Ventoy

The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

From https://www.ventoy.net:

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files.

With ventoy, you [do not] need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly.

Installation

Install ventoy-bin^AUR.

Setup

Formatting of the media that will be used for booting is required.

Warning: The USB drive used will be erased and all its existing data will be lost after setup.

There are three utilities to set up the media:

/opt/ventoy/Ventoy2Disk.sh, which is a shell script to be run from the command line. When ran with no arguments it will print a detailed usage message, and exits.
/opt/ventoy/VentoyGUI.x86_64 is a graphical method. When run by a non root user, root password will be asked for. In addition, xauth, or similar, is required.
Loading file:///opt/ventoy/WebUI/index.html by a web browser.

Read the doc_start page, and explore the rest of ventoy web site, for more details.

Usage

ventoy creates 2 partitions on the media. The 1st partition is used to store the bootable images. The 2nd partition is for the ventoy binaries. Therefore, usage is simple. One has to write the images to be booted to the 1st partition of the media. That is, to mount it somewhere, write the required images, unmount it, and boot it.

Updating ventoy

Updating is meant in the sense of getting a newer release of the ventoy program. It has nothing to do with the images to be booted. Updating is handled in place. The images to be booted will be kept intact by this process. As can be seen by the usage message when running /opt/ventoy/Ventoy2Disk.sh, the methods for updating the application are similar to the methods of installation.

Tips and tricks

ventoy can be extended in several ways by plugins. See its site for more details.