What am I missing about this zalman ve300

[phaZed]

I have had some issues with the computer picking the internal cdrom regardless of bios settings. Removing the internal CD rom fixes this most of the time for me.

[taysr]

After a few months of use i've found for me it works 95% of the time, but unfortunately it's not at the point where I can throw out my cd collection.

[andcorptech]

Originally Posted by taysr

After a few months of use i've found for me it works 95% of the time, but unfortunately it's not at the point where I can throw out my cd collection.

Thats not what its designed for. It does what is is designed to do very well. If a BIOS doesnt support it. , this has little to do with the Zalman. I attempt use it for all OS installs and many app installs and have found very few systems which will not boot from it.

I can do a Win 7 install from initial boot to usable desktop in under 10 minutes. Awesome tool for me

[shamrin]

Originally Posted by compnet

ntfs on mbr... I think my first test laptop might have some random problems.. I've tried it on 2 others and its working.. I really hope it works on "anything a USB CD" would work on like I've heard...

You're going to be disappointed. I'd say it works less than half the time for me. I like mine, but I only use it for booting an image when I have to for some reason or when I'm feeling lucky. It does seem to improve its chances if you pull the machine's own optical drives but FFS, how much easier to just use a CD.

[FoolishTech]

I'm really glad I saw this thread, I knew it was too good to be true. :\

[tim fitzgerald]

We'll all & all once you get used to it's little quirks Zalman's are great tools and big time savers. Sometimes you can have trouble booting from a thumb drive or a cd rom also. I have D7 on both thumb & two zalman's , my cd sleeve with me as well.

[NYJimbo]

Originally Posted by shamrin

You're going to be disappointed. I'd say it works less than half the time for me. I like mine, but I only use it for booting an image when I have to for some reason or when I'm feeling lucky. It does seem to improve its chances if you pull the machine's own optical drives but FFS, how much easier to just use a CD.

Yeah, I try it, but if it don't work you fall back to plan B. I do the same with things like Memtest86+. I got it on a USB stick, but if that don't boot then I drag out the boot CD. The Zalman is nice to have around, does seem to work most of the time.

[andcorptech]

Originally Posted by shamrin

You're going to be disappointed. I'd say it works less than half the time for me. I like mine, but I only use it for booting an image when I have to for some reason or when I'm feeling lucky. It does seem to improve its chances if you pull the machine's own optical drives but FFS, how much easier to just use a CD.

Its weird that people have so many issues. I would say i have had less than 10 computers which wouldnt boot from it, usually old Dell's and IBM's. I still have my CD's but its just handy to have all isos in one small package.

As for Cd's being just as easy, the load times are so much faster with the Zalman

[Peter@ifix]

I had problems initially with my drive recognising the _ISO folder, but once I followed the troubleshooting instructions on this page it has worked perfectly.

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/ve200

The only hardware I can't get it to work on are Dells, old or new.

[TimM]

With my Zalman VE-200, I find that on some machines the time from the machine having no power on the USB port to the time that the BIOS has read all the possible boot devices is too short... the HDD part of the Zalman is identified, but the CD emulation isn't.
In that case, as the computer boots, I first go into BIOS, then reboot from there. This leaves power to the USB port on, the Zalman has time to start its CD emulation, and the computer's BIOS then finds the emulated optical drive without any problem.