Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

extremetech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

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

#61

Post by darklajid »

dfc wrote: post #24
phamilton wrote: post #12

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…

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.

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

#62

Post by sc00ter »

dfc wrote: post #22
km3k wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

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

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

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

#63

Post by 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.

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

#64

Post by 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.

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

#65

Post by 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

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

#66

Post by planckscnst »

phamilton wrote: post #12

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…

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.

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

#68

Post by 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

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

#69

Post by nitrogen »

sid0 wrote: post #41
Kwpolska wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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*).

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

#70

Post by 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.

Post reply on HN