Category: Review

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iodd MINI Pro Review

Iodd recently released the iodd MINI Pro. The new features over the original iodd MINI are that it can now use a USB-C to USB 3.0 A cable (verus Micro B cable to USB 3.0 A cable) and a M.2 2280 SATA3 SSD (vs the 2242 SSD on the iodd MINI). Unforunately, it does not support a NVMe M.2 SSD, only a M.2 2280/2242 SATA3 with a B+K connector. You get your pick of 512GB, 1TB or 2TB sizes. You cannot just buy the enclosure itself which is a bit of a bummer.

Upon receiving the iodd MINI Pro, I opened the back up. There is a black sticker on the back that states “Warranty void if removed”. I removed this sticker and there is a very small screw that you need to remove under the sticker. There are tabs on the bottom and the sides: I highly recommend using an electronics toolkit with a prying tool so you don’t break the tabs off. Attempts to reinstall the screw failed, it is very small and I ended up stripping the threads in the head, so I just left it out (the tabs are good enough for securing the back plate).

Iodd rebranded the SSD with their own label. Looking up the part number on the back it appears to be a rebadge of a Verbatim M.2 SATA SSD from 2022. I’m assuming 22 = 2022 and 02 is the month, so it was manufactured in Feburary 2022.

The case of the iodd MINI Pro has a more premium feeling over the original iodd MINI. The buttons are bigger, have better tactical feel and the LCD display has a nice matte finish to it.

One oddity I found with the ST400 and iodd MINI Pro is that they can only display 30 files in one folder and then an error “Too many files” is displayed, however, on the original iodd MINI, it is able to display more than 30 files in one folder.

Benchmarks:

SEQ1M = Big file transfers speed.

RND4K Q32T1 = Small file multitasking performance.

RND4K (IOPS) = How many small file ops per second.

RND4K (µs) = Latency for those operations.

iodd MINI Pro with Verbatim 512GB M.2 2280 SATA III SSD (comes with iodd MINI Pro purchase)

iodd MINI Pro with Transcend 2TB M.2 2280 SATA III SSD with Dram Cache – MTS830S

iodd MINI with Kingspec 1TB 2242 SSD

iodd ST400 with 1 TB Samsung 870 EVO 2.5 SSD

Drive 1 – iodd MINI Pro with Verbatim 512GB M.2 2280 SATA III SSD

Drive 2 – iodd MINI Pro with Transcend 2TB M.2 2280 SATA III SSD

Drive 3 – iodd MINI with Kingspec 1TB 2242 SSD

Drive 4 – iodd ST400 with 1 TB Samsung 870 EVO 2.5 SSD

Unlike the iodd MINI, it does not come with a carrying case, so you will need to buy one yourself. After measuring the device, I went with this case.

My verdict: buy the ST400 enclosure with no drive and then supply your own 2.5 SSD unless you absolutely need the smaller form factor size. 2.5 SSDs are easier to come by and you aren’t forced into buying a bundled SSD.

  • Soli Deo Gloria

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In Search of the Perfect Android Podcast App

Recently, I subscribed to Club Twit (twit.tv), which includes ad free videos for their tech shows.  I loaded these shows up into Pocket Casts without any problems.  I, however, wanted to watch these on my computer full screen.  I blissfully logged into Pocket Casts on the web to see if I could play my podcasts there, then I was greeted with this message: that will be $40/year.  Are you kidding me?  They have a “deal” where the first year is $20, then year 2 and beyond is $40.

Podcast apps are just aggregators of RSS feeds and there’s no way I’m paying $40/year for the ability to watch videos hosted by a 3rd party.  Researching around, I found Bluestacks which can run Android apps on Windows and indeed, I could load Pocket Casts and have it go full screen without any problems and it would sync my progress of watching the show to my phone.  They even created an icon for Pocket Casts on my desktop, so all I had to do was click on the icon and it would auto-launch Bluestacks and Pocket Casts.

However, this $40 cash grab attempt left a bad taste in my mouth with Pocket Casts. In addition to that, I have issues with their playlist feature.  I can add 3 episodes of a podcast to the queue, but it never plays the last item in the playlist automatically.  So annoying when you are in the shower and not near the phone!

I decided to hunt around for a new podcast app.  Podcast Addict was highly recommended on Reddit, so I loaded it up.  It offered to restore my backup from the year 2011: yes, I had used this app in the past.  Apparently, it saves the app data in a secret backup location on your Google Drive that you can’t see.  Unfortunately, Podcast Addict doesn’t appear to sync between multiple devices, so I uninstalled it.

I then tried Podurama which looked very promising.  They offer syncing between devices and their free tier allows playing of your podcasts on their website.  Unfortunately, I could not get the syncing to work between my computer and phone, so I uninstalled that one as well.

I then stumbled onto Podcast Republic.  While they do not offer playing podcasts from a website, they do offer syncing between devices and right from the get go, they say it’s free.  I loaded it up into Bluestacks and I was able to sync my podcast progress to my phone.  Hooray!  The sync, however, does not seem to be “real-time”, but I was able to do it on demand from Settings>Account & syncing>Sync now.  The app has ads which were not obtrusive at all, just a small banner at the very bottom of the app.   I went ahead and paid the one time fee of $4 to remove the ads.

As an added bonus: I see they support streaming radio stations.  I listen to a radio station on iHeartRadio using their official app.  Unfortunately, they started putting ads on the screen in their app: annoying!   I went to radio-browser.info, found the streaming URL for the station I listen to and added it in Podcast Republic.  No more screen ads!

-Soli Deo Gloria

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Windows 11 Confirmed

I watched the Windows 11 live stream from Microsoft today. There was a few interesting tidbits, such as it will be free upgrade for Windows 10 users (not unexpected), will only come in a 64-bit version (32-bit version is gone) and requires UEFI/Secureboot/TPM 2.0. A lot of people are hyperventilating over the TPM 2.0 requirement, but we are roughly 6 months away from the release of Windows 11 and I have no doubt that this requirement will either be relaxed or a workaround will be found.

Installing the leaked Windows 11 dev build was blocked by Microsoft from installing on bare metal and within days, people figured out how to copy all of the files from the Windows 10 sources folder from the install media and then just overwrite the Windows 10 WIM file with the Windows 11 WIM file and viola, all restrictions were removed. The TPM 2.0 requirement was already bypassed for this build by replacing appraiserres.dll with one from Windows 10. Heck, WinNTSetup will probably have a tick box to just remove the requirement.

The 32-bit version should have been removed a long time ago. If you have something that requires Windows 32-bit (for the 16-bit subsystem support), you should probably be running an emulator for that program or leave it on an older OS. The last time I had to install Windows 32-bit was back in June 2014 for a company we bought from Baldor Generators. There was 1 guy that had to run a MS-DOS program and MS-DOS programs only work on Windows 32-bit (without emulation), so we had to revert his Windows 64-bit back to Windows 32-bit.

However, if I had to do it over again, I would just run winevdm or DOSBOX to run his MS-DOS program and leave him on Windows 64-bit. There’s even more options such as VMWare Workstation, I think it’s finally time to drop MS-DOS support for programs that were created 40 years ago.

  • Soli Deo Gloria