Zanaffer Posted June 9, 2010 Share Posted June 9, 2010 About half a week ago I stumbled on a piece of tech hardware that sounded so perfect for what I do on a daily basis (fix people's computers) that I felt like sharing it here with you all. The device is called the I-ODD 2501. I ordered one and it arrived today, and I have been playing with it. What it is: It is basically a 2.5-inch hard drive (laptop sized HDD) to USB controller that also mimics a USB DVD drive, using ISO files stored on the hard drive What it's good for: Eliminating the binder full of diagnostic disks and LiveCDs and OS install disks into one device. Since the computer "sees" the device as a USB DVD drive, and most computers built in the last 5 years can boot to a USB DVD drive, and you can put a large-ish HDD into the enclosure... it makes it so the computer can boot to an ISO file. Why it's neat: Lots of reasons. First, you can use a program like ImgBurn to archive all your OS disks onto a single device. Second, lots of new computers like netbooks don't have optical drives, and if you have the ISO image of the restore disks, you can use this to restore the computer. Third, loading from hard drive over USB is a LOT faster than DVD, and so on. Why it's super extra cool: There is a write lock switch on it, so you can plug your HDD into a virus-infested computer without having to worry about getting infected. What it is NOT good for: It is NOT good for bypassing copy protection on game DVDs. ISO files just don't have the info that the copy protection looks for. Games will not recognize this disk as the original CD or DVD. Additional misc. info: It comes with no hard drive, so you'll have to buy a hard drive to put in it yourself. I cannibalized a 320GB Western Digital external USB drive for its SATA HDD, and used that in it. The IODD has three modes, which you select using the jog dial on the side. First mode is "Dual Mode" where it shows up as both a USB hard drive and USB DVD. Second is "HDD-MODE" and it shows up on the computer as an external HDD. Third is "CD-MODE" where it acts only as a USB DVD drive. The tiny OS in the firmware of the device supports exFAT and FAT32 file systems, but does not support NTFS. You can format the HDD as NTFS, but you won't be able to load ISOs from it. You can put multiple partitions on it, but the IODD will only look for ISOs on the first partition. If you do this, you can format the second partition as NTFS if you want (I did this, and I am storing the WinXP exFAT update on it). When the device arrived today, it had an older version of the firmware that did not support exFAT. Updating the OS required a 32-bit OS. I could not update the firmware from my main computer (64-bit). It looks like all future firmware updates will be made as specially crafted ISO files, so this seems to be a one-time issue. The screen shows one ISO at a time, however it does have two lines for text. Even though the display is very small, it is quite bright and displays a fairly long file name. The ISO files must be stored in a folder called "_ISO" on the root of the first partition, which must be exFAT or FAT32. The device lists the ISO files in the order that they were copied to the HDD, not in alphabetical order. If you copy new ISO files to the hard drive, the IODD's display will not show the new items until you unplug and replug the IODD. More info: South Korean site (Firmware and stuff seems to be here): http://www.i-odd.com American sales site (This is where I bought mine, oddly there isn't a link to it from the Korean site): http://www.iodd-usa.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p1p3 Posted June 9, 2010 Share Posted June 9, 2010 This looks very handy, will have to pitch getting one of these to my boss. Does it require any external power or is it fully usb powered? If it is only powered by usb how do you select the image to use when booting? Seems kind of hard to select the iso if you have a lot of them before the computer tries to boot from it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zanaffer Posted June 9, 2010 Author Share Posted June 9, 2010 This looks very handy, will have to pitch getting one of these to my boss. Does it require any external power or is it fully usb powered? If it is only powered by usb how do you select the image to use when booting? Seems kind of hard to select the iso if you have a lot of them before the computer tries to boot from it. It's fully USB powered in the same way that most portable HDDs are: It has a Y cable that you plug into two USB ports. One plug provides power only, and one provides power and data. Some computers only require the single data/USB plug for this. The easy way to select the boot device would be to boot into the BIOS/Boot device selection screen, that would give you time to select the proper ISO file. Alternatively, you can plug the power lead up to a powered on computer and select the ISO, unplug it, and then plug it into the one you're working on. In "CD Mode" it remembers which ISO you were using. Also, some computers provide power over USB even when turned off (some Toshibas have this feature, I think.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master Shake Posted June 10, 2010 Share Posted June 10, 2010 *DELETED - WRONG THREAD* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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