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

extremetech.com

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

#51

Post by eagan »

andrewflnr wrote: post #13
a3_nm wrote: post #10

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...

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

#52

Post by eagan »

techosaurus wrote: post #32

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

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

#54

Post by joenathan »

m0nastic wrote: post #40

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:…

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/...

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

#55

Post by drivebyacct2 »

lukeschlather wrote: post #46
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #38

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…

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 ju…

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.

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

jfdi wrote: post #17

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.

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by ryan-c »

rektide wrote: post #50
overshard wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#58

Post by hahainternet »

StavrosK wrote: post #35
hahainternet wrote: post #16

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/

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

#59

Post by blinkingled »

eagan wrote: post #49
blinkingled wrote: post #44

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 contr…

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…

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.

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

#60

Post by lukeschlather »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #55
lukeschlather wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ju…

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…

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.

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