How To Clone An Android Tv Box? 2 Methods Explained

In this particular post, I am about to explain to you How To Clone An Android TV Box? How To Clone Android Tv Box Firmware? How To Copy Files From Android Tv Box? So that you can have a backup of your device in case something goes wrong. You may also want a second box for another room or even as a gift! Android TV boxes are trendy because of their power and capabilities and because they can be modded.

Unfortunately, if something goes wrong or you want to return it for some reason, your tv box will stop working. Cloning an Android TV Box is also helpful in case of theft.

How To Clone An Android Tv Box?

To Clone an Android Tv Box:

• A software cloning tool like MyClone or Box Clone can be used.
• A hardware cloning tool, such as Android SDK and ADB, can be used.

What is Android Tv Box?

Android tv box is a set-top box for streaming media from the internet. It has similar functionality as Netflix and lets you stream your content via apps like Plex and Kodi.  Android tv boxes are very popular with cord-cutting geeks because they can replace cable subscriptions at a fraction of the price, and give more control over what shows up on their home screen/interface.

Allows them to build out their whole entertainment center in one device that fits under their television instead of having separate components spread across different devices, all feeding into an input source on the TV.

This guide will show How To Clone An Android Tv Box? So you have two identical units just by connecting another USB drive containing bootable images plus cloning these drives onto a second device using.

Features of Android Tv Box

1. Android TV Box is a great way to watch your favorite shows
2. It’s easy to install and setup
3. You can use it with any HDMI cable or an adapter for older TVs
4. The remote control has a voice search capability, so you don’t need to type in the show name when searching for something new
5. Download apps from the Google Play store, including Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora Radio, HBO GO, and more! 6. Get an Android TV box today – they’re available on Amazon!

The next step would be to clone or flash an Android TV box.

Cloning An Android TV Box Using USB Flash Drive

The process used here requires a computer and USB flash drive with at least 16GB capacity (although 32 GB would be better). You can use any OS that works on the computer; we recommend Windows for this tutorial because it’s easy to follow instructions in text format than other OSes like MacOS.

The files required are all open source, so there isn’t anything shady involved here! First things first, make sure the device is powered off before starting this procedure. If it has power when connecting storage devices, it will not detect the drive correctly.

The first step is to download a “Win32 Disk Imager” program from Sourceforge and install it on your computer (it doesn’t require installation). Now we need two .img files: one for the original box and another backup of that image file after you have made some changes or modded it in any way.

You can find now them everywhere on the internet; make sure they are compatible with your Android TV Box model, so there aren’t compatibility issues later. We recommend using Google Drive because many sites don’t allow downloads on their website anymore due to copyright reasons! Make sure both images are located in the same folder before continuing. Once this is done, plug the USB flash drive into your computer.

Now run Win32 Disk Imager and select one of the images you downloaded earlier with the “Image File” option under the “Device” tab. Make sure that size is correct for this file before continuing! Most Android TV boxes should be around 60-80 MB, but some are different, so always check first before proceeding.

After ensuring that everything is in order, click on write to begin the cloning process, which can take up to an hour per image! Once done, eject the USB storage device from your machine safely without pulling it out abruptly since this may corrupt files stored inside (a very common mistake)

Finally, insert these two devices back into your original box and power them on again. If everything is being done correctly so far, you should see the same content as the original TV box.

Now that was pretty easy. Well, if your Android Box has been messed up or bricked somehow, cloning it can save a lot of time for you instead of RMAing it! We hope this tutorial helped with learning how to clone an android tv box safely and effectively.

Keep in mind that changing the operating system on boxes may cause compatibility issues, so remember to keep backups just in case something goes wrong!

Android Tv Box Cloning KODI(LibreELEC)

It has made optimizations explicitly for the hardware inside specific boxes. Suppose we retake our MXQ PRO box as an example. In that case, this one uses the Rockchip RK3328 chipset, so obviously, LibreELEC software works better than, say, OpenElec since they are both built around different chipsets.

First, download the RetroPie ISO file from their website.

Once you have the RetroPie image, burn it onto a blank DVD or flash it to an SD card using free software like Win32DiskImager. It is also possible to use alternative OS images such as RecalBox for this process, but we will stick with Retro Pie here. Boot up your newly flashed/burned game drive and choose the “Retro Pie” option.

If everything goes well, you should be greeted by the Emulation Station front end that enables easy navigation between different emulators available on the system. Once inside setup configuration screens, follow instructions carefully until installation finishes successfully. You can now reboot into LibreELEC from within the Kodi interface, which again has been pre-installed as part of earlier steps in this guide.

Finally, we will clone our LibreELEC OS to the internal flash memory of the Android TV Box, and this means that every time you reboot your box, it should boot into Kodi directly from now on without even touching the SD card or USB drive again :).

First, download the latest version of LibreELEC image from their website here: LibreELec Download page and extract it using a file decompression tool such as WinRAR.

Then copy all extracted files onto an external storage device like a USB stick and plug this one into your PC since we need to transfer those files over via computer before going any further.

On Windows, open the command prompt window by holding the shift key and right-clicking with the mouse anywhere inside the displayed folder where your LibreELEC image files are located.

You will now see a lot of white text on black background with some instructions for proper use, type “diskpart” at the bottom and press enter key to start the disk partitioning program. This is required because Windows does not know which drive letter should it assign to your external storage media, so we need this software in order to find out what letters are available first.

Once you get a confirmation message that a new disk has been added successfully inside windows, go back using arrow keys until you reach the directory where the LibreELEC image file is stored, then type the following command:

DISKPART LIST DISK

This one will show a list of all currently detected disks, including their assigned names/letter, which can be pretty long, copy this list down to notepad and make sure you know which drive letter is assigned for your external USB device.

Although it should be relatively easy by looking at the letters shown in the command prompt window, make sure that no other hard disks are using the same letter as yours. Since we will need them later on when cloning LibreELEC OS onto the internal flash memory of the Android TV box.

SELECT DISK X

Once you have selected the correct disk, type the following command while replacing “Z:” with a proper drive letter name such as E:/ so again, replace Z: accordingly…

CREATE FACTORY IMAGE

This one will start the factory image restore process and will take about 30 minutes to complete. Once finished, your android tv box will now boot directly into LibreELEC every time you power it on without manually entering anything else.

since the next step is to clone our OS image from the USB drive onto the internal flash memory of the Android TV Box, so first we need to erase everything by putting this device in “factory restore” mode:

SELECT DEVICE 0

0 is the number where the new factory image has been added, disk X as defined previously.

ERASE FACTORY IMAGE

Once our external storage media is erased and ready for the cloning process, plug it back into the PC and open a file manager utility such as Windows Explorer or Total Commander. Next, find the folder where you have extracted the LibreELEC image so you can see all subfolders and files inside it.

Next, copy the entire contents to the root of our external storage device, which should contain LibreELEC-RPi.arm-…xxx directories and two other essential ones called BOOT and SYSTEM. These are what we need for a successful cloning process:

MOVE FOLDER X:\LibreELEC* TO ROOT OF USB DEVICE.

Now close ALL open windows, including the command prompt window, because the next step requires a computer restart, but ONLY AFTER you have removed your USB device from the PC’s ports.

 Since this one will be needed later on for Linux booting procedure after the Android TV box has started up.

Next Step

First, boot into LibreELEC on Android TV Box. When you power up your box, it should now directly load LibreELEc OS, which will start in about 30 seconds or so since this one has been cloned onto the internal memory. After that, there is nothing else to do besides configuring the network connection and adding some root rights by typing the following command through ssh.

OPTIONAL (but recommended): ADD NEW USER TO SU (type “y” then press the enter key)

PASSWORD XXXXX (replace XXXX with the Password of your choice) That’s all for now, but before closing, please leave a comment below if our guidelines have helped you successfully clone the android tv box as well problems that might occur during this process. Thank you and have a nice day!

Next Step

Boot into Linux from LibreELEC using a USB device. Now that we’ve successfully cloned our android tv box, it’s time to boot directly into Linux by inserting our USB drive containing a single file called “boot.”

Which was created during the previous step before Android TV Box started for the first time then Turn off your box, then insert a USB stick with the following command through SSH or Telnet connection (make sure you know the IP address of your Android TV Box) :

REBOOT

Once rebooted, press any key on the keyboard when prompted since the following steps will require manual input; otherwise, the system won’t start properly.

OPTIONAL STEP

Re-enable automatic startup of LibreELEC After you have booted into Linux using your USB drive, power off the android tv box and insert the USB storage device once again with the following command:

ERASE FACTORY IMAGE  

Next time when you start up an Android TV Box, it will load our cloned OS directly from internal memory. That concludes this guide on how to clone an android tv box since there is nothing else left for us to do except save video files onto the external hard drive.

A couple of final words before closing, if your media player supports network shares, then I strongly suggest that instead of connecting some bulky external storage device.

Simply attach your NAS or Server with all necessary video files pre-loaded since this will save some time when booting up the android tv box.

How To Copy Apps From One Android Tv Box To Another?

• Navigate to the Home screen on your Android TV.
• Go down the page and click Settings.
• Choose Apps from “Device” under.
• Choose the application you want to move.
• Select Storage used as you scroll down.
• Choose a USB drive.

How To Program Android TV Box?

• Utilize an HDMI C cable to connect the Android TV Box to your TV.
• Connect the Android TV Box to an electrical outlet.
• The remote control for the Android TV Box needs batteries.
• Switch to the HDMI source after turning on the TV.
• Connect the remote.                    
• The setup procedure is followed on the screen.
• Enter your Google account information.

Conclusion

So to sum it all up about How To Clone An Android Tv Box? We’ve learned that cloning an android TV box is a pretty straightforward process. It really just requires the right software and hardware to get started. If you have any other questions or comments about this blog post, please leave them in the comment section below!

Frequently Asked Questions