Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optical drive | Hacker News Reader

Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optical drive

extremetech.com

161 pointsukdm68 comments

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.

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

Apt changed my life...<3 debian.

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.

I've not tried with RHEL, but Fedora works great with unetbootin, I've used it a lot.

For RHEL we do traditional PXE boot and Kickstart. (I guess you don't have a network so can't do that.)

A much more common problem is that the hardware/bios/low-level bootloader is capable of booting from a USB CD drive, but not from a USB mass storage device.

At least link to the kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elegantinvention/isostic...

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

They link to it in the article.

Twice no less!

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

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.

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.)

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

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

Very nice, it's cheap enough too http://www.amazon.com/Zalman-VE200-B-Black-Drive-Enclosure/d...

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/...

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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/

Fantastic, thank you.

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.

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

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...

on newer macs at least, the efi bios will not boot to certain usb hard drives, but will boot to a usb cd/dvd drive.

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

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... ) 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.

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

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.

isostick copes with ISOs >4GB by splitting them, YUMI doesn't.

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

As seen on Security Now...

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

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.

I hope it actually presents itself to the computer as an USB optical drive.

Now, is that worth $100? Probably not, as the number of computers which do support booting from USB cd. drives but not USB flash drives is pretty low.

Edit: Though as some other mention, some OSes on the other side of the equation are hard coded to install from the optical drive.

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.

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.

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.

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?

That support is not a required part of the EFI spec. It's possible to emulate it anyway, but quite complex: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/4957.html

Even on traditional BIOS systems, you can do tricky things like use isohybrid to generate an iso that can be either burned to optical media, or directly dd'd to a thumb drive and booted (using syslinux).

Another approach (my personal one) is to use a combination of grub/memdisk on a thumb drive to provide a list of bootable isos.

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

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

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*).

The isostick is also useful for some newer machines. Macs have a lot less problem booting images, as you mention. I've found that even newer netbooks don't like booting from USB flash sticks, but will happily boot from optical drives (and thus, isostick).

Some utilities will only boot from optical drives as well, though this is less of an issue with newer utilities and OSes. Windows XP is a good example, which is still in surprisingly high use today.

The read-only switch should also be handy :)

Best Regards - Eric Agan, Elegant Invention

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.

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

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?

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

Grub can boot just about anything... Windows included.

Unless things have changed GRUB can boot other operating systems.

So you need 150 different operation systems on your usb and computer ? I'm just fine with creating usb stick with most recent version of os when i need. And i think most people feels the same way...

If i can solve my problem with software and ordinary (=cheap) hardware, why should i pay 10 times more ?

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

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ automates the process.

I thought unetbootin was targeted towards single partition drives? The main advantage of what I've written is you get a nice FAT32 partition with syslinux, and secondary partitions on your USB drive for the actual OS; thus Windows (dunno about Mac) can use the drive normally, and it doubles as a bootable drive. Unforutnately unetbootin's "how it works" page is extremely sparse on detail. http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/unetbootin/wiki/howitworks

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".

$ cat /etc/fstab

/ /dev/sda2 ext4 ro 1 1

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com