New IODD Mini Pro (no more E2B\Ventoy Secure Boot and WinPE issues!)

IODD have just released the new IODD Mini Pro which has a USB 3.1Type C USB connector and improved firmware.

'.RMD' is used for removable media devices, '.VHD' for fixed devices

The Mini Pro is available in capacities of 512GB ($149), 1TB ($185) and 2TB ($248).

If you have struggled to get Ventoy (or even E2B!) to boot certain ISOs then you can put an end to all of your Secure Boot and other issues by using one of these devices!

Because it supports VHD files, you can also make a blank VHD and install Ventoy into it and make another VHD and install E2B onto it. This means that not only will you be able to boot from any ISO or VHD, but also boot from a virtual Ventoy or E2B image to take advantage of their special features (e.g. bypass hardware restrictions on Win 11 installs (E2B and Ventoy), fully automate the install of Windows inc applications and drivers (E2B), etc.

If you are a fan of Rufus, then simply make small VHD files and use Rufus to make a bootable image on those VHDs for any of your payloads.

The IODD device or the virtual devices can be set to emulate either a fixed disk or removable USB media (e.g. thumb drive). This is useful because some types of payloads (such as WinPE or Linux-based) will only boot from removable media and not from fixed disk media (e.g. spinning rust HDDs or standard SDDs).

Secure Boot WinPE

If you use WinPE ISOs, these often do not fully work (shortcuts not all working, missing desktop icons, etc.). You also may find you need to disable Secure Boot to even get Ventoy or E2B to boot to the menu.

The solution is to make a blank VHD file on the IODD and extract the contents of the WinPE ISO onto the mounted VHD file. Now there will be no Secure Boot issues or missing content. You can even set the VHD as read-only to avoid potential corruption and set the VHD to emulate a removable flash drive.

Since you can mount up to four virtual images at the same time, you could for instance, have all your WinPE and Windows applications and drivers and PStart apps, etc. on a separate VHD. This means you can boot to any WinPE or WinToGo image from one VHD and then access your Windows utilities from this 2nd mounted VHD. One or both VHDs can be write-protected if you wish. You can even add a 3rd read/write VHD to use for scratch file storage.

You can also have multiple Ventoy or E2B VHDs on the same IODD Mini. That means it can contain different E2B\Ventoy multiboot images and menu systems for different jobs - e.g. Win11 installs, Win10 installs, WinPE disinfect, WinPE repair, Ubuntu installs, Windows updates, Windows applications, etc.

How I saved my company £1000's

I worked for a UK company called Research Machines (RM) in the late 1900's and early 2000's. 

RM had a small army of service engineers that were sent out to different schools in their area each day to repair RM computers and equipment. These engineers were situated throughout the entire UK but they had to be sent spare parts, new PC mainboards, new hard disks, etc. every day, as well as many CDs/DVDs which they used to install Windows, update software and diagnose faults, etc. It worked like this:

1. Engineer would request parts from main Oxford Service centre
2. Service center would box parts plus any new software CDs/DVDs
3. Boxes despatched overnight by couriers. Each courier had a spare car boot key for all the engineers in their area. That would go to the engineers home address in the middle of the night (no traffic!), open their car boot, collect any old parts and deposit the new box into their car boot and lock it again.
4. The engineer would then have all the new parts and new software for that morning already in the boot of his car.

A large, time-consuming and labour intensive part of this arrangement however, was that those CDs and DVDs had to be replicated by hand at the service center and all the service engineers had to be given the new media. This meant thousands of CDs and DVDs had to be written onto writable media every month because BIOS, software, driver and diagnostic/test software was regularly updated.

The service engineers did not have the equipment or time to burn their own CDs/DVDs. USB DVD drives were also too fragile for service use.

Although most PCs and Notebooks had USB 2 ports, multiboot USB drives were not available (this was before Easy2Boot was invented!). 

It was at this point that I came across the Zalman and IODD virtual USB devices. You could simply copy ISOs onto them and boot any one of them as a virtual USB CD\DVD drive.

I demonstrated these devices to the Service department and within a few weeks, each service engineer got a new Zalman hard disk drive! This meant the service centre no longer needed to duplicate thousands of CDs\DVDs. They simply emailed the engineers a list of the latest ISOs which could be downloaded from the RM website by each of the engineers (all schools had the internet even if the engineer did not). This was much cheaper in both labour and materials. Virtual Zalmans/IODDs were a game changer for us!

Because RM actually made/assembled the PCs and Notebooks, we ensured that all models supported USB-booting correctly. 

Since those days, the latest IODDs now have AES encryption, PIN entry, write-protection, etc. and these devices are better than ever. Most ISOs will Secure Boot - so no BIOS password is required to disable Secure Boot (this was often a problem because the BIOS password was always a tight-kept secret in schools for obvious reasons!).

IODD YT videos

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The IODD Mini Pro is not yet available on Amazon UK, but is available from Amazon.com. The plastic and buttons look more robust that the previous Mini model and the USB 3 connector will be too.

OK, they are not cheap, but if you spend a lot of time getting multiboot USB drives to work and your time is precious, they are really worth it!