At least it did for quite a while. When setting back up my Shield, I had to go through all the remote recognition, Google account thing, etc. And then the update after update after update occurred. But all was working fine. Until I got to the Nvidia Shield experience 9. About 75% through installing it, the Shield shut down, no video, etc. I powered down, and back on. Nothing. The green light on the machine comes on for 1 second, then turns off. Thinking maybe I have a loose connection, I pulled out the SSD and then re-seated it all but no difference.

Then I repeated the installation on the SSD again (dd of the images) and put it all back together and it worked! Boots fine now, but I'm going through the same process I did before (boot for 15 mins, power down, reboot and it should be alive), but now it seems stuck in some endless loop after completing the boot process, where it is optimizing apps, then some error message about "Print spooler not started", and then it reboots again.

Anyone have any thoughts to this? Is Nvidia Shield Experience 9 the culprit with this?

K
[Shield Android TV General] Nehemoth:
There are two things that I can thing off, please bear in mind that I'd never has used these functions:

First: If after cloning the old drive everything works, I would enable developer's options and the last options it's called Provide full system upgrades. In the past I'd seen this future used for issues similar like yours.

Second: Would use the procedure to download the full image from the Nvidia Developers site. You can find a lot of information and tutorials in how to accomplish this on reddit.

Good luck
[Shield Android TV General] k0d3g3ar:
Thank you. Your "second" option may be possible. The first assumes I can get to the UI after it boots, which I can't. But if there is an alternative disk image other than the one referenced in the first post of this thread, I'm open to trying it. It seems that the hardware isn't flawed, but how it wants to react to the image is. The first time I did this, it worked other than the issue I described. But subsequent re-imaging of the drive is no longer working.
[Shield Android TV General] Sm0o0th:
Hello, I am new to Linux. I installed Ubuntu 20.04 on my Windows 11 PC. Could someone please guide me on how to do this dd thing? I have the 500GB Samsung SSD connected to my computer via data to use 3.0 and I am ready to roll!
[Shield Android TV General] DJ 1:
Hi, I got a 2015 shield TV pro, wanted to do the ssd swap, got an evo 870 500GB ssd,

..I think where I went wrong was initialised the new SSD (apparently new SSD needs to be completely RAW...untouched), before using the Hdguru HDD copy tool (windows)

Now when I put SSD into shield I get agree light but no video signal at all,

I'm hoping If I do the copy again properly, since the 2015 boots from HDD (not flash) that it'll boot once HDD is copied properly?

How to know if I'm in apx??

How-to get out of apx ?? (if so)

Thanks.
[Shield Android TV General] ivanovjohn2018:
You can see the APX mode in the device manager on your computer. If you accidentally erased data on your "native" HDD, the instructions on xda will help you, but you will not be able to update using regular methods, only through fastboot, excluding the blob file.
[Shield Android TV General] DJ 1:
Hi, are the

dd if=start.bin of=/dev/sdc bs=4M

&

dd if=end_976574630.bin of=/dev/sdc seek=976574630

based on a 500GB SSD?

I created SSD, as per the 1st post... But no video signal at all, (just a green light)

think I may need to try & get in via fastboot?, But usually to do anything in there is need to enable 'usb-debugging' (which would require it boot at least once to set the option in settings)

Confused...

Thanks.
[Shield Android TV General] emile_b:
Hi guys,

Sorry if this had been asked 100 times before but I've searching for days and can not find the solution. My HDD is totally dead (keys not recoverable), I would like the Shield to work as before even if Netflix and other streaming content does not work. Is there a block image I can put on a 500GB(or more, I have spare 1TB drive) drive which will do this? And download anywhere?

On a side note I can't believe they designed it such that an HDD failure (very common) causes such issue!

Thanks in advance.
[Shield Android TV General] ivanovjohn2018:
you can download the dump from here -https://xdaforums.com/t/guide-linux-windows-migrate-to-ssd-hdd-of-any-size-only-for-satv-pro.3440195/post-80558795 (at the same time, after unzipping, it will take more than 500 gb, so the system !!!! the disk, for example, "C" must be at least 1000 GB), it is for a 500 GB disk, but you can try to load it to 1000GB through the program https://www.balena.io/etcher / . Be sure to reset everything as soon as the console starts for the initial settings!!!!!