Description.
Ventoy is a great, open source and free software that installs on a USB flash drive (NOT on the system) and allows you to drag any ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI image onto the USB without burning, and have it automatically added to its boot menu so that you can decide which one to use at any time. Moreover, the drive is not unusable, since you can also add documents and folders you need without affecting Ventoy's operation.
The Ventoy installation script will create in the drive selected by the user a new MBR table with the following layout:
- 1 MB free space at the beginning of the drive.
- 32 MB system FAT partition at the end of the drive.
- ExFAT data partition of the remaining size on the drive.
Ventoy has many options such as reserving free space at the end of the drive, but this tutorial will discuss only those by default.
Installation from Linux
We download the file for Linux from the Ventoy website or its repository on GitHub and unzip it.
We open the location in a terminal or navigate to it:
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cd ~/Downloads/ventoy-X.X.XX/
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./VentoyGUI.x86_64
If our USB stick does not appear in the drop-down list, we can click the refresh button to its right. The interface displays the downloaded version that will be installed on the drive. In case you already have Ventoy installed, both versions will be displayed and you can press the 'Update' button to update the software on the device, without affecting the ISO images and documents stored on it.
Now all you have to do is press the 'Install' button and wait a few seconds.
Installation from Windows
We download the file for Windows from the Ventoy website or its repository on GitHub and unzip it.
We connect the USB stick and launch the Ventoy GUI:
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Ventoy2Disk.exe
'Ventoy2Disk.exe' is a x86_32 application and supports both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows PC with Intel / AMD processor. Ventoy also provides 'Ventoy2Disk_X64.exe / Ventoy2Disk_ARM.exe / Ventoy2Disk_ARM64.exe' you can use them if needed. These 'exe' files are in 'altexe' subdirectory and you must copy them to the upper directory to use them (the same location with Ventoy2Disk.exe).
If our USB stick does not appear in the drop-down list, we can click the refresh button to its right. The interface displays the downloaded version that will be installed on the drive. In case you already have Ventoy installed, both versions will be displayed and you can press the 'Update' button to update the software on the device, without affecting the ISO images and documents stored on it.
Now all you have to do is press the 'Install' button and wait a few seconds.
Usage
We mount the 'Ventoy' partition from our file explorer and copy to it all the images in any supported format that we want to have available. No need to burn, flash, etc... just drag or paste the files as they were downloaded, and the Ventoy operating system will automatically generate an entry for each one in its start menu.
Once the message disappears, we can restart the computer making sure that it boots from the USB stick. When the Ventoy boot menu is displayed, select an image and press Enter.If we try to unmount the 'Ventoy' partition right after copying an image, Mint will most likely display a notification warning that data is still being copied and the device should not be disconnected. It is time to wait.
More information at Ventoy Documents.If we are not going to use it anymore, we can delete the downloaded file and the directory where we unzipped it.