ISOstick: Is It An Optical Drive Or A USB Stick?
ISOstick: Is It An Optical Drive Or A USB Stick?
Posted 07/28/2011 at 12:04pm
| by Brad Chacos
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"I remember when a TV was a TV," my grandmother told me the other day, "And a radio was a radio. Now you can get radio stations on your TV! And TV stations on your computer!" Her look of amazement confirmed that, in fact, (grand)parents just don't understand, but before you smirk at the story, remember that we may be in my incredulous grandmother's shoes one day. Consider the currently-in-development ISOstick: it's a flash drive and an optical drive in one!
The ISOstick is a flash drive that tricks computers into thinking that the ISOs stored on it come from physical optical drives, ExtremeTech reports. If that sounds like it's made for running OSes on the fly, you're exactly right; there's even a built-in bootloader called "isosel" that helps you select which OS to launch if you've got oodles of Linux distros on the stick. "Some BIOSes only see the first drive a device presents, so isostick's optical drive comes first so you don't have to worry about not being able to boot from it!" the creator boasts on the Kickstarter page for the device. Plus, a read-only switch on the ISOstick protects against possible badware infections.
The downside? Um, it doesn't actually exist yet. In fact, the creator of the ISOstick is currently raising funding on Kickstarter in order to keep the project going. If – or as we hope, when – it does hit the streets, it won't be cheap: expect to pay $100 for an 8GB ISOstick, $175 for a 16GB version, or $225 for 32GBs of faux-optical fun.
Check out the ISOstick website and its Kickstarter page, which both go into extensive details about the guts of the device. If ISOstick sounds like something you're interested in, go ahead and toss the guy some pocket change – every little bit helps. At the time of publication, 129 backers had already donated $17,538 towards the $25,000 goal, with 25 days left til the donation deadline.
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ddreese
July 29, 2011 at 3:43pm
It would be nifty to be able to select from several different ISO's on the thumb drive, but I can buy a 2GB or 4GB thumb drive for less than $5 from Fry's Electronics, and I can use free tools like the HP USB Key Utility to make an ISO image boot from a thumb drive. I can get 20 such thumb drives from Fry's for the price of their 8GB version.
grexxman
July 29, 2011 at 1:28pm
I agree with n0b0dykn0ws and Blastodon as far as YUMI and XBoot go but coming from someone who literally just got done making some nice toolbox flash drives TODAY using YUMI and WinSetupFromUSB, it would be nice to have a refined system. YUMI and XBoot are nice but they're not perfect. For example, I can get UBCD to boot up from my FDD but when I try to boot into PartedMagic from UBCD or try loading just the PMagic iso onto it, it can't find the sqfs file. It works wonderfully using another tool made by PendriveLinux but I can't get it onto my Multiboot drive :(. Maybe this tool will finally be able to let me put it on a multiboot drive. It'll be nice to put ALL of my ISO's on the drive and not have to worry about whether I have a certain disk with me or not. I'm not so much focused on the boot order (this can be changed... unless of course as many of you have mentioned, it's an older system) but just to streamline the process of booting ISOs from my flash drive will be a big help.
Gezzer
July 28, 2011 at 9:10pm
I don't know about this one. As stated by others it would be good for older systems that don't let you boot from a usb drive. But don't all most all of those have a CD or floppy drive? So a system with a dead CD/floppy? Well maybe, but how many times would you run into that plus why bother with something that old any way? Come to think of it most people playing around with old systems would have an extra drive or two kicking around anyway.
Sure it's a good idea buliding a better mouse trap and all, but why if the perceived improvement really doesn't justify the extra cost? Sounds like a swing and a miss to me.
livebriand
July 28, 2011 at 4:58pm
I thought of something exactly like this a while ago. Except... without the pricetag.
arnoldziffel
July 28, 2011 at 3:09pm
Netac (China) has been making these types of flash sticks for years. They are unavailable in the US but try this amazon.uk link (http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=electronics-uk&field-keywords=Netac) or try Ebay austrailia. I have used the U230, U260, and U208 for Floppy emulation, CD rom boot and HDD. The U230 at a 1GB might seem like a waste, but being able to reconfigure it as needed is great for computer repair of older industrial equipment when trying to upgrade from the dark ages. They have upgraded models , U265, U220, and U219 available at http://www.netac.com/
n0b0dykn0ws
July 28, 2011 at 12:15pm
Umm. Am I misreading this or does XBoot not do the same thing?
n0b0dykn0ws
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