How does drive droid work?

Question

I just found this clever little app drive droid that lets you boot from iso from your mobile. It would be interesting to know how it works. Does anyone have any knowledge about it. Drive droid

P.S. sorry for my bad english

Answer 1

There is a dedicated thread on XDA forum about this application

DriveDroid allows you to boot your PC from ISO/IMG files stored on your phone.

DriveDroid relies on the kernel of Android, in particular the USB Mass Storage (UMS) feature. It allows your phone to act as an USB-drive and have a device (SDcard) or file (ISO/IMG) be used as the content for that emulated drive.

• USB-drive and CD-drive emulation

These two modes allow your phone to act as an USB-drive or as an CD-drive. Most devices only support USB-drive emulation. Some devices only support CD-drive emulation.

To get both USB-drive as well as CD-drive emulation on your phone you need a patched kernel.

With USB-drive emulation it is possible to boot IMG files and most Linux-based ISO. It also allows you to write to the disk, which allows you to create data-disks as well as install an OS onto the USB drive. The downside of this mode is that some ISOs will not boot, since those ISOs are created for CD-drives.

With CD-rom emulation it is possible to boot all CD-based ISOs. So, having both USB-drive emulation as well as CD-rom emulation is preferable

The functionality is such that the android device acts as an emulated drive to boot .iso files from PC.

Once installed, DriveDroid will ask you for the root access after which you can proceed and download one of the Linux ISO images from withing the DriveDroid app. However, if you have already downloaded any bootable ISO image, then you can copy them to the Downloads\Images folder on your SDCard. This is the default folder where ISO images are kept.

After connect your Android phone to your PC and press the power button on the PC. During the booting process, press F12 to pull up the boot selection menu and choose your Android device from the menu. Pretty soon, you would be booting from the ISO image located on your Android phone.