
Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optical drive - ukdm
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/91344-isostick-the-usb-memory-stick-that-thinks-its-an-optical-drive
======
phamilton
To all the people doubting the use of such a device, many OSs don't currently
work "out of the box" with unetbootn and other such tools.

I've personally had problems with RHEL and Windows XP, and I can guarantee
there are others.

With RHEL, you had to copy the rpm repo on the CD to another storage medium
and manually set up the repo. This is because the default repo is set up to
detect an optical drive, mount it, and use it as a repo. That's a pain.

Windows XP has problems with continuity between the restarts involved in the
install process.

Emulating an optical drive would fix those problems and allow any ISO to run
unmodified.

A final benefit is the multi-ISO support on one drive.

~~~
dfc
It seems like you would still need to copy the rpm repo to another medium?

Apt changed my life...<3 debian.

~~~
darklajid
Hm? I read the GP as saying

"If you boot the iso from a harddrive (or the equivalent, a 'normal' usb
stick) the installer fails because it explicitly looks for a CD/optical medium
containing the repository"

With the gadget in this article that wouldn't be an issue anymore: The
thumbdrive _is_ an optical drive for all the OS knows.

------
Inufu
At least link to the kickstarter project:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elegantinvention/isostic...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elegantinvention/isostick-
the-optical-drive-in-a-usb-stick)

Looks awesome though, I'll grab one. And I bet that I'm able to change the
microSD card ;)

~~~
wccrawford
They link to it in the article.

~~~
Dysiode
I think the principle is that you give direct traffic to the important link
rather than the content aggregator.

~~~
wccrawford
It wasn't just a 'content aggregator'. There was actually an article there,
explaining it. I found it to be useful beyond just the kickstarter site, so I
have no problem with them linking to it instead.

------
jeremyarussell
I think the big difference here is that we get the potential to put multiple
disks on a single usb device. From the technicians perspective I'd like to rid
myself of the big stack of cd's i have that i use to install windows, or run
diagnostics, or any of those things. I remember thinking to myself last year,
man if only someone made this. And low and behold here it is. I may have
already talked my boss, (he's the owner, I'm the Technician Manager.) Into
pledging for 5 32 GB models. (Something like 1,100 dollars ish.)

~~~
eagan
That's what we're going for! Thanks for the support! Hope your boss does the
pledge, the more the merrier!

After working as a tech for several years, I know I always wanted something
like this. It's great to finally build it and help everybody out!

Best Regards - Eric Agan, Elegant Invention

------
m0nastic
Earlier this year I was working building the network for a security conference
and one of the guys had a similar device‡.

It came in really handy when we had to install all the servers (he had
multiple flavors of Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc.).

I've been meaning to pick one up, for the rare times when I find myself
somewhere needing a bunch of boot disks; but I can vouch that at least this
one is really neat.

‡ <http://www.zalman.com/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=431>

~~~
joenathan
Very nice, it's cheap enough too [http://www.amazon.com/Zalman-VE200-B-Black-
Drive-Enclosure/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Zalman-VE200-B-Black-Drive-
Enclosure/dp/B004TO3XZW)

you could throw a 64GB SSD in there and still be below the price of the 16GB
Isostick [http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-SSDNow-Solid-
SV100S2-64GZ/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-SSDNow-Solid-
SV100S2-64GZ/dp/B004BDORM4/)

------
ChuckMcM
And presumably those iso's can be DVDs of your favorite movies as well.
Something for the netbook crowd.

I've had sticks which, when attached, show up as two devices, one is an
optical drive with the disk of drivers already convieniently mounted in it :-)
and the other the stick drives writable side. So the technology isn't
particularly new of course but I like the notion of multiple ISO images on a
stick and an easy way to select them.

------
techosaurus
Did anyone else notice that the ISOs have to be stored on a FAT32 partition?
Doesn't this limit you to maximum 4GB ISOs? The OS X Snow Leopard ISO (at
least last time I checked) is about 8GB. Seems pretty limiting to use Fat32.
If it's a self contained system, why not use a better filesystem?

~~~
eagan
We're supporting FAT32 because it's the most universally supported (and
easiest to support). Other filesystems will be supported in future updates,
for sure. In the meantime, the management software will split the files
automagically into .iso.1, .iso.2, and so on (or you can do this yourself).

Hope that helps \- Eric Agan, Elegant Invention

------
blinkingled
I am doubtful if this is usable with all the firmware compatibility issues it
will have to tackle. My Mac's firmware for example refuses to boot anything
other than OS X from a regular external USB DVD drive. I had to play tricks
with Parallels and Bootcamp to get my Windows installation files on my 2nd HDD
to start the installation.

Plus there are also software issues - Windows XP used to send reset to the USB
controller on boot for example that would need to be worked around somehow in
the Isostick's firmware.

More than anything most modern OSes and hardware setups boot just fine using
standard USB stick based installers - Win 7, OS X and various Linux distros.

~~~
eagan
We're really pushing for Mac compatibility. Mac firmware is very picky, for
sure, it seems to have very strict requirements for SCSI command support on
optical drives.

Resetting the USB controller and such are no problem for isostick, it will
come right back up in the same state it was left in.

Excellent point that modern OSes don't need the optical drive functionality. I
still use my isostick to carry around lots of OSes and switch between them
with ease, though.

Best Regards - Eric Agan, Elegant Invention

~~~
blinkingled
Thanks for the reply. If you can get my 2010 MacBook Pro to boot Windows and
Linux using Isostick, you already have my money :) - lack of that
functionality has caused me lot of pain.

------
thristian
It turns out that it's possible to make a single file that is both a bootable
ISO image that can be burned to a CD, and a bootable hard-drive image that can
be written to a mass storage device (like a USB key), to create a storage
device that is bootable on x86 machines with a BIOS, x86 machines with EFI, or
PowerMac machines.

It's possible, but it's not pretty: <http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/4957.html>

------
StavrosK
Why is it not possible to directly boot from an iso? It doesn't seem that
hard, technically, although I'm sure there are good reasons against it, or
someone would have done it by now.

It would be great if we could install unetbootin (or something equivalent) on
a flash disk, select which iso to boot, and have it boot.

I know this is possible for linux-based images, but I'm talking about
something generic.

------
est
To make an OS think a USB stick is a USB optical drive, it's already been done
for years in China

<http://baike.baidu.com/view/628264.htm>

You can make a USB stick like three virtual devices, a USB-HDD, USB-CDROM and
a USB-ZIP.

It's all about firmware and USB stick chip. Many made-in-China USB sticks
support this out of the box

------
vegardx
Oh god - this will end up saving me $100 in under a year, just in raw cost of
CD-R and DVD-R. What a great product! If they'd just stick with a proper key-
ring; those damn things break all the time, I think I'm on my second or third
USB-drive, just this year because it's broken.

------
jodrellblank
At last. Brilliant idea.

I still wonder if there's a USB computer-to-computer cable hiding in the hard
to search for internet which allows one to mount an ISO in some desktop
software and the other to see it as an optical drive.

But try searching terms like USB, ISO, and not get bogged down in normal
results.

------
hahainternet
The Sandisk U3 series of drives can already do this but in a slightly less
integrated fashion.

This was also a nice attack vector on Windows machines as you could insert a
usb stick with attack code on the CD partition, which then wrote its output to
the flash partition.

~~~
StavrosK
I have two of those sticks. Do you know if you can expand the partition to
arbitrary sizes?

~~~
hahainternet
You can, but it was a huge pain in the ass the last time I tried. It looks
like things have moved on since then: <http://u3-tool.sourceforge.net/>

~~~
StavrosK
Fantastic, thank you.

------
a3_nm
Does this really solve the whole problem? I've seen BIOSes (even on reasonably
recent machines) which were unable to boot from an USB key, but I'm not sure
that they would all have been able to boot from an USB optical drive either.

~~~
andrewflnr
That's not the problem it's trying to solve. AFAICT, if you can't boot from
USB, you're still out of luck.

~~~
eagan
Some BIOSes will, oddly enough, boot USB optical drives but not USB mass
storage. No idea why, it may have to do with the fact that way too many USB
flash drives have piss-poor SCSI command support (they speak SCSI Block
Commands, USB is just used as transport).

Here's a hilarious list of common problems in USB sticks: [http://www2.one-
eyed-alien.net/~mdharm/linux-usb/target_offe...](http://www2.one-eyed-
alien.net/~mdharm/linux-usb/target_offenses.txt)

------
dfc
Why would I pay for something that I can do with unetbootin?

~~~
km3k
Does unetbootin allow you to choose from multiple ISOs to boot now? It didn't
last time I checked. I realize there's ways around that (like manipulating
syslinux config files: [http://tazbuntu.blogspot.com/2009/05/multibootin-with-
unetbo...](http://tazbuntu.blogspot.com/2009/05/multibootin-with-
unetbootin.html) ) though.

I like to use YUMI for booting from one of many ISOs on a single USB stick:
<http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/>

This kickstarter project's idea of having the USB stick handle all this for
you would be great.

~~~
dfc
So what does this isostick do that YUMI does not do?

~~~
wccrawford
It pretends to be an optical drive, allowing you to boot on systems that will
boot from a USB CD Drive, but not a USB stick.

------
denysonique
this device may be misused for malicious purposes, e.g. a backdoor which
autoruns itself after stick insertion on windows(autorun.ini)

------
overshard
As seen on Security Now...

~~~
eagan
o_o Really? I've been listening for a mention, did I get one? \- Eric Agan,
Elegant Invention

------
drivebyacct2
Why? Put Grub2 on a jump drive. It can easily present a list of ISO files to
boot into as well. I mean, a drag and drop solution or a script to rebuild the
grub menu would be nice, but not worth $100. Or am I missing something
technical here?

I guess I don't understand why you need to emulate a DVD drive except for
legacy operating systems. When I burn ISOs or images to a jump drive, they
show up as DVD media in OS X and Windows 7, and the installers for every
version of OS X that I remember and Windows 7 will all install perfectly from
a jump drive.

It sounds like this is just a piece of firmware to do the trickery of
processing the ISO. There are Sandisks that show a CD and a Flash drive and
it's all done in partitioning, there's no software involved and it's undo-able
via software.

I can only see this being useful if you have a BIOS that boots from USB-CD but
not USB-HD. Again, I may be missing something. This sounds cool, but I'm not
sure why exactly.

~~~
lukeschlather
Hypothetically, a device that allowed you to throw a bunch of isos on a flash
drive, and automatically threw up a grub-like chooser would be really nice.
Yes, I can write a disk to a USB stick, but it starts to be a little clunky
since you need a partition for each iso.

Ideally I want all of my install disks on one drive, since I never know if I
need Ubuntu, Windows 7, Windows XP, 64 bit, 32 bit, etc. I'm tired of juggling
physical media and isos.

~~~
drivebyacct2
No, Grub can boot from an ISO file (no "burning" or partitioning required).
You can drag and drop it on a jump drive that has Grub installed and boot to
it.

You could even patch Grub to scan the first partition for filenames ending in
ISO and present them in the boot menu automatically.

This would be a starting point: <http://www.panticz.de/MultiBootUSB> I might
hack around and see if this can be automated and made to be user friendly.

~~~
lukeschlather
My understanding is that you can't chainload non-Linux OSes from Grub2. And
though I'd rather be loading Linux OSes, most of what I'm doing is installing
Windows. So that doesn't really solve my primary use case.

Also, yes, the howtos I've read sound very fiddly, and it would be a lot more
attractive if it were automated and user friendly. If this is done in hardware
to look like a CDROM drive, that is the most automated and user-friendly
solution. Even a fully-functional Grub2 that can chainload Windows isos will
still be a little less elegant.

------
hackermom
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this appears to be something that mostly
solves a problem related to old BIOSes, no? Because I can "burn" .dmg and .iso
etc. to SD cards or USB memory sticks and boot them just fine from EFI on my
MacBook, as if they were optical discs or external hard drives. I know this is
possible with most modern BIOSes, too, so apart from the actual hardware
identification of the device, cleverly claiming it's an optical drive, what
valuable utility does it provide, and what problem does it solve?

~~~
Kwpolska
No. This is useful for stupid OS-es that don't like being on a USB stick.

~~~
sid0
The problem is I can't think of any. Windows, Linux and Mac OS X all support
installation from a USB stick.

~~~
nitrogen
As others have pointed out in other threads, some versions of some
distributions of Linux will only load their resources from an "actual" optical
disc drive (e.g. /dev/sr*).

------
jfdi
Guys, why is this newsworthy... I recently made a bootable ubuntu usb stick
after a couple google searches and commodity $15 8GB stick from BBY sale bin.

Maybe I'm missing something important here, but the technology to burn an ISO
to a USB is freely available why would anyone spend extra money for this rig.

~~~
mikezupan
try burning multiple isos to a single usb stick.. next time read the article

~~~
dfc
YUMI does this apperently. I had never heard of Yumi before, but I read the
comments (and the article) so now I know about it.

So given our new knowledge what does this do that yumi does not?

~~~
e1ven
Yumi uses GRUB directly for the boot, so I believe it's limited to Linux only
(AFAIK, Grub can't direct boot an iso)

~~~
dfc
Unless things have changed GRUB can boot other operating systems.

------
rektide
JUST FUCKING STOP IT. Don't use an ISO in the first place. Just make a USB
drive with partitions and copy the damned data onto the USB drive. If you want
a bootable partition, use syslinux, as detailed here:

<http://thefowle.livejournal.com/470622.html>

~~~
overshard
I don't think you understand the point of this. It will allow you to create
read only USB drives. This means that people who work on computers all the
time now don't have to haul a case of CDs around because viruses could
possibly jump onto their read-write thumb drive. They can now setup a
thumbdrive with all their tools and it's "read only".

~~~
rektide
$ cat /etc/fstab

/ /dev/sda2 ext4 ro 1 1

~~~
ryan-c
That really doesn't protect the device from an infected system - it can just
remount it rw. You need a hardware write blocker to protect against a
malicious system.

~~~
overshard
You don't need a hardware write blocker, the beauty of "burning" an ISO to a
thumb drive is that the ISO format doesn't allow writes. There is no way at
all to write to it unless you rewrite the drive itself in which case it
becomes fairly obvious.

