IODD ST400 Variations (NO SSD)

This enclosure is great. It keeps your information secured until you provide the key and provides a great peace of mind for protecting your data in the event that you lose your device. The device comes with USB C which is a welcomed addition compared to some of their other product offerings.The enclosure is a good value if you are looking to have an added peace of mind if you ever lose your drive. While it won't prevent someone else from being able to use your drive, It will prevent them from being able to access what you lost.Drive powers up and is readily available for pin entry in less than 5 seconds from when the device is powered up. I do find that most computers will post and begin booting before you even have the change to unlock the drive and mount the ISO. Also, some computers interrupt USB power during a soft reset which can sometimes make it complicated to get your ISO to mount. There is a function that keeps the password cashed for two minutes which aims to alleviate this but I found that entering bios or pressing the pause print screen/scroll lock on the keyboard sometimes will pause the power on self test. This gives me time to enter my pin and mount my ISO. Or likewise, i'll enter the bios setup utility (mount my ISO) and immediately exit it without saving changes and my device will be ready to boot from.Something to keep in mind but all in all, a very useful enclosure and it does make safeguarding my files convenient.

Ever heard of Rufus? Windows app that makes it quick and easy to copy ISOs and images to a USB stick. Good for making Windows or Linux installers.Notice how you can only do one OS at a time?Ever heard of Ventoy? It’s a mini Linux bootloader that allows you to just drag and drop ISOs, VHDs, images, and etc to the usb drive, and boot from them in a list. So much more convenient, but then you have to hope Venroy both supports the ISO you’re trying to boot, AND hope it plays nice with your computer’s BIOS. Ventoy needs to be updated on the usb stick to ensure compatibility.Notice how that adds a failure point and more finagling?Here comes IODD with the easiest, yet most powerful, boot tool ever made. Slap a 2.5 inch drive in it (or perhaps an M.2 with a Sata adapter) and connect. The onboard screen will show you all the folders and files present. Select an ISO, VHD, image, or bin file, and it’ll put it in a virtual CD drive attached via USB. Boot from that natively, and you’re good to go!You can drag and drop any file just like Ventoy. Use ISOs alongside your documents and data.You can encrypt the drive with built in hardware acceleration. You can emulate floppy disks and internal AND external storage. You can set multiple users and add or remove access.No IT tech should go without their IODD.

It's very amazing item with quality and helpful tools for any IT persons

This is super-handy for keeping a cache of ISOs on hand, ready to boot whenever you need it. In fact, the last couple of times I wanted to install Ubuntu Linux, instead of burning the ISO to a bootable USB flash drive, I just copied the ISO to this and let the machine boot from it that way.I installed a Samsung 870 EVO in mine. The USB 3.1 is no joke, as copying files or booting from images are as fast as can be, so I'm quite pleased with its performance.I've used it several times without any trouble, including switching between mounted ISOs -- everything worked perfectly.My only complaint, and it really is trivial, is that there's not much of a substantial feel to it (just as other reviewers have said). Something about it feels cheap, but I'm not sure what. I do appreciate the included sleeve, for sure. But the device works very well, and that's what matters.

Fantastic lil helper …

Latest Update:Sadly still seeing lots of problems when using encryption. I copy ISOs to the mounted, encrypted HDD and every single time one of the 10 or so ISOs becomes corrupted during the transfer. And when one is corrupted the ST400 says "No supported partition" and I need to reformat the HDD and start over. I also had an issue with one ISO in particular, one that had a longer than usual file name inside the ISO, which would instantly cause the No supported partition issue. If I don't use encryption then these problems don't occur. Hopefully IODD will investigate and resolve.Previous Update:IODD investigated tested the issue I described to them with several ISOs (when using encryption on the ST400), they found an issue where the OS was resetting the USB connection, and IODD released a beta firmware update (7.6.0) that seems to have fixed my issue. I'm very happy with the fix, with the customer service person helping, with the dev team. Thanks IODD! I really wanted this device to work, and delighted it now does.Previous Update:IODD support responded to say that my problems may be because of low power, that I should try connecting through a powered USB hub. I tried a powered USB hub but that did not resolve the issue.Original review:When I saw this I just had to get it. It scratches me exactly where I itch. I love the idea of this. I'm always in search of a USB stick to install with an ISO, and always need to make the decision, do I over-write this? What if I need it? So being able to solve that perpetual problem with a device that can hold them all AND supports encryption AND can even do stuff with VHDs AND more? They could have charged 4x as much and I'd have bought it. But, alas, after 12 hours or so trying to get this thing to work, I give up. There's something seriously wrong somewhere.1) The manuals/guides/wiki are minimally helpful. They lack specificity on some really basic things and then they muddy things up further by lacking fluent English. For example, when I unboxed this I had no idea what to do next. I thought I'd throw my SSD into it and I'd get a dialog that said something like, "I see you've inserted a new drive, want us to prepare it for you?" Nope. Then I thought surely there'd be a menu option to do that. Nope. No instructions in the manual telling me to format before I insert the drive in the device, or to insert the drive then connect it to a computer and format it there. The device is telling me it doesn't like the partition that's already on the device, so I remove the drive and format it outside of the device. They are pretty vague sort of indicating that it can be any Windows style and format. But they say, it can't be the first partition, so it sounds like they may be expecting GPT. So I try GPT and NTFS (since someone somewhere said it must be NTFS to do VHDs). I do all that, insert the drive in the device, turn on encryption, and... it wipes the partition I just set up. So now I figure out I can plug the ST400 in and format the exposed drive from the computer. Okay! Now I'm getting somewhere?!2) Buggy, defective, or they are letting me do something massively wrong. I copy over a few ISOs, safely unmount, then plug it up to an old laptop and try to use Kali live. Everything's starting up, I'm giddy with anticipation, and... I'm at some initramfs prompt. Something went wrong. Odd. I try an Ubuntu live. And, I'm at an error screen. I go back to my other computer, check the hashes on the ISOs, they are perfect copies. WTF? I try again on the laptop. Same result. I look for any settings on the IODD, maybe there's some sort of compatibility mode, maybe it's trying to emulate a 96x CDROM and it's freaking out the installer or something weird. Nope, very few options to choose from. I google for similar errors, nothing relevant. I search for anything IODD, and there's so little IODD related discussion and no community from which to get help. I copy over a few other ISOs, maybe it's an Ubuntu issue since Kali is also based on Ubuntu IIRC. Nope, same result.3) I'd try every combination of things I could think of, switching cables, switching MBR to GPT and back, using or not using encryption, NTFS or exFAT, etc. and I only ever got it to be workable once, and that was with GPT/NTFS/no encryption but I don't even know if that working status would last. Quite a few times I've set up the device on one computer, disconnected it to add some ISOs from another computer and when I get to the other computer suddenly the drive is no longer recognized as though the partitions are damaged, and I take it back to the original computer and it's still not recognized, despite the display on the device still listing the ISOs. (This is with me doing the safe removal in Windows and then also the Safe Removal on the device itself.) I've had issues where I unmount the virtual cd drive and hit that button again and get some CHKDSK 30 display on the device (nothing in manual) and then suddenly it can't list the contents of the device until I restart. I had another issue where I was trying to copy ISOs to the device and got a Windows error about something else modifying the volume or something. And I've twice had issues where I set the password, it worked on one computer, I go to another computer and the password is rejected -- I know it sounds like operator error, and still could be but I swear to you after the first time I was super, super, super careful in setting and repeatedly entering the code.I've spent hours trying every combination of things I can think of, hoping to find the magical right combination that lets me use this device, but I've only seen it truly work once, and have zero confidence it in working again or continuing to work if it ever does.And again, maybe it's all, somehow me. But there's no community online, I've heard support isn't responsive [I WAS VERY WRONG HERE! IODD IS VERY RESPONSIVE!], and if I am doing something massively wrong then, fair enough, that's on me, but it's also on this device somewhat for not making it clear what I'm supposed to do and letting me know when I do something so seriously wrong.