I've been using the older iodd/zalman branded products like this for years as a PC tech. While tools like Ventoy are amazing for what I imagine the casual users needs, these things present both UEFI and legacy boot options based on the host PC and ISO loaded. I've had Ventoy not work properly on a LOT of older systems (I deal with a lot of older folks on a budget that just need their old PC working again). Another thing I love is the ability to set it in optical only, HDD only, or both so you limit access to the system seeing your data on the rest of the drive while booting from an ISO, or use the drive to do simple backups. I don't think the casual user really needs this over Ventoy, but I tried switching away and that wasn't an option for me, now I just keep Ventoy on the drive I carry in my pocket with a smaller selection of images and really only use it when I don't have my full bag with me.
Exactly! Ventoy works wonderfully for ISO booting, but does have specific limitations or weaknesses compared to the ST400. All the comments below this are akin to 'just use Linux bro' because they only consider their own specific use cases. EDIT: Love you @Lemming!
@@CraftComputing I think this reply is a bit too dismissive of the criticism, because in the video you directly contrast this device to carrying around multiple USB drives or needing to flash a USB drive every time you want to use it to make sure it has the correct image on it. Ventoy IS an alternative to THAT case, even if it's not as full-featured as the product you're testing. Of course this product can do things that Ventoy can't, but Ventoy doesn't have the problem of having to manually select images, and for many of the people who watch your channel Ventoy deserves a mention because we don't need those extra features. I think that's why so many people are talking about Ventoy in the comments.
Yup, I've been using the zalman for 5-6 years now. Started with a 320 GB laptop drive that was a leftover, then a 500 GB SSD and currently a 2TB SSD...
I use Ventoy to boot from multiple ISOs on a single USB flash drive. Does this method not work well for you? I don't get to play with a lot of server hardware but I'd imagine it would work just fine. This little device is very cool though
I salute you Jeff for the 4D chess move of not mentioning Ventoy or the other 2 or three tools that allow you to make a multiboot usb drive, ensuring everyone and their dog will flood the comment section pointing that out. That's what we call a pro youtuber move. ENGAGEMENT ENGAGED hahha.
Also yes I know the limitations of the software tools, I also identify as IT administrator and I've had to burn CDs some times because stuff wouldn't boot otherwise
It is a definite pro strat. People point out Ventoy, people point out to them Ventoy's shortcomings, sometimes people come back to defend Ventoy... and I'm part of it too now.
I bought one of these cases and returned it after a day. I found it a bit clunky and learned about a ventoy right after. Great program all around. One thing about this hardware one is that I was trying to get vdi images working in read/write. That'd be awesome for a dos drive with firmware updates, etc. Never did work in my breif testing. I don't think there's a way to have a read/write image in Ventoy.
@@CraftComputing Now that I’ve watched further looks quite cool, Ventoy does the job most of the time for me but something I might consider in the future.
One note about the encryption: on the IODD Mini, at least, enabling encryption massively reduces the read and write performance. I think it was something like 1/4 the performance. I'd be curious to see if the drive is *actually* encrypted if you take it out of the case. One Amazon review says they were able to read the data from a locked used drive that was sold as new.
Not sure about the mini, but I have the 2541 and whilst I don't need the encryption so haven't turned it on (I went for the 2541 over the 2531 as I wasn't sure of the reliability of the side toggle switch control on the latter), based on the manual it seems that the encryption happens in real-time, as if you accidentally turn on encryption you can back out as long as you haven't written any data (i.e. initialised the now blank partition table) yet by just turning off the encryption. The encryption is just with the pin code entered, as the decryption is compatible with the desktop version of the product, the 3544.
Really wish you would have done a comparison between this drive and ventoy on a standard USB Drive. I use a M.2 NVME enclosure that isn't all that much bigger than a USB Stick with Ventoy (I have a second one with Medicat Installed). It is lightning fast and I would like to have had some kind of comparison to this device. Sounds like Ventoy has a real advantage in that you don't have to choose your .iso until it boots.
There's a number of things this can do that Ventoy cannot. One useful one is being able to hide the storage from the booted OS so it only sees internal drives. Windows has a bad habit of writing boot files to external drives.
@@LemmingGoBoom Never had this problem. Windows will create boot drive on external drive only if you select that external drive as target during installation. P.S.: Some USB drives have a physical switch which toggles write protection. Would do the same thing. At a fraction of the cost.
@@LemmingGoBoom I've never seen Windows bootable files on removable drives, but what Windows does is it writes hidden "SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION" and "RECYCLE BIN" folders on all drives, including removable ones.
If you want a cheaper options you could use the tool ventoy on a 128GB USB Stick. It offers you also the possibility to mount iso's with a nice boot selector.
There's a number of things this can do that Ventoy cannot. One useful one is being able to hide the storage from the booted OS so it only sees internal drives. Windows has a bad habit of writing boot files to external drives.
@@LemmingGoBoom not really a use case for me. I use windows only for gaming and rest is Linux and I also only have Linux isos or XCP-ng and TrueNAS on my stick. And as soon as the devs of the games I play and enable proton support in their anti cheat that will remove windows completely from my life.
no VHDs though. I use ventoy as well, but having options is good. Or sometimes i need to boot multiple PCs at once, which is why it's nice to have options!
Looks like just Ventoy with a marked up price? It's just an enclosure?? EDIT: Looks like it does more, but not worth the extra money for an enclosure IMO.
Great video! Thanks for making me aware of this. it's on my list. I've used Ventoy and it works well enough except for when it doesn't work at all with certain ISOs, but in addition to the UEFI issues you've mentioned I've also had issues with the Ventoy disk getting corrupted somehow when inserted into a Mac or PC and either losing the ability to boot or not mounting the partition holding the ISOs. This looks to be a much more robust, less annoying solution; just select the ISO you want, plug it in, and go. And then there's the advantage of being able to check the contents without plugging it into a computer. I think this might also work for booting up Raspberry Pis and various ARM/x86 SBCs that support USB SSD booting? But what really sells me on it is the ability to use it to boot a USB version of Windows. I have a USB stick floating around just for that, and I'd much rather consolidate that and all my ISO images and Raspberry Pi bootable SD cards.
Another possible alternative is a rooted Android smartphone with DriveDroid or similar software. If you already have the phone it's basically free. The only problem is it's been very unreliable on my current phone, likely due to some hardware or firmware quirks. But if it works it's great. One unique advantage is that since it's a smartphone you can download new ISOs without needing any extra hardware.
But that's the thing about yours or other software solutions. They aren't even close to 100% reliable. This one is simpler, so if you have to use it often, it adds up in fuckery avoided.
@@SomeThingOrMaybeAnother And the IODD is just software running on a different device. I think my situation is unreliable because of a flaky USB port. IIRC it used to be more reliable.
I made a USB stick awhile back that had a GRUB environment and was set up to query the drive for a list of ISOs, and make a menu entry for them. You booted from the drive, then just selected the ISO you wanted, grub booted it and you were good to go. Obviously, it wasn't perfect, but it worked pretty darn well
I've done the same but using SYSLINUX on a USB stick, and a static menu of bootable kernels. Only worked with booting linux distros, but that's all I needed it for. Grub2 would have been better, but I was already playing around with PXELINUX too at the time and it was a fun project.
There is an option to save state (auto mount ISO on reconnect). This feature was available even on the earliest model IODD 2531 (Zalman VE300). In IODD ST400 you just need to press 9 on the keypad for 3 seconds - drive will save state and enter sleep (ready for disconnect). Be sure to safely remove drive in Windows BEFORE entering save state status to be sure that all data is safely written to the drive before disconnecting (for NTFS formatted drives).
@@AndrewEvenstarNo problem. This drive is really useful for servicing. And oppose to Ventoy and other USB boot systems, it works with older systems, like 20-years old computers that come with some wood cutting machines in our company.
@@CoreyPL that's awesome. and you mostly just load isos on it and have it load like a virtual disc drive right? anything special you had to do with those old systems?
@@AndrewEvenstar nothing special. If it's able to boot from USB then it will boot from the enclosure. It supports EFI and standard legacy booting. Mounting iso is everything you need to do. Also be sure to upgrade the firmware once you got the device. There is also a wiki made by manufacturer where you can find list of all the functions bind to different keys and key-combos.
I've had an IODD Mini for a while now. It is my most useful tool, period. On mine at least, you can press and hold the disconnect button while an ISO is mounted, and it will remain mounted when the device is powered on and unlocked the next time.
I've owned the older iodd-2541 for many, many years. I don't use it very often anymore, but when I do, it's a joy. I threw in a pretty big SSD which comes in handy when I want to take an image of a machine before blowing it away with a new OS.
I'm so mad that I just found out about this. I spent the time and money to get a tone of 32 and 64GB USB drives, a USB drive organizer, create all the bootable drives I need, and label them all. This would have saved me so much time.
@@gglovato some machines just refuse to boot to ventoy depending on age and firmware on the hosts. It's a great tool, but can be very finicky unless all the hardware you encounter is newer.
@@kienanvella agreed. I am a pc tech by trade and ventoy works a little less than half the time on my customers’ systems. If you have modern non-OEM hardware you probably don’t need this, but the commenters acting like ventoy works great on all systems need to remember that their experiences are NOT universal.
@@gglovato as stated above, it does t always work. And I’d rather not have to wait to find out it doesn’t and waste the time to make a new bootable that does.
So Jeff. I have a question. Do you hate my bank account? because i watch videos from you and them boom! punch in my account. Think my wife gona ban me from watching your channel. (SO far i held off on it because the homelab and other Jeff inspiring purchases have benefited her lol) Great video as always dude.
Well, there is a button in your keyboard, since the 80’s that does something magical. When you press “pause” during boot it literally pauses the process so you can select what ever iso you want… my first hd enclosure like that was a zalmann, back 15 years ago… still have it! Works perfectly! Now iodd has it in NVMe version
Or... you could just install Ventoy onto a USB and copy multiple ISOs onto a single flash drive and be able to boot of each of them when you boot off that USB.... no money needed, no extra hardware needed.
When you're using encryption on this device, be sure to safely eject it in Windows and then on the device itself. One of the sub menus has a safe eject. I've had a couple of instances when I didn't do the second part and I lost all the data on the drive. Yes, I'm running the latest firmware
Have you tried Ventoy.. used it for years, allows you to buy a 32gig stick, ventoy runs a small os that allows you select from a list of whatever ISO's you have stored on there... so much easier and cheaper than this (albeit super nerdy and i want it) option. I usually have a couple of linux, a promox and a windows iso. super easy..
There's a number of things this can do that Ventoy cannot. One useful one is being able to hide the storage from the booted OS so it only sees internal drives. Windows has a bad habit of writing boot files to external drives.
Like some other commenters, I've had the older Zalman one for a while, absolutely amazing piece of kit, and has saved my bacon many times in my old sysadmin job. One thing we observed with our units is that they tended to eventually kill any SSDs installed inside them (might be because at the time SSDs weren't really a thing and the old firmware didn't manage wear levelling properly. Likely this has been fixed in newer models).
I'm wonder if a lack of TRIM is the main culprit, but that's speculation. I've had more and more early (~120GB, esp Kingston A400) drives fail regardless of use case. You can flash the Zalman to the newer IODD firmware btw.
@@iodehk5205 Oh absolutely, I'm an ext4 or btrfs guy myself; I just wanted to clarify the slight misinformation in the video stating "NTFS is not supported on Linux", when that's factually incorrect. It doesn't work the best as a native fs for Linux, but Linux can access the fs just fine for data management and transfers.
One possible caveat is that some older PCs refuse to boot from USB 3.X. Since I use cheap, semi-obsolete systems for specific purposes, all my OS install flash drives are USB 2.0. I've even seen this from some older systems that came stock with USB 3.0. onboard.
Another cool option with VHD is you could boot into one of multiple live CD ISOs, but still have VHD for your other files and have writable media, while the live cd images will be read only. Great for portable setup, as well switching distros, while keeping some big downloads (maybe games for example), intact.
I've used the Zalman models over the years they're great to carry everywhere. An advantage over a normal bootable stick is that it's read-only, so can't be nuked by malware on an infected machine :)
I have an old 1GB Imation USB thumb drive that has a write-protect switch. It dates back to the first 1GB thumb drive days. I've never come across another drive with a write-protect switch. I had a couple just like it that I found very useful for moving unclassified data to classified systems. Saved the time of waiting for our slow and inconvenient data moving service, or burning CD/DVDs. This was like 18 years ago. Argh. I'm old. 😱
Nice review, if you can find this product as reviewed. But again, I've still never seen one of these Amazon product links actually go to the product reviewed. They don't even have the IODD ST400 available ANYWHERE on Amazon (searched Amazon, full site, for "IODD ST400" and variants), but instead want to sell me another item from the same company (the IODD Mini) for $133 with a 256GB SSD, or over $170 with a 512GB SSD. These Amazon product links just suck.
There is software to turn Raspberry Pi into a functionally similar device. There is also multi-boot software to keep many ISOs on a single thumb drive and select the one you need at boot time.
Yeah... been doing this on usb drives ever since Grub2 came out. Didn't have to purchase anything, just a usb stick large enough for th3 isos and memory requirements. BTW. I managed to pull this off using isolinux and wimboot from iPXE.
Loved the older Zalman ones (and the original Korean OEM that made them). The USB 3.0 ones were bad about breaking off the USB connectors, but the 2.0 ones were robust. Hundreds of ISOs and floppy disk images all on one SSD was great.
Yeah I bought the USB 3.0 one from Amazon years ago and got the 2.0 one... and I kept it cause its much better than the 3.0 version. That one also lets you mount floppy, hard drive, and removable disk images on top of the ISOs. I can't work without it.
My Zalman one lost its firmware after a few years. It took arcane prayers and a P4-era PC running XP and software from a Russian forum to get it working again, but it did resurrect and is now with a fellow tech. I bought a newer IODD USB 3.0 one which has been flawless.
I've started using Ventoy a while ago, it's wonderful. I only have a single GPT one at this point, but may make an MBR version for the rare times that I still need that.
AS a field service technician, been looking for something like this, And for anyone who says try Ventoy, Sardu,Easy2Boot, or others, I have, they don't work for most of my needs, I work in retail environments, Cash register, self checkouts, pinpad, pc's, servers, firewall,routers,switches,thinclients, Most companies have a way to load through their network, but a few thinclients Dell,Lenovo,HP we need to load from an image, also I have found bootable linux diagnostics for registers and self checkouts, do not work in the other boot tools mentioned, they either start to load, and freeze or I get errors on boot. Ventoy is great if you have a few .iso images of windows or linux, for a PC, but there are a multitude of machines not in those categories that it simply doesn't work for. Not saying this will, just that some technicians deal with more than an off the shelf pc or laptop and Ventoy doesn't work for everything.
Been using the equivalent from Zalman for years. Very handy. Sadly not all Zalman models were of the same build quality but mine has survived the test of time until now.
nice review i have the iodd2541and its an aswesome tool ...(to the hell with rufus ventoy etc) i have a big question can you test it with an ssd a good one please? i use my iodd 2541 with a samsung 860 evo 1tb it give me a 250MB/s transfer max so i want to know if it is much faster..... please can you try ?
Cool. I made a similar device a couple years back using a Raspberry Pi Zero. Of course it is limited to USB2 speeds and storing disk images on the SD card, but it works well.
@@bitelaserkhalif I built mine from scratch using scripts and an IR sensor/remote but the gadget_cdrom project on github does the same thing with a nice OLED screen and menu.
Ventoy is amazing, let's you dump ISOs onto a USB or external HDD and choose which one to boot like you would with a dualboot system with grub, it's really neat
Been using that system (prev model, smaller LCD, different brand) for at least 10 years! Still have a couple of those but now I’m using an external SSD with Ventoy! Get with the times.
@@LemmingGoBoom There are things that ventoy can do that this cannot. Like a graphical launch menu (not pre-selection, LAUNCH) Like using any usb to fit multiple ISO If you need encryption i would understand, but this is rather a niche case scenario, most ISO do not contain personal / confidential information unless pre-programmed
@@llortaton2834 this has a GUI to selct stuff on its own screen, and it can fit multiple ISOs too. It's more compatible with older stuff or servers than Ventoy
there are 2.5" drives (generally older) that are thicker, I'm currently looking at 2 different HDDs, one is 9mm, the newer one is 7mm. I even have some ~10 year old Crucial M4 SSDs that are 9mm. also, RIP Optane :(
I originally purchased the Zalman version of this product, then the IODD touch version, then the mini, m.2 version, which is my current go-to. I have a 256GB usb with ventoy I keep on my keyring, but the IODD is great to have in addition. One of the best tools a PC tech can have in their LTT backpack :P
I used easy2boot for years and it works like a charm for most things. I only encountered problems with pfsense, which needed some more steps to make it work. It's a free alternative you can use in a standard pendrive
ST400 and IODD Mini SSD have additional advantages. You can secure boot to ISOs and VHDs without any compatibility issues. Encrypted drive. You can change the device type between 'Fixed disk' and 'Removable' so that the device or VHD either appears as a hard disk or as a removable flash drive. Of course, you can always install Ventoy or Easy2Boot onto the IODD drive as well. Then you can use the extra features of those utilities too such as live ISO + persistence, boot Windows ISOs and pick XML or injection file, install XP to SATA\SCSI drives (E2B only), Fully automated Windows install from unaltered Windows Install ISO with drivers, apps, etc. (E2B only), driver replacement (Ventoy only), etc.
Cheapo alternative that's not Ventoy: get an Android device that you can root (and just chuck a large SD card in there). Put DriveDroid on there (there's a free version, the paid one costs 2 bucks). DriveDroid will let you select if it should present as a CDR, USB-RO or USB-RW device. Works 95% of the time. Only thing that consistently refused to work were CasperFS based system when using the toram param but that's nothing new with multiboot devices.
A bunch of people mentioned Ventoy, which I've heard of and actually downloaded, but never used... So after setting up a flash drive with it real quick, I set out to test it out with different ISOs I use somewhat regularly. Somewhere between a third and a half of them do not boot using Ventoy.... so its definitely not a perfect replacement for this product. I'm going to get this thing ordered next week and try it out. It has some other features that I think could be quite useful as well.
Just use Ventoy and save yourself some money, lol. You just install it to any USB storage device (including portable SSD) and you just paste in any ISOs you want to boot from to any other partition on the drive (it scans for ISO files on all partitions on the drive being used).
Thanks for informing me of the existance of such a neat device! One note to the start about your comment on the necessity of specifying the maximum Height of 7mm: this is actually important, as some 2.5" harddrives are actually 9mm or even 11mm thick, thus incompatible with this enclosure (my 4TB seagate for example)
This one seems to be gone from Amazon already and replaced by something with a (probably) m.2 drive already in it going by the form factor. It kinda looks like an old candybar phone.
I've actually gotten my coworkers to start using Ventoy at work and at home. I even went as far as to turn our custom wim file into a fully bootable ISO complete with a autounattend file integrated with it. When you boot the ISO it wipes the disk, skips the OOBE, creates the users accounts and plops you onto the desktop of our custom Windows installation. Took a while to get figured out, but man is cool to watch and WAY faster to install than a WDS server if put on an SSD
back in the XP days, the unattended install processes were less refined but i spent piles of time making updated fully patched, updated drivers, with all my software so i could blow windows out and be fully usable in less than an hour. ie: codecs, ftp clients, different browser, different useful utilities. havent played with a WIM file for making an unattended new version of windows. ;) win10 largely works out of the box, updates most drivers, etc. but xp, i generally had a raid controller or other unsupported controller and needed .sys files loaded automagically before install could find disks etc. though this is true on win10 still? maybe newer builds have amd ryzen board raid boot support built in now. but i dont always run raid since pcie gen4 nvme drives are already way too fast to see any difference for a home user.
I had a similar product from IODD in the past, I no longer use it in favour of ventoy but it worked well. The only issue is that when I formatted the SSD the IODD gave me a non-descript error (to be fair the LCD panel was tiny). Apparently I had to defragment the drive for some reason. Windows was understandably skeptical of my wanting to defragment an SSD but I got it done and the IODD worked just fine.
The whole having to rush to select the correct iso before the system attempts to boot makes the entire thing really pointless when you could just use a regular external SSD with something like Ventoy which gives you a universal boot menu that will allow you to select on-screen which iso you want to use after the system has already booted from the SSD.
The old 2541 was storing the current selected CD 10 years ago. Either iodd had a bump on the head and forgot what these devices are used for or the review is wrong
I'm wondering, did anyone happen to mention Ventoy in the comment section yet? I heard it has VTOL and can mow a lawn while walking your dog all at the same time.
Having this same device but with an internal battery so you can power it on to select and mount iso prior to booting a computer would make it so much more user friendly.
They always used to.. I think it was a capacitor as it only lasted about 10 minutes but it was enough to select a drive and walk over to the machine that needed booting I hope the review is wrong on this point because it will massively reduce the usefulness of the new models.
Wow, this looks quite handy... might have to pick one of these up. Always a PITA when I put a physical in and have to dig out a flash drive. Flash drives have a habit if making their way to the very bottom of my drawer at my desk 😄. The encryption is a nice touch too
Had the zelman brand enclosure about 10years ago. Did a basic version of this. It a massive space saver, as we always carried a portable usb dvd drive and a bunch of writable discs
I've wanted something like this for a long, long time! However, I really think this needs to be built into Android. HTC used to have a drivers disk included on their phone and connecting USB with that driver selected would emulate a CD. I wish that would be leveraged and expanded for all ISOs.
Android emulating a cd drive from an ISO: this actually exists, but unfortunately needs a rooted device and maybe even a custom kernel. DriveDroid is one such app. Sad google never thought of making this a stock feature. Root today is too much of a pain. Used to root my phones, but you just lose to much today (apps that refuse to work when rooted)
I have a usb with several OS isos on it, that is what I have always done for like 20 years that price for the iodd is overkill as hell, can do the same as it is with a pi zero for $5 if you don't want to do many OS images on flash drive
I use an ST300 with a 4TB Samsung QVO at work. I do a ton of OS reloads, and this makes it incredibly easy. I've got every ISO I could possibly need, a copy of Hiren's and Macrium Reflect, and still plenty of space for several client backups. I do push them to a NAS periodically, but that's irrelevant. I've even got room for Snappy Driver Updater with a full driver repository. My biggest trouble is on faster computers with Fast Boot enabled. I often blow right by the F9/F12/F-Whatever boot options screen because the IODD hasn't completed loading the ISO yet, so I might have to reboot a few times to get it to catch the external boot device or go the long route and tell Windows to boot from it. I did notice adding the larger SSD slowed boot times on the device, which makes sense. Overall, I highly recommend this device to any bench techs out there.
I got a 128 gb USB 3.2 ventoy drive with a few flavors of Linux, PC troubleshooting software, drive management, proxmox, windows, and a few other files. It's awesome.
Just checked the listing:: 10/09/2022 :: Currently unavailable We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock. Was looking forward to trying this at work.
I’d recommend looking into “Ventoy”. It’s a tool that creates a boot loader on a USB drive, and you can then install ISOs to the USB drive. So you boot into the Ventoy OS, and then select whatever ISO you want and it will boot into that. Then you can have all your ISOs on one drive. No need to buy special hardware like this.
@@LemmingGoBoom And as he said, he understand that it's a professional tool that comes with extra features, but you just felt the need to comment anyway.
Good video. Ignoring NAND drives in it, a slim mechanical 2.5 inch HDD in there could allow for SWAP space and then another Reiser4.04 partition for fast journaling. Beats needing to use fat32 as swap space although that can be somewhat handy sometimes too. It is cool it can be a CDROM drive emulator. One would hope to emulate a FDD on it (like with PXE) or an ieee1284 bootable or serial rs232 emulation. Drivers and IOMMU are thereby problems circumvented via such a method. Plop Linux would be the ironic ISO to have on it, and useful. It would be good if it could emulate being an rj45 ethernet cable crossover cable linked drive. You make a good point about lack of ability to select an ISO on the fly and that makes one think a gotek drive for a floppy emulator could have done that instead, and then one might PXE or piggyback to such an extra drive device. A workaround would be to put ubcd538.iso and hiren's on that device so as to then select an ISO via keyboard when operating the entire PC lookng at the big desktop plasma screen monitor onscreen. It is a nice gadget and an extra version could be made with a rj45 ethernet bootable port. This information I write is to help you and the manufacturer. Thing is, at 100 quid, one could build a gadget like that out of a raspberry-pi style SBC (amd64 or intel maybe) with RAM that can be use for storage, and not just the hdd inside it. Tha can solve your vhd catch22 with a lot of tinkering. My comment has no hate in it and I do no harm. I am not appalled or afraid, boasting or envying or complaining... Just saying. Psalms23: Giving thanks and praise to the Lord and peace and love. Also, I'd say Matthew6.
FYI for anyone looking into one of these. IODD has since released a firmware update that enables saving the chosen ISO or VHD for repeated booting. You have to manually save the state using a key on the keypad. Once saved, it’ll auto load the chosen file every time it’s powered on. Good when you have Windows To Go, a Linux live environment, or a full on installation. Be sure to configure the system to show up as an internal HDD instead of external USB for best results.
why not use a software solution on the ssd? there are enough bootloaders, that can handle just straightup booting from an iso. also there are apps for your phone, which essentially do the same. if you are not using the hundreds gbs of free space on your phone, you can just download an app for image mounting, load up your iso and the contents of iso are directly exposed through the usb-connection. for the last solution, you can even use the wifi connection to quickly download a debian iso to your phone, mount it and use it as a rescue disk.
I've been using a program called AIO Boot for a few years now. I can boot from both windows and linux also able to boot to special diagnostic cd images. Very easy to use and free!
I have tried to setup the device but cant get many iso files to work. With "Ubuntu" giving "missing magic number" error when attempting to boot and windows also failing to boot when using the IODD.
extremely large downside: this thing will require you to DEFRAG your SSD because it has trouble with mapping non-contiguous memory. there's not much info on this thing, so it may be a dealbreaker for anyone reading this.
Ventoy works for anything with PC BIOS and/or UEFI if all you want is a thumb drive that you can copy multiple ISOs and VHDs onto and then boot multiple machines from those ISOs and VHDs. It's free software that you install into a flash drive, then you just copy the filesystem images onto it, and when you boot up it presents you a menu on the PC. I have Win10 and Win11 installers, Ubuntu, Proxmox, Kali, Gallium, and a few distros of the day, plus a Hackintosh VHD that works on many Intel Skylake+ laptops. Sometimes I joke that my office is on my keychain.
I've been using an iodd mini for years now not only to re-image customer PCs on-the-run but to boot up IBM "firmware update" USB images via 16GB USB key VHDs on servers. Also used it to install pfSense, OPNsense, and Untangle serial images on Protectli boxes. I think 2023 is going to be the year I upgrade to an ST400 with a 1TB SSD drive.
I bought one of these because of this video about a year ago, and all I can say is "SO CLOSE!" This is almost a great device, but it has one MAJOR problem that makes it a drawer-piece. It has no internal power, so it has no memory of settings. That means that when you power on the pc that you want to boot, you have to race down to the iso you want and select it before post gets to the boot process. If it fails, you have to reset the pc and try again because when the pc cycles power, so does the IODD, and it doesn't keep the iso selected, so it's a race condition. It's much less a problem for servers because they tend to take a long time to boot, but modern PCs tend to be booted before I can select an ISO on this. All it would take is some small rechargeable cell and this thing would be amazing. One little battery is the difference between amazing and trash. I bet some Engineer wanted to and his boss said "why? can't you just power it from the USB port?" We've all been there.
I've been using the older iodd/zalman branded products like this for years as a PC tech. While tools like Ventoy are amazing for what I imagine the casual users needs, these things present both UEFI and legacy boot options based on the host PC and ISO loaded. I've had Ventoy not work properly on a LOT of older systems (I deal with a lot of older folks on a budget that just need their old PC working again). Another thing I love is the ability to set it in optical only, HDD only, or both so you limit access to the system seeing your data on the rest of the drive while booting from an ISO, or use the drive to do simple backups.
I don't think the casual user really needs this over Ventoy, but I tried switching away and that wasn't an option for me, now I just keep Ventoy on the drive I carry in my pocket with a smaller selection of images and really only use it when I don't have my full bag with me.
Exactly! Ventoy works wonderfully for ISO booting, but does have specific limitations or weaknesses compared to the ST400. All the comments below this are akin to 'just use Linux bro' because they only consider their own specific use cases.
EDIT: Love you @Lemming!
@@CraftComputing I think this reply is a bit too dismissive of the criticism, because in the video you directly contrast this device to carrying around multiple USB drives or needing to flash a USB drive every time you want to use it to make sure it has the correct image on it. Ventoy IS an alternative to THAT case, even if it's not as full-featured as the product you're testing.
Of course this product can do things that Ventoy can't, but Ventoy doesn't have the problem of having to manually select images, and for many of the people who watch your channel Ventoy deserves a mention because we don't need those extra features. I think that's why so many people are talking about Ventoy in the comments.
Yeah, it's more for enterprise where value (price performance) doesn't matter...
@@amp888 I totally second your opinion.
Yup, I've been using the zalman for 5-6 years now. Started with a 320 GB laptop drive that was a leftover, then a 500 GB SSD and currently a 2TB SSD...
have you tried ventoy? does the same and costs nothing and can be used w/ any USB stick
If you actually watched the video... you'd realize there are things this can do that Ventoy cannot.
@@LemmingGoBoom yeah, but in practice, these things are flaky at best...
@@Absolute-Unit I've got one that I've been using for 10 years now, they work just fine.
As if Ventoy is 100% rock solid...
@@CraftComputing Well, you can't beat the value proposition and for most cases it might just be good enough.
I use Ventoy to boot from multiple ISOs on a single USB flash drive. Does this method not work well for you? I don't get to play with a lot of server hardware but I'd imagine it would work just fine. This little device is very cool though
Most underrated comment on the video. Glad to see some other Ventoy users representing!
There are things this can do that Ventoy cannot.
| Most underrated comment on the video |
Yes, because no one else mentioned Ventoy ;-)
I salute you Jeff for the 4D chess move of not mentioning Ventoy or the other 2 or three tools that allow you to make a multiboot usb drive, ensuring everyone and their dog will flood the comment section pointing that out. That's what we call a pro youtuber move. ENGAGEMENT ENGAGED hahha.
Also yes I know the limitations of the software tools, I also identify as IT administrator and I've had to burn CDs some times because stuff wouldn't boot otherwise
Oh, now I feel stupid. Lol
Yeahhhhhh seems that way lol.
It is a definite pro strat. People point out Ventoy, people point out to them Ventoy's shortcomings, sometimes people come back to defend Ventoy... and I'm part of it too now.
make sure you lick the balls when you go all the way down the shaft. youtubers like that.
So it’s Ventoy as Hardware
thought the same. I've been using an external USB hard drive with Ventoy for years.
I bought one of these cases and returned it after a day. I found it a bit clunky and learned about a ventoy right after. Great program all around.
One thing about this hardware one is that I was trying to get vdi images working in read/write. That'd be awesome for a dos drive with firmware updates, etc. Never did work in my breif testing.
I don't think there's a way to have a read/write image in Ventoy.
Much more powerful than that. AES256 Encryption in hardware, VHD Bootable mounting, plus, you know, ISO mounting like Ventoy.
Ye. it's cool, but ventoy works with everything and it's free. But I can't really flash chromeos flex on it, cuz... google 😵
@@CraftComputing Now that I’ve watched further looks quite cool, Ventoy does the job most of the time for me but something I might consider in the future.
One note about the encryption: on the IODD Mini, at least, enabling encryption massively reduces the read and write performance. I think it was something like 1/4 the performance.
I'd be curious to see if the drive is *actually* encrypted if you take it out of the case. One Amazon review says they were able to read the data from a locked used drive that was sold as new.
Not sure about the mini, but I have the 2541 and whilst I don't need the encryption so haven't turned it on (I went for the 2541 over the 2531 as I wasn't sure of the reliability of the side toggle switch control on the latter), based on the manual it seems that the encryption happens in real-time, as if you accidentally turn on encryption you can back out as long as you haven't written any data (i.e. initialised the now blank partition table) yet by just turning off the encryption. The encryption is just with the pin code entered, as the decryption is compatible with the desktop version of the product, the 3544.
Really wish you would have done a comparison between this drive and ventoy on a standard USB Drive. I use a M.2 NVME enclosure that isn't all that much bigger than a USB Stick with Ventoy (I have a second one with Medicat Installed). It is lightning fast and I would like to have had some kind of comparison to this device. Sounds like Ventoy has a real advantage in that you don't have to choose your .iso until it boots.
There's a number of things this can do that Ventoy cannot. One useful one is being able to hide the storage from the booted OS so it only sees internal drives. Windows has a bad habit of writing boot files to external drives.
Exactly! I see no real advantage over Ventoy.
@@LemmingGoBoom Never had this problem. Windows will create boot drive on external drive only if you select that external drive as target during installation.
P.S.: Some USB drives have a physical switch which toggles write protection. Would do the same thing. At a fraction of the cost.
@@LemmingGoBoom I've never seen Windows bootable files on removable drives, but what Windows does is it writes hidden "SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION" and "RECYCLE BIN" folders on all drives, including removable ones.
Yeah since learning about ventoy I have been so happy adding ISO to it and using it in many different scenarios
If you want a cheaper options you could use the tool ventoy on a 128GB USB Stick. It offers you also the possibility to mount iso's with a nice boot selector.
There's a number of things this can do that Ventoy cannot. One useful one is being able to hide the storage from the booted OS so it only sees internal drives. Windows has a bad habit of writing boot files to external drives.
@@LemmingGoBoom not really a use case for me. I use windows only for gaming and rest is Linux and I also only have Linux isos or XCP-ng and TrueNAS on my stick. And as soon as the devs of the games I play and enable proton support in their anti cheat that will remove windows completely from my life.
@@LemmingGoBoom I installed windows a thousand times and I have never had this happen to me. how are you letting windows just do want it wants.
no VHDs though. I use ventoy as well, but having options is good. Or sometimes i need to boot multiple PCs at once, which is why it's nice to have options!
Looks like just Ventoy with a marked up price? It's just an enclosure??
EDIT: Looks like it does more, but not worth the extra money for an enclosure IMO.
There are things this can do that Ventoy cannot.
@@LemmingGoBoom Yep, But for most people needing just an easier way for bootable ISOs this does not seem worth it.
@@msinfo32 I'm buying one right now, saves the 10 is USB images I use often.
Great video! Thanks for making me aware of this.
it's on my list. I've used Ventoy and it works well enough except for when it doesn't work at all with certain ISOs, but in addition to the UEFI issues you've mentioned I've also had issues with the Ventoy disk getting corrupted somehow when inserted into a Mac or PC and either losing the ability to boot or not mounting the partition holding the ISOs. This looks to be a much more robust, less annoying solution; just select the ISO you want, plug it in, and go.
And then there's the advantage of being able to check the contents without plugging it into a computer.
I think this might also work for booting up Raspberry Pis and various ARM/x86 SBCs that support USB SSD booting?
But what really sells me on it is the ability to use it to boot a USB version of Windows. I have a USB stick floating around just for that, and I'd much rather consolidate that and all my ISO images and Raspberry Pi bootable SD cards.
I've never run into a valid ISO that ventoy couldn't boot.
Great, another super cool gadget I want but don't really need! Thanks Jeff 😉
That's why I'm here :-D
(angry wallet noises)
Another possible alternative is a rooted Android smartphone with DriveDroid or similar software. If you already have the phone it's basically free. The only problem is it's been very unreliable on my current phone, likely due to some hardware or firmware quirks. But if it works it's great. One unique advantage is that since it's a smartphone you can download new ISOs without needing any extra hardware.
But that's the thing about yours or other software solutions. They aren't even close to 100% reliable. This one is simpler, so if you have to use it often, it adds up in fuckery avoided.
@@SomeThingOrMaybeAnother And the IODD is just software running on a different device. I think my situation is unreliable because of a flaky USB port. IIRC it used to be more reliable.
I made a USB stick awhile back that had a GRUB environment and was set up to query the drive for a list of ISOs, and make a menu entry for them. You booted from the drive, then just selected the ISO you wanted, grub booted it and you were good to go. Obviously, it wasn't perfect, but it worked pretty darn well
Yup. Grub2.
I've done the same but using SYSLINUX on a USB stick, and a static menu of bootable kernels. Only worked with booting linux distros, but that's all I needed it for.
Grub2 would have been better, but I was already playing around with PXELINUX too at the time and it was a fun project.
Yup, syslinux! Thank you for correcting me. Custom background, everything.
There is an option to save state (auto mount ISO on reconnect). This feature was available even on the earliest model IODD 2531 (Zalman VE300).
In IODD ST400 you just need to press 9 on the keypad for 3 seconds - drive will save state and enter sleep (ready for disconnect). Be sure to safely remove drive in Windows BEFORE entering save state status to be sure that all data is safely written to the drive before disconnecting (for NTFS formatted drives).
thanks for this, testing and presenting this product to my IT dept this week.
@@AndrewEvenstarNo problem. This drive is really useful for servicing. And oppose to Ventoy and other USB boot systems, it works with older systems, like 20-years old computers that come with some wood cutting machines in our company.
@@CoreyPL that's awesome. and you mostly just load isos on it and have it load like a virtual disc drive right? anything special you had to do with those old systems?
@@AndrewEvenstar nothing special. If it's able to boot from USB then it will boot from the enclosure. It supports EFI and standard legacy booting. Mounting iso is everything you need to do.
Also be sure to upgrade the firmware once you got the device. There is also a wiki made by manufacturer where you can find list of all the functions bind to different keys and key-combos.
@@CoreyPL very much appreciated for your help. I'll review these notes and the wiki when I test tomorrow !
Ive been using the ZALMAN ZM-VE300 for over 8 years crossflashed with IODD firmware to support vhd/vhdx booting. Its still kicking.
Hey could you elaborate on that crossflash? I have that same zalman and would love to add vhd support!
@@NateBluehooves there is a "ioddfirmware" github repo with instructions.
I've had an IODD Mini for a while now. It is my most useful tool, period. On mine at least, you can press and hold the disconnect button while an ISO is mounted, and it will remain mounted when the device is powered on and unlocked the next time.
I have the 2541 and the ISO stays mounted as long as you stay in the same directory, even if the PC powers off the USB port on a reboot.
I've owned the older iodd-2541 for many, many years. I don't use it very often anymore, but when I do, it's a joy. I threw in a pretty big SSD which comes in handy when I want to take an image of a machine before blowing it away with a new OS.
Oh my goodness the clonezilla move, how did i not think of that :O
I'm so mad that I just found out about this. I spent the time and money to get a tone of 32 and 64GB USB drives, a USB drive organizer, create all the bootable drives I need, and label them all. This would have saved me so much time.
Or you couldve downloaded ventoy and use a single or a couple usb drives
@@gglovato some machines just refuse to boot to ventoy depending on age and firmware on the hosts.
It's a great tool, but can be very finicky unless all the hardware you encounter is newer.
@@kienanvella agreed. I am a pc tech by trade and ventoy works a little less than half the time on my customers’ systems. If you have modern non-OEM hardware you probably don’t need this, but the commenters acting like ventoy works great on all systems need to remember that their experiences are NOT universal.
@@kienanvella i know, it does happen to me too, and i keep regular pendrives for those rogue computers
@@gglovato as stated above, it does t always work. And I’d rather not have to wait to find out it doesn’t and waste the time to make a new bootable that does.
what i learnt from this video is IODD ST400 is a trash. its better to use thumb drives and rufus!!!!
So Jeff. I have a question. Do you hate my bank account? because i watch videos from you and them boom! punch in my account. Think my wife gona ban me from watching your channel. (SO far i held off on it because the homelab and other Jeff inspiring purchases have benefited her lol)
Great video as always dude.
Well, there is a button in your keyboard, since the 80’s that does something magical. When you press “pause” during boot it literally pauses the process so you can select what ever iso you want… my first hd enclosure like that was a zalmann, back 15 years ago… still have it! Works perfectly! Now iodd has it in NVMe version
Wow. I had always wondered why that was still there. Thank you brother. :)
@@variouselite Unpause with Ctrl....
Or... you could just install Ventoy onto a USB and copy multiple ISOs onto a single flash drive and be able to boot of each of them when you boot off that USB.... no money needed, no extra hardware needed.
When you're using encryption on this device, be sure to safely eject it in Windows and then on the device itself. One of the sub menus has a safe eject. I've had a couple of instances when I didn't do the second part and I lost all the data on the drive. Yes, I'm running the latest firmware
Sorry.... I'm too damn cheap for that. I think I'll stick with cheap-o Thumb Drives and just label them with a Silver Marker.
Have you tried Ventoy.. used it for years, allows you to buy a 32gig stick, ventoy runs a small os that allows you select from a list of whatever ISO's you have stored on there... so much easier and cheaper than this (albeit super nerdy and i want it) option. I usually have a couple of linux, a promox and a windows iso. super easy..
There's a number of things this can do that Ventoy cannot. One useful one is being able to hide the storage from the booted OS so it only sees internal drives. Windows has a bad habit of writing boot files to external drives.
Couldn't you accomplish the same thing with a GRUB config file that provides a menu to select from the different ISOs on a partition?
Like some other commenters, I've had the older Zalman one for a while, absolutely amazing piece of kit, and has saved my bacon many times in my old sysadmin job. One thing we observed with our units is that they tended to eventually kill any SSDs installed inside them (might be because at the time SSDs weren't really a thing and the old firmware didn't manage wear levelling properly. Likely this has been fixed in newer models).
I'm wonder if a lack of TRIM is the main culprit, but that's speculation. I've had more and more early (~120GB, esp Kingston A400) drives fail regardless of use case.
You can flash the Zalman to the newer IODD firmware btw.
Thanks for that@@Nexxxeh I didn't know there was newer firmware that might work better. Will give it a go.
Correction, Mac OS supports reading nfts without plugins. You need a plug-in if you want to write to nfts.
NTFS support has been natively in Linux since Kernel 2.4, with a major rewrite having been done for the filesystem in 4.14
it's low performance and there are no functional checkdisk tools, but yeah, it will work for a while
its still kinda buggy/issuey compared to a normal linux fs. but it does work mostly
@@iodehk5205 Oh absolutely, I'm an ext4 or btrfs guy myself; I just wanted to clarify the slight misinformation in the video stating "NTFS is not supported on Linux", when that's factually incorrect.
It doesn't work the best as a native fs for Linux, but Linux can access the fs just fine for data management and transfers.
Since kernel 5.15, the new ntfs3 driver is included, which performs pretty much the same as Windows.
One possible caveat is that some older PCs refuse to boot from USB 3.X. Since I use cheap, semi-obsolete systems for specific purposes, all my OS install flash drives are USB 2.0. I've even seen this from some older systems that came stock with USB 3.0. onboard.
You can restrict the USB mode in the settings of the device. Or just use a USB 2.0 only cable...
What about Ventoy?
"NTFS is not natively supported by [...] Linux"
So we're just going to ignore the NTFS3 driver built right into the Linux kernel since version 5.15?
The VHD part of these is really cool. You can set up a few Linux installs and windows 2 go, and then you need way less isos.
Another cool option with VHD is you could boot into one of multiple live CD ISOs, but still have VHD for your other files and have writable media, while the live cd images will be read only. Great for portable setup, as well switching distros, while keeping some big downloads (maybe games for example), intact.
Easy-To-Boot is my go to. I have a 128GB USB stick with a couple dozen Linux distros, a few Windows versions, and a few utilities.
I've used the Zalman models over the years they're great to carry everywhere. An advantage over a normal bootable stick is that it's read-only, so can't be nuked by malware on an infected machine :)
I have an old 1GB Imation USB thumb drive that has a write-protect switch. It dates back to the first 1GB thumb drive days. I've never come across another drive with a write-protect switch. I had a couple just like it that I found very useful for moving unclassified data to classified systems. Saved the time of waiting for our slow and inconvenient data moving service, or burning CD/DVDs. This was like 18 years ago. Argh. I'm old. 😱
I checked the IODD website and you can switch to "read-only" on this device, which is nice !
Nice review, if you can find this product as reviewed. But again, I've still never seen one of these Amazon product links actually go to the product reviewed. They don't even have the IODD ST400 available ANYWHERE on Amazon (searched Amazon, full site, for "IODD ST400" and variants), but instead want to sell me another item from the same company (the IODD Mini) for $133 with a 256GB SSD, or over $170 with a 512GB SSD. These Amazon product links just suck.
There is software to turn Raspberry Pi into a functionally similar device. There is also multi-boot software to keep many ISOs on a single thumb drive and select the one you need at boot time.
What is it called?
@@brucekives2194 Ventoy, Easy2Boot - this is multi-boot software for USB drives. Don't remember how the RPi analog is called.
Yeah... been doing this on usb drives ever since Grub2 came out. Didn't have to purchase anything, just a usb stick large enough for th3 isos and memory requirements. BTW. I managed to pull this off using isolinux and wimboot from iPXE.
Loved the older Zalman ones (and the original Korean OEM that made them). The USB 3.0 ones were bad about breaking off the USB connectors, but the 2.0 ones were robust. Hundreds of ISOs and floppy disk images all on one SSD was great.
Yeah I bought the USB 3.0 one from Amazon years ago and got the 2.0 one... and I kept it cause its much better than the 3.0 version. That one also lets you mount floppy, hard drive, and removable disk images on top of the ISOs. I can't work without it.
Mine broke on the toggle selector
My Zalman one lost its firmware after a few years. It took arcane prayers and a P4-era PC running XP and software from a Russian forum to get it working again, but it did resurrect and is now with a fellow tech.
I bought a newer IODD USB 3.0 one which has been flawless.
Easy2Boot
2TB Sabrent 2242 NVMe in a USB3 enclosure
All the ISO's
Macrium Reflect images
useful applications
Documents
Win2Go
all on a thumb drive.
I've started using Ventoy a while ago, it's wonderful. I only have a single GPT one at this point, but may make an MBR version for the rare times that I still need that.
AS a field service technician, been looking for something like this, And for anyone who says try Ventoy, Sardu,Easy2Boot, or others, I have, they don't work for most of my needs, I work in retail environments, Cash register, self checkouts, pinpad, pc's, servers, firewall,routers,switches,thinclients, Most companies have a way to load through their network, but a few thinclients Dell,Lenovo,HP we need to load from an image, also I have found bootable linux diagnostics for registers and self checkouts, do not work in the other boot tools mentioned, they either start to load, and freeze or I get errors on boot. Ventoy is great if you have a few .iso images of windows or linux, for a PC, but there are a multitude of machines not in those categories that it simply doesn't work for. Not saying this will, just that some technicians deal with more than an off the shelf pc or laptop and Ventoy doesn't work for everything.
Been using the equivalent from Zalman for years. Very handy. Sadly not all Zalman models were of the same build quality but mine has survived the test of time until now.
Right with you. My Zalman is starting to show its age.
The Zaman ones were relabeled IODD devices.
nice review i have the iodd2541and its an aswesome tool ...(to the hell with rufus ventoy etc) i have a big question can you test it with an ssd a good one please? i use my iodd 2541 with a samsung 860 evo 1tb it give me a 250MB/s transfer max so i want to know if it is much faster..... please can you try ?
Cool. I made a similar device a couple years back using a Raspberry Pi Zero. Of course it is limited to USB2 speeds and storing disk images on the SD card, but it works well.
Can you give me a guide (prefer googleable keyword because UA-cam hates URLs)
@@bitelaserkhalif I built mine from scratch using scripts and an IR sensor/remote but the gadget_cdrom project on github does the same thing with a nice OLED screen and menu.
Alternatively; get a flash drive with big enough size (128 normally works), install Ventoy on it and plop every .iso you want to have for booting
Ventoy is amazing, let's you dump ISOs onto a USB or external HDD and choose which one to boot like you would with a dualboot system with grub, it's really neat
Doh. Currently unavailable on Amazon and " We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock."
Been using that system (prev model, smaller LCD, different brand) for at least 10 years!
Still have a couple of those but now I’m using an external SSD with Ventoy!
Get with the times.
There are things this can do that Ventoy cannot.
@@LemmingGoBoom There are things that ventoy can do that this cannot.
Like a graphical launch menu (not pre-selection, LAUNCH)
Like using any usb to fit multiple ISO
If you need encryption i would understand, but this is rather a niche case scenario, most ISO do not contain personal / confidential information unless pre-programmed
@@llortaton2834I don't really see how a graphical launch menu is that much of an advantage?
It's easier to see, easier to navigate are 2 benefits ventoy has over it
@@llortaton2834 this has a GUI to selct stuff on its own screen, and it can fit multiple ISOs too. It's more compatible with older stuff or servers than Ventoy
there are 2.5" drives (generally older) that are thicker, I'm currently looking at 2 different HDDs, one is 9mm, the newer one is 7mm. I even have some ~10 year old Crucial M4 SSDs that are 9mm.
also, RIP Optane :(
I originally purchased the Zalman version of this product, then the IODD touch version, then the mini, m.2 version, which is my current go-to. I have a 256GB usb with ventoy I keep on my keyring, but the IODD is great to have in addition. One of the best tools a PC tech can have in their LTT backpack :P
Linus would be proud 🥲🤣
Master Jeff If you want Multi ISOs on a USB Flash drive why not use "" YUMI "" ?
I used easy2boot for years and it works like a charm for most things. I only encountered problems with pfsense, which needed some more steps to make it work.
It's a free alternative you can use in a standard pendrive
I used to use e2b for years but then got one of these enclosures and won't go back. These are so much easier to use.
OR you could just label your usb sticks
Great add 👍
ST400 and IODD Mini SSD have additional advantages. You can secure boot to ISOs and VHDs without any compatibility issues. Encrypted drive. You can change the device type between 'Fixed disk' and 'Removable' so that the device or VHD either appears as a hard disk or as a removable flash drive. Of course, you can always install Ventoy or Easy2Boot onto the IODD drive as well. Then you can use the extra features of those utilities too such as live ISO + persistence, boot Windows ISOs and pick XML or injection file, install XP to SATA\SCSI drives (E2B only), Fully automated Windows install from unaltered Windows Install ISO with drivers, apps, etc. (E2B only), driver replacement (Ventoy only), etc.
Ventroy? Ever heard of it?
There are things this can do that Ventoy cannot.
You could also use a rooted android phone (up to android 10) with drivedroid. No magical device needed.
Awesome now please make a video on how to actually setup and use the thing since the documentation is garbage.
Why not just set up a large flash drive with ventoy and load it will all your ISO’s?
Cheapo alternative that's not Ventoy: get an Android device that you can root (and just chuck a large SD card in there). Put DriveDroid on there (there's a free version, the paid one costs 2 bucks). DriveDroid will let you select if it should present as a CDR, USB-RO or USB-RW device. Works 95% of the time. Only thing that consistently refused to work were CasperFS based system when using the toram param but that's nothing new with multiboot devices.
Shhh! People like to buy thingies and do stuff the hard way.
Ventoy still seems more easy and convenient. not to mention that you can use existing usb sticks
A bunch of people mentioned Ventoy, which I've heard of and actually downloaded, but never used... So after setting up a flash drive with it real quick, I set out to test it out with different ISOs I use somewhat regularly. Somewhere between a third and a half of them do not boot using Ventoy.... so its definitely not a perfect replacement for this product. I'm going to get this thing ordered next week and try it out. It has some other features that I think could be quite useful as well.
how has your experience been? our IT dpt just got one and i've just began testing it.
I used to use a normal USB stick with easy2boot to achieve the same purpose.
You could just use Ventoy - does almost the same thing, without the need to preselect which iso to use.
Just use Ventoy and save yourself some money, lol. You just install it to any USB storage device (including portable SSD) and you just paste in any ISOs you want to boot from to any other partition on the drive (it scans for ISO files on all partitions on the drive being used).
Exactly.
I tried to make a comment about this but my comments just get automatically hidden for this video.
Thanks for informing me of the existance of such a neat device! One note to the start about your comment on the necessity of specifying the maximum Height of 7mm: this is actually important, as some 2.5" harddrives are actually 9mm or even 11mm thick, thus incompatible with this enclosure (my 4TB seagate for example)
Exactly. Some drives are still "large"
This one seems to be gone from Amazon already and replaced by something with a (probably) m.2 drive already in it going by the form factor. It kinda looks like an old candybar phone.
The mini one is actually an older device.
I've actually gotten my coworkers to start using Ventoy at work and at home. I even went as far as to turn our custom wim file into a fully bootable ISO complete with a autounattend file integrated with it. When you boot the ISO it wipes the disk, skips the OOBE, creates the users accounts and plops you onto the desktop of our custom Windows installation. Took a while to get figured out, but man is cool to watch and WAY faster to install than a WDS server if put on an SSD
back in the XP days, the unattended install processes were less refined but i spent piles of time making updated fully patched, updated drivers, with all my software so i could blow windows out and be fully usable in less than an hour. ie: codecs, ftp clients, different browser, different useful utilities. havent played with a WIM file for making an unattended new version of windows. ;) win10 largely works out of the box, updates most drivers, etc. but xp, i generally had a raid controller or other unsupported controller and needed .sys files loaded automagically before install could find disks etc. though this is true on win10 still? maybe newer builds have amd ryzen board raid boot support built in now. but i dont always run raid since pcie gen4 nvme drives are already way too fast to see any difference for a home user.
I deff am going to get this at some point. I know i wanna screw around with a bunch of linux distros at some point and this will save me cash.
They're invaluably handy, I've had my older one for like 15 years now. Every time I use it it just reminds me how freaking awesome it is.
I had a similar product from IODD in the past, I no longer use it in favour of ventoy but it worked well. The only issue is that when I formatted the SSD the IODD gave me a non-descript error (to be fair the LCD panel was tiny). Apparently I had to defragment the drive for some reason. Windows was understandably skeptical of my wanting to defragment an SSD but I got it done and the IODD worked just fine.
Same, i used the old one with a numpad, also for encryption
The whole having to rush to select the correct iso before the system attempts to boot makes the entire thing really pointless when you could just use a regular external SSD with something like Ventoy which gives you a universal boot menu that will allow you to select on-screen which iso you want to use after the system has already booted from the SSD.
The old 2541 was storing the current selected CD 10 years ago. Either iodd had a bump on the head and forgot what these devices are used for or the review is wrong
ventoy does this and is free.
I'm wondering, did anyone happen to mention Ventoy in the comment section yet? I heard it has VTOL and can mow a lawn while walking your dog all at the same time.
Ask your doctor if Ventoy is right for you.
Having this same device but with an internal battery so you can power it on to select and mount iso prior to booting a computer would make it so much more user friendly.
They always used to.. I think it was a capacitor as it only lasted about 10 minutes but it was enough to select a drive and walk over to the machine that needed booting
I hope the review is wrong on this point because it will massively reduce the usefulness of the new models.
Cheap USB sticks or a $200 shell...
🤔
Wow, this looks quite handy... might have to pick one of these up. Always a PITA when I put a physical in and have to dig out a flash drive. Flash drives have a habit if making their way to the very bottom of my drawer at my desk 😄. The encryption is a nice touch too
Had the zelman brand enclosure about 10years ago. Did a basic version of this. It a massive space saver, as we always carried a portable usb dvd drive and a bunch of writable discs
I've wanted something like this for a long, long time! However, I really think this needs to be built into Android. HTC used to have a drivers disk included on their phone and connecting USB with that driver selected would emulate a CD. I wish that would be leveraged and expanded for all ISOs.
Android emulating a cd drive from an ISO: this actually exists, but unfortunately needs a rooted device and maybe even a custom kernel. DriveDroid is one such app.
Sad google never thought of making this a stock feature. Root today is too much of a pain. Used to root my phones, but you just lose to much today (apps that refuse to work when rooted)
You don't browse Amazon.....Amazon browses you 😃
I have a usb with several OS isos on it, that is what I have always done for like 20 years
that price for the iodd is overkill as hell, can do the same as it is with a pi zero for $5 if you don't want to do many OS images on flash drive
Isn't NTFS natively supported from >5.12 kernel?
he is an apple boi
HeY gUYs dId yOu kNoW AbOut VeNtOy
Ventoy
I use an ST300 with a 4TB Samsung QVO at work. I do a ton of OS reloads, and this makes it incredibly easy. I've got every ISO I could possibly need, a copy of Hiren's and Macrium Reflect, and still plenty of space for several client backups. I do push them to a NAS periodically, but that's irrelevant. I've even got room for Snappy Driver Updater with a full driver repository. My biggest trouble is on faster computers with Fast Boot enabled. I often blow right by the F9/F12/F-Whatever boot options screen because the IODD hasn't completed loading the ISO yet, so I might have to reboot a few times to get it to catch the external boot device or go the long route and tell Windows to boot from it. I did notice adding the larger SSD slowed boot times on the device, which makes sense. Overall, I highly recommend this device to any bench techs out there.
I got a 128 gb USB 3.2 ventoy drive with a few flavors of Linux, PC troubleshooting software, drive management, proxmox, windows, and a few other files. It's awesome.
Just checked the listing:: 10/09/2022 :: Currently unavailable
We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.
Was looking forward to trying this at work.
I’d recommend looking into “Ventoy”. It’s a tool that creates a boot loader on a USB drive, and you can then install ISOs to the USB drive. So you boot into the Ventoy OS, and then select whatever ISO you want and it will boot into that. Then you can have all your ISOs on one drive. No need to buy special hardware like this.
I understand this is a professional tool but I will stick with my m.2 nvme Ventoy install drive. Blazing fast :D
This is a cool peace of kit tho.
There are things this can do that Ventoy cannot.
@@LemmingGoBoom And as he said, he understand that it's a professional tool that comes with extra features, but you just felt the need to comment anyway.
@@llortaton2834 He said nothing about extra features, he just said it was a professional tool.
Beyond TrueNas, proxmox, opensense, VMware, Ubuntu, Fedora, Kali, tails, and Windows, what ISOs do you keep on hand?
Good video. Ignoring NAND drives in it, a slim mechanical 2.5 inch HDD in there could allow for SWAP space and then another Reiser4.04 partition for fast journaling. Beats needing to use fat32 as swap space although that can be somewhat handy sometimes too. It is cool it can be a CDROM drive emulator. One would hope to emulate a FDD on it (like with PXE) or an ieee1284 bootable or serial rs232 emulation. Drivers and IOMMU are thereby problems circumvented via such a method. Plop Linux would be the ironic ISO to have on it, and useful. It would be good if it could emulate being an rj45 ethernet cable crossover cable linked drive. You make a good point about lack of ability to select an ISO on the fly and that makes one think a gotek drive for a floppy emulator could have done that instead, and then one might PXE or piggyback to such an extra drive device. A workaround would be to put ubcd538.iso and hiren's on that device so as to then select an ISO via keyboard when operating the entire PC lookng at the big desktop plasma screen monitor onscreen. It is a nice gadget and an extra version could be made with a rj45 ethernet bootable port. This information I write is to help you and the manufacturer. Thing is, at 100 quid, one could build a gadget like that out of a raspberry-pi style SBC (amd64 or intel maybe) with RAM that can be use for storage, and not just the hdd inside it. Tha can solve your vhd catch22 with a lot of tinkering.
My comment has no hate in it and I do no harm. I am not appalled or afraid, boasting or envying or complaining... Just saying. Psalms23: Giving thanks and praise to the Lord and peace and love. Also, I'd say Matthew6.
Trippy, technically and spiritually insightful comment! God bless.
FYI for anyone looking into one of these.
IODD has since released a firmware update that enables saving the chosen ISO or VHD for repeated booting. You have to manually save the state using a key on the keypad. Once saved, it’ll auto load the chosen file every time it’s powered on.
Good when you have Windows To Go, a Linux live environment, or a full on installation.
Be sure to configure the system to show up as an internal HDD instead of external USB for best results.
why not use a software solution on the ssd? there are enough bootloaders, that can handle just straightup booting from an iso. also there are apps for your phone, which essentially do the same. if you are not using the hundreds gbs of free space on your phone, you can just download an app for image mounting, load up your iso and the contents of iso are directly exposed through the usb-connection. for the last solution, you can even use the wifi connection to quickly download a debian iso to your phone, mount it and use it as a rescue disk.
I've been using a program called AIO Boot for a few years now. I can boot from both windows and linux also able to boot to special diagnostic cd images. Very easy to use and free!
I have tried to setup the device but cant get many iso files to work. With "Ubuntu" giving "missing magic number" error when attempting to boot and windows also failing to boot when using the IODD.
100$ for a case? No thank you. Have a flash card or a simple ssd with write protect switch and put ventoy on it. Boot multiple isos no problem.
extremely large downside: this thing will require you to DEFRAG your SSD because it has trouble with mapping non-contiguous memory. there's not much info on this thing, so it may be a dealbreaker for anyone reading this.
Ventoy works for anything with PC BIOS and/or UEFI if all you want is a thumb drive that you can copy multiple ISOs and VHDs onto and then boot multiple machines from those ISOs and VHDs. It's free software that you install into a flash drive, then you just copy the filesystem images onto it, and when you boot up it presents you a menu on the PC. I have Win10 and Win11 installers, Ubuntu, Proxmox, Kali, Gallium, and a few distros of the day, plus a Hackintosh VHD that works on many Intel Skylake+ laptops. Sometimes I joke that my office is on my keychain.
I've been using an iodd mini for years now not only to re-image customer PCs on-the-run but to boot up IBM "firmware update" USB images via 16GB USB key VHDs on servers. Also used it to install pfSense, OPNsense, and Untangle serial images on Protectli boxes. I think 2023 is going to be the year I upgrade to an ST400 with a 1TB SSD drive.
I bought one of these because of this video about a year ago, and all I can say is "SO CLOSE!" This is almost a great device, but it has one MAJOR problem that makes it a drawer-piece. It has no internal power, so it has no memory of settings. That means that when you power on the pc that you want to boot, you have to race down to the iso you want and select it before post gets to the boot process. If it fails, you have to reset the pc and try again because when the pc cycles power, so does the IODD, and it doesn't keep the iso selected, so it's a race condition. It's much less a problem for servers because they tend to take a long time to boot, but modern PCs tend to be booted before I can select an ISO on this. All it would take is some small rechargeable cell and this thing would be amazing. One little battery is the difference between amazing and trash. I bet some Engineer wanted to and his boss said "why? can't you just power it from the USB port?" We've all been there.