Ventoy is a new software application for Linux and Windows that does things a bit differently. Instead of extracting an ISO image, it allows you to place the actual ISO images on the USB device so that you may boot from them directly.
The program supports multiple ISO images that you can place on a USB device and uses GRUB as the boot manager.
With Ventoy you can create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files. You don’t need to format the disk over and over. Just copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly. You can copy many files at a time and Ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them.
Both Legacy BIOS and UEFI are supported in the same way. Most type of OS supported (Linux/Unix/Windows/WinPE/Vmware/Xen).
Ventoy features
- 100% open source
- Simple to use (Get started)
- Fast (limited only by the speed of copying iso file)
- Directly boot from ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files, no extraction needed
- Legacy + UEFI supported in the same way
- UEFI Secure Boot supported (1.0.07+)
- Persistence supported (1.0.11+)
- MBR and GPT partition style supported (1.0.15+)
- WIM files boot supported (Legacy + UEFI) (1.0.12+)
- Auto installation supported (1.0.09+)
- ISO files larger than 4GB supported
- Native boot menu style for Legacy & UEFI
- Most type of OS supported, 550+ iso files tested
- Not only boot but also complete installation process
- USB drive write-protected support
- USB normal use unaffected
- Data nondestructive during version upgrade
- No need to update Ventoy when a new distro is released
Conclusion
Ventoy is a powerful tool to create bootable USB devices. If there will be a new version of your favorite distribution, it is enough to delete the old ISO image and load in a new one.
So you can easily add and remove any of the supported ISO images of disks. Which in turn is very convenient, is not necessary each time to create and overwrite multiboot USB flash drive. The whole process is done by adding and removing iso images.
