Whether you’re testing Linux or installing Windows, creating a bootable disk is a tedious process. What if you could format a hard drive to boot once, then simply drag and drop ISO files onto it to boot? That’s what Ventoy offers.
How to Make a Multi-Bootable USB with Ventoy – Boot Multiple ISO Files from One USB!
Why would anyone want an external hard drive or thumb drive full of bootable operating systems? Well, for starters, it’s a fun way to try out different operating systems without having to install them. Most Linux distributions let you try them out in a live environment before installing them. With Ventoy, trying them out is even faster, since you don’t have to write the image to the drive every time. But a tool like this also makes it easy to manage a collection of installable operating systems and keep them all on the same device, which is great if you’re the type of person who fixes computers regularly.
Once installed, there will be a partition where you can place ISO, WIM, IMG, VHD(x), and EFI files. In theory, this should work for any bootable image. There is a list of tested ISOs if you want to confirm which one you have in mind. Note that macOS is not supported, nor is booting from Ventoy on Mac devices.
To get started, download Ventoy for your operating system and boot it. Connect the drive you want to use for booting operating systems. (Note that Ventoy can technically write to internal hard drives, but by default it will only list external drives. This is to prevent you from accidentally rewriting your internal drives.)
