It would not matter whether or not you are check driving Linux or putting in Home windows—making a bootable drive is an annoying course of. What should you may format a tough drive for booting as soon as after which merely drag ISO recordsdata onto it so as to boot from them? That is what Ventoy provides.
Why would anybody need an exterior exhausting drive or thumb drive filled with bootable working programs? Effectively, for one factor, it is a enjoyable option to check out completely different working programs with out putting in them. Most Linux distributions allow you to attempt them out in a dwell setting earlier than putting in—with Ventoy making an attempt issues out is even quicker as a result of you do not have to put in writing the picture to the drive each time. However a software like this additionally makes it simple to handle a group of installable working programs and maintain all of them on the identical gadget, which is nice should you’re the form of one who fixes computer systems usually.
After setup, there’s a partition you’ll be able to drop ISO, WIM, IMG, VHD(x), and EFI recordsdata on. This could, in concept, work for any bootable picture—there is a listing of examined ISOs if you wish to affirm the one you are considering of. Notice that macOS is just not supported and neither is booting from Ventoy on Mac gadgets.
To get began, obtain Ventoy on your working system and begin it up. Join the drive you wish to use for booting working programs. (Notice that Ventoy can technically write to inside exhausting drives however will, by default, solely present exterior drives—that is to forestall you by accident rewriting your inside drives.)
Credit score: Justin Pot
Choose the drive you wish to write to and click on Set up. Ventoy will reformat the drive to have two partitions—one which you’ll boot from and one other, a lot bigger partition the place you’ll be able to put your picture recordsdata. Drag as many pictures to this partition as you need. You’ll be able to even type the photographs into folders, if you’d like—Ventoy will search for all appropriate recordsdata even when they’re in sub-folders.
Credit score: Justin Pot
I put a number of frequent Linux distributions and a Home windows 11 installer on my drive to check. Then I restarted my pc and booted from the drive. I immediately noticed all the ISO recordsdata as an choice.
Credit score: Justin Pot
I examined all of those and may affirm that they booted as if I might written them to a drive instantly. That is going to be my go-to methodology for testing out Linux dwell environments and putting in working programs on PCs going ahead.
