We did our initial review of the Zalman ZM-VE300 USB 3 enclosure here:
Now that we have had a chance to work with the unit we are really impressed with its ability to facilitate booting from “optical disk” via internally mounted ISO or to boot from the drive itself.
When the enclosure is in Dual Mode meaning both the mounted ISO and the hard drive storage are presented to the BIOS we are able to boot from either via Boot Menu.
What this means is that we can boot the Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 DVD so to speak and have the necessary RAID drivers on the USB hard drive.
Given that we have installed an 80GB Intel X25-M SSD in this enclosure we have enough room for all of the OS ISOs we require plus all of the current server, workstation, and desktop hardware drivers needed.
In the near future we will be slipstreaming the Renesas Electronics USB 3.0 controller driver into our desktop OS WIM files so that we can use the USB 3 interfaces on the desktops we build to speed things up even further.
This product is a clear win for us.
Even if we were building a lot of desktops or workstations, servers are our mainstay, having a number of these units around will make getting that OEM, Retail, or Volume License version of a Windows 7 OS, or even Windows XP Professional, installed in _very_ short order.
We will be ordering a few more of these enclosures along with some Intel 320 Series 80GB and 160GB SSDs to install in them to make the best possible combination.
Happy Friday everyone and thanks for reading! :)
Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book
*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.
5 comments:
I purchased ZM-VE300 after reading your post. My Symantec Endpoint Protection client quarantines the firmware upgrade EXE. Agh!
Suspend SEP when it comes time to upgrade the firmware. :)
Philip
That worked. I should have realized. Thanks.
Awesome.
The drive has already saved us more than enough time to pay for itself.
We have more on the way. :D
Philip
Getting a "bad or N/S drive" message on the display using a new WD 250GB Scorpion drive but it seems to be working. I emailed Zalman support. I am looking forward to eliminating all my flash drives I carry in my technician bag.
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