iodd ST400 Variations (2TB SSD)

Works great! Had to disable secure boot for linux
This device works great.So far I’ve installed windows 11 and Armbianx86, each OS on its own .vhd.Windows 11 vhd booted fine first try. Initially I couldn’t get Armbianx86 to boot. Turns out I had to disable secure boot even though it was a UEFI version of Armbianx86.I have two partitions on the drive. Each partition is selectable and can boot from vhd or iso.Lots of possibilities with this device.As others have said, the documentation is TERRIBLE! I had to play around with setting the USB/internal drive settings many times to get what they do. The “mode” CD, Dual or Hard Drive are apparently set by file name. Go to the IODD download site and download the vhd and util tools stuff and read through it and try to figure out what is relevant.I created vhd using Windows disk manager and IODD vhd tool. Creating a vhd in Windows takes a while. The IODD tool creates a vhd almost instantly. Both work fine.This is a fun and useful device. $90 seems a bit overpriced.

Clunky, but does the job
This device is very cool. It can act as a regular hard drive with partitions, various formats, etc. It can simulate a CD/DVD drive from an ISO file. It can simulate a flash drive from a VHD file. And, it can do combinations of all those things at the same time. For that, it is a very cool device and I’m happy with it. I’m not using encryption, so no comments about that.The things I don’t like, but can tolerate…* The buttons are solid black and really hard to see the numbers/symbols on them.* The device “feels” a tad cheap – kind of a spongy plastic.* The UI is not intuitive to me at all. But, it is fairly basic and you’ll eventually get the hang of it.* The on-device help and all the manuals are full of broken English and lack all sorts of details. It took me a while to realize you do most tasks from your OS, such as the initial format of the drive, creating flash VHDs, etc.* The device cannot create a VHD for you, so every time you want to create a ‘fake’ flash drive, you need to run a Windows app to create a VHD file, store it on the device’s main hard drive, and then mount it from the device’s LCD interface. It would be cool if the device could just generate and mount a blank VHD on the fly.* Only fixed size VHDs are supported, which potentially wastes a lot of space. You have to guess the max size flash drive to create for an image, and then live that decision regardless of how much data is copied to the flash drive. Maybe there are 3rd party tools that can shrink a VHD. What would be cool is if the device could support dynamic VHDs that grow as data is added to them.

Questionable quality, dubious value, not entirely thought out. but too useful to ignore.
Drawers full of scattered USB flash drives. If this is you, you immediately see the benefit to this thing. One device, potentially any number of installation media or utility boot discs. Emulates CD or Flash as you like. This thing sits somewhere between that drawer of flash drives and a slick PXE host. And you can use it as a plain-Jane general purpose USB enclosure, too.However, execution is a little lackluster, especially for the price. No print manual is included. A pdf is available but is lacking any kind of coherence or organization. Just an IP-logging site and HTML documentation page that has frequent errors when you connect via VPN or TOR for your own privacy. There’s an executable to configuring the device from a live machine, but it’s Windows only.Mechanically: nothing secures the SSD except the tight fit. No real padding inside, either. I wouldn’t trust this to survive a fall from a table. Buttons are clicky and responsive but the layout is not intuitive at all and the buttons are very difficult as they are un-inked and you need a strong light source. The enclosure itself is thin and cheap plastic. The pictures suggest a nice texture but in my hands it isn’t particularly pleasant to touch. The cable is very short which is a problem because the construction doesn’t inspire confidence and you probably don’t want this thing hanging off an edge. Comes with a case, but the case is flimsy, cheap, marginally too tight, and doesn’t have a place to stow the short cable.The whole thing is just very unrefined. Even simple things like “screensaver” on the LCD don’t actually run a screensaver and instead just stays on with a logo displayed. I mean, why?!The weirdest twist that I can’t believe I didn’t realize until I used it for the first time: power. You cannot adjust any of the settings without it plugged in to the computer you intend to use it on. “Obviously it won’t work without power” but it seems like a major oversight in usability to not have any kind of battery in here. In practical use, you plug it in to a powered up machine, set up the device, and reboot.Finally, let’s talk money. For the cost of this device PLUS a third-tier 320GB SSD, you can get a bulk 20 pack of 16GB USB 3.0 flash drives from Sandisk instead for the same price. I can’t think of needing to carry around more than 10 installation/utility discs, and 16GB is about double a dual-layer DVD. Sure, 80% of those flash drives will be straight up blank, compared to the ST400 implementation, but I’m just saying. You might question the reliability of USB flash drives over SATA SSDs, but as long as you’re not constantly writing to them, they’ll be fine.The drawer full of USB drives might be a mess, and clumsy to organize, but they’re reasonably tough. Cable length isn’t an issue. Operating them is dog-easy. There’s no buttons you can’t read and no screens that won’t turn off. A more practical pack of 8GB flash drives makes the financial discussion even more prominent.With this revelation, it’s clear the ST400 is poised as a luxury item. But, as a luxury item, the fit, finish, and interface just doesn’t go the distance. I can understand someone wanting this, but the math makes it hard to recommend.Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate it and plan to keep using it… mostly because I don’t have another use for my recycled SATA SSD that’s approaching the end of it’s writable life.But it’s clear the ST400 is only as good as it needs to be and not a hair over that “minimally viable product” line.

I’m always needing to boot from some LiveCD, or rescue CD, or utility, or install some OS or other. Until now I just rummaged through my box of flash drives looking for one I can erase, or burned an ISO to a CD. Not anymore … I put all the ISOs on here and choose the one I want through the menu.Also if there’s a utility that will ONLY write to a flash drive, you can create a VHD of the required size and copy it to the iodd and then select it as a VHD. The OS will see it as a flash drive and the utility will write to it.I use this to take backup drive images before reinstalling the operating system. The drive image software is an ISO I boot from and the HDD is where I write the backup. Then I can take the drive anywhere I want to copy the backup off.The read and write performance is very good.Other reviewers say it feels cheap … it doesn’t feel cheap to me. It’s plastic but it’s not flimsy plastic with a chicklet keypad which is what I was afraid of. The keys are discrete objects, not a membrane on the drive. I don’t see why it won’t survive reasonable wear and tear.The only thing I don’t like about this device is the documentation. It is terrible. I had to take the drive out and reset it 3 or 4 times before I realized that the password they call the “2nd password” is the password you enter FIRST … and that the 2nd password is NOT the same ad the administrator password. Once I got that sorted out everything is fine.The only thing I wish I had changed is getting a bigger drive, I was thinking 1 TB was overkill for holding ISOs but I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I would be writing backups to it as well. But replacing the internal drive is easy if you have to do it.By the way, I tried Ventoy and it never worked properly at least on my hardware. Either the machine wouldn’t boot, or it would boot but was all messed up … for example I use Parted Magic to secure erase NVMe drives. I could get it to boot, but actually wiping drives didn’t work under Ventoy. With this thing because the OS sees it as a discrete hardware device, there are no such concerns.Not everyone needs something like this, but if you do, this thing will do what you need it to do, no sweat.

Ein echt cooles Werkzeug/Multitool für den interessierten PC Anwender. Die Bedienung ist ein bisschen tricky, da muss man sich etwas rein Fuchsen aber das Tool kann extrem viel und wenn man erst mal weiß wie es funktioniert, ist es doch recht einfach.

The system/software crashes al lot causing ALL data (=virtual hard disks) to be corrupted. Usb boots (live or with persistentce) or software like Ventoy (live or with persistentce) gives you more options. And if the data gets corrupted you only lose a drive instead of hours of coding…