Ventoy is the best bootable ISO program you've never heard of

Key findings

  • Ventoy enables easy ISO management on USB drives without formatting.
  • Install and use multiple ISOs on a single USB drive.
  • Ventoy supports various image files and ISOs and is compatible with Linux and Windows.



Installing ISO files hasn't always been easy. Many people use USB drives to manage and install their ISOs. The problem, however, is that you often have to format your USB drive to mount a new ISO on your USB drive. But thanks to Ventoy, that's changed. Ventoy is an open source tool that makes using bootable USB drives as easy as copying and pasting your ISO on your drive.

One of the main advantages of Ventoy is that you can continue to use your USB drive as normal, as you don't have to format it every time you want to add a new ISO. This means that any files you want to keep will stay there, as you can simply delete an old ISO and add a new one. This could mean that instead of having multiple USB drives with different operating system ISOs, you could use a single drive for all of them.



Install Ventoy on your USB drive

Once you've downloaded Ventoy from the official website, it doesn't take long to install it on your USB stick. The whole process is so seamless that you'll wonder why you didn't do this sooner!

  1. Insert your USB drive and open the Ventoy2Disk.exe to install. Make sure that the correct drive is selected from Device dropdown and select Install.
    Image showing the Ventoy installation screen

  2. The same Warning is displayed twice and you will be informed that the drive will be formatted and all data will be lost. Select “Yes” both times to continue with the installation.
    Image shows the second check to make sure you are happy with the formatting of your USB drive

  3. Once the installation is complete, the empty folder for the USB drive will appear so that you Transfer your ISOs to the drive.
    Image showing the USB drive file folder after successful Ventoy installation

  4. Simply Drag and drop Copy your ISO to the USB drive and you're done.
    Image showing transferring an ISO file to a USB drive with Ventoy installed


It really is that simple. Once Ventoy is installed on a USB stick, you can simply drag and drop your ISOs onto it and they will be bootable. You can also add non-bootable files to the USB stick and not worry about losing them. If you want to swap ISOs, you don't need to reformat or reinstall Ventoy, just delete the old ISO and transfer the new one to the USB drive.

Related

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Booting and installing an ISO

Now comes the fun part. You can install or boot your ISO. Whether you want to install Windows 11 or boot a Linux distribution from your USB stick, both work the same way. Make sure your USB drive is plugged into your PC and then boot from the USB stick. This can be done in a few different ways, so choose the one that works best for you. Once you've booted Ventoy from the USB stick, installing your ISO image is easy. Ventoy has a few menu options at the bottom of the screen. These will help you do different things, but for now we'll focus on installing an ISO image.


  1. Click on F2 key on your keyboard to Browse The ISO files on your USB drive.
    Image showing the Ventoy menu tool option

  2. Select the ISO You want install or Boots.
    Image showing the ISO files on the USB stick in the Ventoy menu

  3. Some ISOs can display an additional screen, which is quite common in Linux distributions. You can Select the version You want to install.
    various Endeavouros boot options from the Ventoy menu

  4. Sit back and watch the installationDepending on the operating system you are installing, you may need to Select options And Input info to simplify installation.


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Compatibility and supported devices

The best thing about Ventoy is that there seems to be no limit to how many ISOs you can install on a USB stick. For my testing, I used a 64GB USB drive and had absolutely no problems. Everything worked as it should whether it had a single ISO or ten on it. Ventoy is compatible with both Linux and Windows and supports a wide variety of image files and ISOs. Ventoy has been tested and confirmed to work with over 1200 image files. It is also compatible with over 90% of the distributions on distrowatch.com.


This is truly an indispensable tool for system developers or anyone in IT who needs to install multiple operating systems. You can even have multiple versions of Windows 11 on it if needed. This way you can test if new updates work and if not, you can save the older working version on the same USB stick. This can save a lot of time and effort, especially if you are responsible for multiple PCs.

If you're interested in Linux and aren't quite sure which distribution is right for you, you can have many different ones on the USB stick and then boot them without actually installing them. This way you can try them out and see which one has the features you need without actually having to install it. It wouldn't take long at all. If you install Linux to dual boot alongside Windows but decide it's not quite right for you, don't worry because you can remove Linux from dual boot in just a few steps.


Ventoy is probably the easiest tool I've found for booting ISOs from a USB stick. You can install it on your USB stick and be up and running in less than 5 minutes. Ventoy is 100% open source and free too, so you really can't go wrong with it.

Ventoy logo

Ventoy

Ventoy is an open source tool to create a bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files.

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