Ventoy bootable USB drive
During the past 10 years, I probably have written OS images to pendrives over 300 times. This to either fresh install or reinstall OS on windows, linux, mac and on raspberrypi computers. However, in 2024 I came to know of a tool called Ventoy! This could have saved me a lot of time and effort in the past.
Ventoy is a open source tool to create bootable usb drives which supports images in ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI formats.
Unlike traditional way of creating an USB bootable drive for each OS image, a Ventoy USB drive can contain all different kind of OS images in one pendrive. It can even organize them as you wish. On boot, you are greeted with a simple GUI where you get the option to choose the image you want to boot into.
I went from using over 8 pendrives to just 1. The simplicity it has brought in my “distro-hopping” workflow is just bliss. I have organized the images files as shown below.
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VentoyDrive
│
└───Windows
│ │ Windows 10
│ │ Windows 11
│
└───Linux
│ Ubuntu 22.4
│ Ubuntu 24.4
│ Kubuntu.24.4
│ PopOS 22.4
│ LMDE 6
│ LinuxMint 21.3
│ Proxmox 8.2
│ Gparted
| MxLinux
Another great feature of ventoy is that in addition to the OS image files, you are free to use the Ventoy USB drive as a normal USB drive. With a large enough pendrive, ventoy can act as both a bootable usb drive and a regular usb storage device. Fantastic!