What am I missing about this zalman ve300

[compnet]

So I went ahead and ordered 2 Zalman ve-300's off of newegg after all the rave reviews on this forum..

Made a _iso folder, put a couple isos in.. I have a vista era laptop I'm doing a fresh install on.. Its vista ultimate, it boots fine off of a vista ultimate DVD made from the same iso I just transfered to the zalman.

If I toggle to the vista iso and try to boot, A) USB CD doesn't show up, just USB hard drive, B) if I select USB hard drive I get operating system not found. I've tried multiple other isos that the computer boots off the CD fine..

I've tried ODD mode, HDD mode, Dual mode.. can't get this thing to boot anything for the life of me.. CD-ROM boot is enable in bios, and there aren't any usb options..

And whats with this in the manual "Do not turn on / off PC while device is connected to PC. It may cause device disorder or error" I got news for you little hard drive enclosure, the computer is going to turn on and off with you attached quite a bit, whether you like it or not.

I'm gonna load up the other zalman I bought and try the first one on a few other computers.. but first impression is incredibly far from all the reviews I've seen here..

 

[tim fitzgerald]

Did you go to the Zalman web site ans download the update file? That should help. If not mine shows up as Zlaman cd drive, on my Lenovo, on my Dell it shows up as cd usb drive. There is also a couple of posts about Zalmans on this forums, just google it.

 

[compnet]

Did you go to the Zalman web site ans download the update file? That should help. If not mine shows up as Zlaman cd drive, on my Lenovo, on my Dell it shows up as cd usb drive. There is also a couple of posts about Zalmans on this forums, just google it.

I'm really hoping its "mark as active" which I forgot to do

testing that now

 

[compnet]

updated firmware, marked as active, isn't showing up in boot manager

 

[compnet]

after firmware update it only works in ODD mode on 1 out of 2 computers

 

[tim fitzgerald]

How do you have the HDD formatted? Also run it in dual mode.

 

[compnet]

How do you have the HDD formatted? Also run it in dual mode.

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...

 

[tim fitzgerald]

I had some problems at first , however so far it works on all the Pc's I've tried it on probably 50 or more. Be prepared in the event you run across that one Pc out there just waiting to mess with your head. Keep your CD's handy, it will happen.

 

[uprighttech]

I had a similar issue when I first got mine. The drive that I put in it had another partition (like the small system partition Windows sometimes makes when installing) before the main one that I had the _iso folder on. After I deleted this partition, it worked great.

 

[tim fitzgerald]

I recall someone else remarking on that same problem..

 

[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]

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]

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]

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]

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.