Fantastic tool. Works with Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, some forms of DOS -- most things.<p>I wrote about it here:
<a href="https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/10/friday_foss_fest/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/10/friday_foss_fest/</a><p>Now there's a PXE network-boot version too.<p><a href="https://www.iventoy.com/en/index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.iventoy.com/en/index.html</a>
Fantastic tool.<p>Having a single thumb drive with multiple ISOs on it means you don't have to keep juggling thumb drives ("now <i>where</i> did I put my Debian 12 XFCE installer") or overwriting them over and over ("oh no, this has the 64-bit ISO, but now I need the 32-bit installer").
Discussions on similar submissions:<p><i>A New Bootable USB Solution</i> <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889392">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889392</a> (October 16, 2021 — 182 points, 47 comments)<p><i>Ventoy makes making bootable USB drives easy</i> <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273289">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273289</a> (August 25, 2020 — 66 points, 11 comments)<p><i>Ventoy: A new bootable USB solution</i> <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24241485">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24241485</a> (August 21, 2020 — 394 points, 106 comments)<p><i>Ventoy – A New Bootable USB Solution</i> <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23394714">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23394714</a> (June 2, 2020 — 70 points, 6 comments)
This is a great tool for those of us who might have a bit of a distro hopping problem. You no longer need to do the whole song and dance with `dd` and can just copy a bunch of ISOs to a single USB drive
This is the best tool I have used for my linux installs, it also is handy to have some recovery/maintenance ISO's quickly available.<p>It works with BIOS and UEFI and even lets you keep using your usb for other files.
the persistence feature is cool: <a href="https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_persistence.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_persistence.html</a><p>especially if you want to customize or keep your bootable recovery disk usb updated without rolling your own ISOs.
Key limitation: can't be installed to run standalone (in a partition on your nvme boot drive) if you care about partitions alignment.<p>Variants without this limitation were discussed yesterday.<p>Usecase: a rescue distribution to start from the UEFI menu manually, or automatically if your normal boot fails
I recently needed to install Linux onto two new systems, and the process has somehow gotten even more infuriating since I last purchased hardware about five years ago. Between Secure Boot, UEFI, the Windows Boot Loader, "self-healing BIOS" (aka, "huh, you tried to boot something other than Windows, lemme just revert all those BIOS settings for you..."), and either crippled or inscrutably complex BIOS, I was dead in the water with the install process for several hours on each device.<p>Ventoy saved my bacon. <i>One</i> of the problems I was encountering turned out to be that one of the BIOSes wasn't recognizing the standard Debian ISO (any of them) as bootable, but it did recognize Ventoy. The other device ultimately refused to boot anything other than either Windows or Ubuntu (hard-locking on kernel load), but Ventoy at least made it easier to trial-and-error my way to that conclusion.<p>I flatly refuse to purchase a mass-market computer ever again. Everything from this point forward is either going to be custom built or purchased from a vendor with explicit Linux support.
I know Ventoy has been around for a while, but I'm still glad we have a good FOSS solution for this. Back in the day, I used to run a proprietary (I think) tool called SARDU for the job, which worked fine, but wasn't terrific.
Very practical for IT work or if you just want to put all of your useful ISOs somewhere like a large USB stick. You can have your Win/AV/Rescue/Linux/Memory testing and other tools together and just boot whatever you need without struggling with writing images and repeating the boot process while smashing your keys. The only machines that this didn't work for me were from the Windows XP era. Didn't have any compatibility issues with ISOs!
This is what I use most often these days for loading any system with a Linux install (or to test drive distros it's an awesome tool).<p>I have found some hardware seems to have weird issues with drives of a certain size (I tried using a 256GB external SSD and have encountered a laptop that will not boot from it, and will only boot from USB storage if it's like 32GB or lower or something weird like that). But that appears to be a particular quirk of that laptop and nothing to do with Ventoy in particular.
Echoing the praise here. I just install this on all the USB storage devices I have. If I have ISOs on it, now I can boot. Otherwise I can use them as regular USB storage.
1. Even better as part of Easy2boot.<p>1. I have servers in the basement with a KVM switch and Idrac. I always keep a usb stick with Easy2boot and Ventoy on it plugged into my servers, and often my desktops, so I can fix stuff offline, or even totally wipe the OS. Plop a live CD (Sergei Strelec) on there, and you can copy isos on there from the network. It's awesome.
It may have evolved since I last used it. But when I tried, it was a bit of a "bag of spanners", thrown together shell scripts which made some incorrect assumptions. Back then it didn't even make a bootable device. Everyone seems to rave about it now though, so may be worth another look.
As an alternative, I've been using an IODD 2541 for making virtual ISOs and USB sticks bootable. Put any SSD into the box, copy ISOs or other formats to the drive. Selection is from a small LCD panel on the front.<p>I'd say it's one of my most essential pieces of kit that I take with me.
Is source code available yet? I ask because I suggested using Ventoy at $WORK and the Security folks shot me down because it's apparently from an a$ian country so we wanna be able to convince ourselves it's not gonna end up just being an extremely flexible trojan...
Also, look at iVentoy. It's not free but it's not expensive, and it is "Ventoy over PXE boot". It takes a bit to set up, but I have it running on a Linux box and I can boot any machine from any image.
What about FreeDOS?<p>FreeDOS with SBEmu is really nice for an instant DOS machine on real hardware:<p><a href="https://github.com/crazii/SBEMU/releases">https://github.com/crazii/SBEMU/releases</a>
switched to using only one large pen drive with all my ISO with ventoy and never looked back. worked well even with windows.<p>there were some challenges, especiall with UEFI with some devices. but there are workarounds documented in the tool's website. it is like a one-time thing per device, but you do have to trust random keys off the internet.<p>it is well worth the hassle of extra keystrokes to get to the boot menu. i just wish there was a way to bypass grub menu for every iso where it applies.
I'm blown away by how easy this makes having a boot drive for multiple operating systems while also letting the thumb drive work normally as a data storage medium
Another plus is Ventoy can install Windows 11 without secure boot, TPM from an official MS ISO. Some Linux distros cannot install with those features enabled.
There are hardware disk enclosures that emulate an optical drive over USB and booting works on hardware level with "physical" optical drive.<p>But how ventoy achieve systems booting and detecting the iso programmatically? I know that initially, there seems to be grub2 reading usb file list and then it reads iso eltorito boot image and boots from it, but how exactly the OS itself know about the virtual drive? Is there an interface in uefi or bios that allow emulate optical drive, or some other standard is at play and operating systems just happens to support it? Window 10/11 pe / installer, for example, reports the iso in diskpart as virtual disk. Not an optical drive. Windows kernel actually mounts the iso somehow automatically.<p>Can someone point me on how this actually works, please.
I have the Gandalf rescue ISO[0] on this, among many other ISOs I use incase I need to repair/rescue or install stuff. My Ventoy setup is a veritable 'Swiss army knife' for general IT related things. The Gandalf Windows preinstalled environment has all this bundled with it, if anyone's interested:<p><pre><code> Tools/Utilities included on this Windows PE:
AoMei Partition Assistant: Partitioning solution
WinRAR: Powerful archiver and archive manager
7-Zip: Archiver and archive manager
Defraggler: Disk Defragmenter
MS Paint and Wordpad: Microsoft’s basic image and text editors
Macrium Reflect: Backup and disk imaging solution
CCleaner: System optimization, privacy and cleaning tool
Media Player Classic: Classic Windows media player
HWiNFO: Hardware information and diagnostic tool
Snipping Tool: Screen capture application.
Windows Defender: Microsoft’s excellent antivirus app
TeamViewer: Remote control solution
Double Drive: Driver backup application
Winmerge: File comparison tool
Opera: Web Browser, Fast, simple and safe way to get around on the web
GetRight: Download manager
Ntpwedit: Change or remove passwords for local system accounts
Partition Wizard
Virtual Keyboard
Virtual Magnifying Glass
DiskCryptor: Disk encryption application similar to Bitlocker
Bitlocker: Microsoft’s disk encryption application
Powershell: Powerful automation tool is both a shell and a scripting language
UltraISO: Directly edit ISO files, make images from CD/DVD-ROM
Unlocker: Unlocker helps delete locked files with error messages
Gimagex: A graphical user interface for the ImageX tool
SuperAntiSpyWare: Free Malware Remover
Magic Jelly Bean Key Finder: A utility that retrieves your Product Keys
HiJackThis: Spot home page hijackers and startup programs
Ghost: The classic imaging tool
Skype: Provides video chat and voice calls
VNC Viewer: Remote Control Software
Sysinternal Suite Troubleshooting Utilities
VLC Media Player: Open-source cross-platform multimedia player
IrfanView Image Viewer
FastStone Image Viewer: User-friendly image browser, converter and editor
Mozilla FireFox: Another great browser
Easy BCD: Boot management tool and bcd editor
Snipping Tool: Take snapshots
Drive Snapshot: Disk imaging solution
MyLan Viewer: Network/IP Scanner
Rufus: Utility to format and create bootable USB flash drives
Wise Data Recovery: Recovery program to get back deleted photos, documents, etc.
WinToolkit: Customize Your Windows Installation
ImgBurn: CD burning tool
Treesize: Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs
Klite Codec Pack Basic
RecoverKeys: Retrieves your Product Keys
Remote Desktop: Latest version of Windows remote desktop
DismGui: Dism with a graphical interface
Klite Codec Pack Basic
Google Chrome: Great Browser
Powershell: Automation scripting
</code></pre>
[0] <a href="https://www.fcportables.com/gandalf-boot-iso/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.fcportables.com/gandalf-boot-iso/</a>