Zalman Virtual ROM Drive - Mini review

[watercooled]

Some of you may know this has existed in one form or another for some time now, under various names, but I've put off buying one due to another forum member not having a great experience with the previous model. However, with my last LinITX order I put one in my basket and now as far as I can tell the problems have been resolved, it works great!

Besides the virtual drive functionality, it has decent transfer speeds; I've not run any benchmarks yet but sequential performance was about what you'd expect for a USB2 drive.

When in ODD mode, it appears as a BD drive to the computer (I assume it's so you can mount anything up to ~50GB) and has a nice temperature display on the LCD. Basically all you need to do is set it to HDD mode, create a folder named '_iso' (without quotes) and put your iso images in there. Then, you plug it into the system you want to use it on, make sure it's in ODD mode, scroll to the image you want to mount, then boot from the drive on your PC. However I think the _iso folder needs to be on the first partition of the drive, so if you're having any problems just check you don't have any boot/system partitions.

In conclusion, I'd thoroughly recommend it!
http://linitx.com/product/13355

[scaryjim]

I keep pondering one of these because I have a store credit at linitx to redeem, but it's got the whole needing to add a HDD issue! What drive did you stick in yours?

[Kumagoro]

If you are imaging with say acronis you can stick it in dual mode (push the wheel in on power on) and you can boot and also back up to it.

[watercooled]

I just used an 80GB Seagate drive from an off-the-shelf USB drive I haven't really used in years; if you have any unused/retired laptops/game consoles/etc you could salvage the drive. It doesn't need to be huge to get a load of .iso's on it.

I noticed the dual mode but wasn't really sure what it could be used for, but now you come to mention it that could be pretty useful!

[MoneyShot239]

Nice man, but mounting iso files isn't really that hard. There is plenty of freeware, although if you wanted to swap programs with a friend I suppose its a pretty cool idea

[burble]

Nice man, but mounting iso files isn't really that hard. There is plenty of freeware, although if you wanted to swap programs with a friend I suppose its a pretty cool idea

I think you're missing the point, these are great for booting a machine from an ISO that's on the HD inside it not really for moving the ISO itself from one machine to another.

I've got a couple them and they're invaluable! I've got all the Dell and HP server images on there plus BartPE, Gparted and so on. No need to carry around a bunch of DVDs and I can easily have multiple different versions of the ISO if I want.

[shaithis]

Never knew such a little gem was out there, thanks

[dave87]

Nice man, but mounting iso files isn't really that hard. There is plenty of freeware, although if you wanted to swap programs with a friend I suppose its a pretty cool idea

Pray tell, how does one do a fresh software install from an iso without something like this?

[MoneyShot239]

Pray tell, how does one do a fresh software install from an iso without something like this?

I'm talking about using .iso files for programs like PhotoShop, AutoCAD, etc.

Haven't done it in ages, but have a look at http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...windows-vista/

The usual route is install some freeware and right click on your DVD drive to mount it.

[Agent]

I'm talking about using .iso files for programs like PhotoShop, AutoCAD, etc.

Haven't done it in ages, but have a look at http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...windows-vista/

The usual route is install some freeware and right click on your DVD drive to mount it.

None of which has anything to do with this device and what it does

I've had mine for a while now and it's invaluable.

More so when you keep up to date Windows installs on it - minimum Windows updates after a fresh OS install

[rtyall]

For the amount of times I need to boot of an external device, I usually just pop it onto a bootable USB stick.
Unetbootin is great for formatting USB sticks and copying across ISOs.

But I cna see that if you spend a lot of time sorting other peoples borked systems, etc, then you might want this.

[Agent]

I've not seen a way to boot multiple ISOs from a pendrive, which is what I mostly use it for. It's also much faster than a pendrive.
Has anyone seen a multi-booting pendrive app?

[Sputnik]

This is the first time I've seen such a device. Looks very interesting. I may buy one for doing Acronis back ups.

[watercooled]

Unetbootin is only for Linux distros, it doesn't actually mount the iso, it extracts it and slightly modifies the bootloader.

[Biscuit]

None of which has anything to do with this device and what it does

I've had mine for a while now and it's invaluable.

More so when you keep up to date Windows installs on it - minimum Windows updates after a fresh OS install

How do you create an up to date (all the windows updates included) install disk?

[watercooled]

I know you can get discs with the latest service pack included?