IODD ST400 Variations (NO SSD)

Ever heard of Rufus? Windows app that makes it quick and easy to copy ISOs and images to a USB stick. Good for making Windows or Linux installers.Notice how you can only do one OS at a time?Ever heard of Ventoy? It’s a mini Linux bootloader that allows you to just drag and drop ISOs, VHDs, images, and etc to the usb drive, and boot from them in a list. So much more convenient, but then you have to hope Venroy both supports the ISO you’re trying to boot, AND hope it plays nice with your computer’s BIOS. Ventoy needs to be updated on the usb stick to ensure compatibility.Notice how that adds a failure point and more finagling?Here comes IODD with the easiest, yet most powerful, boot tool ever made. Slap a 2.5 inch drive in it (or perhaps an M.2 with a Sata adapter) and connect. The onboard screen will show you all the folders and files present. Select an ISO, VHD, image, or bin file, and it’ll put it in a virtual CD drive attached via USB. Boot from that natively, and you’re good to go!You can drag and drop any file just like Ventoy. Use ISOs alongside your documents and data.You can encrypt the drive with built in hardware acceleration. You can emulate floppy disks and internal AND external storage. You can set multiple users and add or remove access.No IT tech should go without their IODD.

Until I learned about this product on a YouTube video I was using Ventoy. The problem with Ventoy is that if you don't watch your OS installation you can sometimes overwrite the flash drive. I accidentally did that twice and lost about 20 ISO files. I got tired of re-downloading all of them again. So this product is perfect because it allows you to have the same functionality of multiple ISO files available to boot from but you have the ability to lock the drive from accidental overwrites. It would be nice if the user interface was a little more customizable or had more options. It's a full color display but could be so much more user friendly if it actually incorporated icons and logos and things like that. But just rating the product as it is and using it for a few months I can honestly say it's about as perfect as you could ask for as far as ease of use and reliability. I basically always keep the drive as read only unless I'm copying or deleting new ISO files so that I prevent accidental overwrites.

This is super-handy for keeping a cache of ISOs on hand, ready to boot whenever you need it. In fact, the last couple of times I wanted to install Ubuntu Linux, instead of burning the ISO to a bootable USB flash drive, I just copied the ISO to this and let the machine boot from it that way.I installed a Samsung 870 EVO in mine. The USB 3.1 is no joke, as copying files or booting from images are as fast as can be, so I'm quite pleased with its performance.I've used it several times without any trouble, including switching between mounted ISOs -- everything worked perfectly.My only complaint, and it really is trivial, is that there's not much of a substantial feel to it (just as other reviewers have said). Something about it feels cheap, but I'm not sure what. I do appreciate the included sleeve, for sure. But the device works very well, and that's what matters.

I found out about this enclosure when I was getting a storage array serviced, and they sent me the installation ISO on one of these. I immediately knew I had to get one for myself. The virtual ODD feature means you can just copy a whole stack of OS image ISOs onto this drive and just pick the one you need. New version of Windows got released? Flashed the wrong ESXi customized image? Downloaded LTS instead of latest? Just grab the new image and load it up. I was able to consolidate ~6 individual boot USB sticks onto this one device. Oh, and you can even encrypt the drive, if you need that layer of security.Don't forget that this is just the enclosure - I had a spare SSD lying around that I used. IODD sells a variant with a drive included, if you don't want to go through the hassle of assembling it yourself.

This device works great.So far I've installed windows 11 and Armbianx86, each OS on its own .vhd.Windows 11 vhd booted fine first try. Initially I couldn't get Armbianx86 to boot. Turns out I had to disable secure boot even though it was a UEFI version of Armbianx86.I have two partitions on the drive. Each partition is selectable and can boot from vhd or iso.Lots of possibilities with this device.As others have said, the documentation is TERRIBLE! I had to play around with setting the USB/internal drive settings many times to get what they do. The "mode" CD, Dual or Hard Drive are apparently set by file name. Go to the IODD download site and download the vhd and util tools stuff and read through it and try to figure out what is relevant.I created vhd using Windows disk manager and IODD vhd tool. Creating a vhd in Windows takes a while. The IODD tool creates a vhd almost instantly. Both work fine.This is a fun and useful device. $90 seems a bit overpriced.