Did you know? Can you install Windows and Linux using the same USB Flash drive, without having to format it twice?
There are several tools to create a USB Flash drive that are well known, such as Rufus, Yumi, Easy2boot. But nothing is easier to use than Ventoy.
Ventoy is a free software tool for creating bootable USB drives with ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files.
With Ventoy, you don't have to format the disk repeatedly, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly.
You can copy multiple files at once and Ventoy will give you a boot menu to select from.
Ventoy supports x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI, and MIPS64EL UEFI, MBR, and GPT partition tables, which makes it universal.
Most types of OS are also supported by Ventoy , such as ( Windows/ WinPE/ Linux/ ChromeOS / Unix/ VMware/ Xen…)
Ventoy features
- 100% open source
- Very easy to use (
- Fast (limited only by the speed of copying the iso file)
- Can be installed on USB/Local Disk/SSD/ NVMe /SD Card
- Direct boot from ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files, no extraction required
- No need for continuous on disk for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files
- MBR and GPT partition styles supported
- x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI, MIPS64EL UEFI supported
- IA32/x86_64 UEFI Secure Boot supported
- Windows automatic installation supported
- RHEL7/8/CentOS7/8/SUSE/Ubuntu Server … automatic installation supported
- FAT32/ exFAT /NTFS/UDF/XFS/Ext2(3)(4) supported for primary partition
- ISO files larger than 4GB are supported
- Native boot menu style for Legacy & UEFI
- Most OS types supported, 780+ iso files tested
- Linux vDisk boot solution ( vhd / vdi /raw…)
- Not only boot but also complete the installation process
- Menus can be dynamically switched between ListView and TreeView modes .
- Concept “Compatible with Ventoy “
- Plugin Framework and GUI plugin configurator
- File injection to runtime environment
- Boot configuration file changed dynamically
- Highly customizable menu themes and styles
- USB drive write protection support
- Normal use of USB is not affected
- Data is not corrupted during upgrade
- No need to update Ventoy when a new distro is released
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Steps to create a multiboot USB drive with Ventoy
- Download Ventoy
- Extract the downloaded zip file.
- Connect the USB drive to the computer.
- Run the file “Ventoy2Disk.exe”
Before starting, click the “Install” button, make sure that the USB drive you are using is detected.
All data on the USB drive will be deleted, backup your data first if any.
- Wait for all processes to finish
After the installation is complete, the USB drive will be divided into 2 partitions. The first partition is formatted with the exFAT file system (you can also manually reformat it with NTFS/ FAT32/ UDF/XFS/ Ext2/3/4).
Copy all the iso/ wim / img / vhd (x) files that you will use to that partition. Ventoy will search all directories and subdirectories recursively to find all image files and display them in the boot menu alphabetically. You can also use the plugin configuration to tell Ventoy to only look for image files in a specific directory (and its subdirectories ).
