Ventoy is another program that allows you to easily create a multi-load flash drive or an external USB disk for UEFI and LEGACY systems by simply copying ISO's bootable files to the drive. This instruction details about the use of utility and its capabilities. ATTENTION: VENTOY is available for both Windows and Linux, then only the first option will be considered.
Simple creation of a multi-load flash drive in Ventoy
First on the basic use of the program, namely how to make the multi-load flash drive as quickly as possible in Ventoy:
- Download the archive with Ventoy from the official site of the https://ventoy.net/en/index.html and unpack it at a convenient location.
- From the folder, run the venentoy2disk.exe file (in case of a warning from SmartScreen, click "More", and then - "Perform anyway").
- In the program window, select the desired USB flash drive ( Attention: All data from it will be deleted) and click the Set button or "Install" to prepare a USB drive.
- Double-confirm that you are aware of the fact that all data from the flash drives will be deleted.
- After a short period of time you will receive a message that Ventoy has been successfully installed on the device. Click OK and close the program window.
- As a result, the drive will be divided into two partitions: one large in the EXFAT file system and the other - FAT, with files for download (in the conductor, it may be displayed only first of them).
- Copy in any way the necessary ISO bootable files on the first EXFAT section. If you wish, you can organize them in folders as it will be convenient for you, it will not affect the operation of the download (but do not use spaces and Cyrillic in folder names).
- Finish, you can download from a flash drive to BIOS or use Boot Menu to boot from it both in Legacy and in UEFI mode. The default boot menu will look approximately as follows:
To download, you will need to disable Secure Boot in UEFI (if the option is enabled). The program has the ability to enable Secure Boot support (in the option "Options" in the main menu, after which it will be necessary to use the "Update" button), but this function works not always.
Additional features of Ventoy
Ventoy supports the capabilities of a flexible menu configuration and some other parameters using the configuration file. Ventoy.json. who must be in the folder Ventoy \ Ventoy.json. On the section with ISO images. The capabilities using the configuration file are described on the official website in the Ventoy Plugin section and include:
- Menu Display Settings (Normal or Tree Structure, Resolution, Colors and Other)
- Changing the displayed name for ISO images in the menu
- Setting the menu design theme, supported GRUB topics (place in Ventoy \ Themes)
- Adding icons to ISO files by assigning classes for them. Icons only work when specifying the topic of registration in the configuration file and place the icons in Ventoy \ Themes \ NameTee \ icons
- Configuring Unattended.xml automatic installation files
- Download from WIM images (requires downloading an additional file)
- Configuring a permanent storage for Linux images started in Live mode
After some tests, I partly managed to deal with the setup of the design and icons, if there are questions - ask in the comments, I will try to answer, but perhaps the answers you can find on Forums.ventoy.net . The most convenient, download the finished topic for GRUB, copy it to Ventoy \ Themes and specify in Ventoy.json, and then edit the theme files.
One way or another, the tool is interesting for study and, I do not exclude that for someone Ventoy will be the most appropriate program for this kind of tasks. I also recommend paying attention to the Aio Boot Creator.