What if we said you could turn any disk into a multi-boot OS installer for free without touching a single config file?

Ventoy is a free tool that turns any USB key into a multi-boot wonder. Even if you're not a distro-hopping FOSS fundie, having a few bootable USB keys around is handy. You can often revive a sickly PC by just booting Windows and running CHKDSK /F on it, or boot Linux to retrieve some files off a computer if a PEBCAK error …

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks muchly !!!

This is very useful to know and I will be using it !!! :)

[Version 1.0]

Re: Thanks muchly !!!

When an anonymous coward says "...I will be using it..." - I wonder if this is going to be a handy hacking tool too?

LOL, I upvoted you.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Thanks muchly !!!

And with this you can use the rest of the space for ordinary usb key things

It's only the boot partition that is special

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Thanks muchly !!!

I am the AC that posted the 1st message.

I am using it to replace something that requires text based menues to be set up and it is a 'pain' when you want to update the image (.iso) as the menues need to be changed or you name the .iso the same as the last image and then forget it is the updated version next time you use it !!!

[Punctuation is optional in the last sentence :) ]

If booting a usb to run a .iso image is to 'hack' ...... then I will be using it to 'hack' my own machines !!! :)

[doublelayer]

This is useful

I built a thing like this using a Raspberry Pi and tiny screen, but this method sounds a lot nicer. It's probably much faster as well if you use a reasonably fast drive.

[John Brown (no body)]

Been using Yumi for years

This sounds nice, and looks like more up to date, but I've been using Yumi for years. It doesn't just boot ISOs, it also "installs" some in certain ways to make them more usable. It's USP for me though is that you can convert an existing USB drive without formatting it or losing the stuff already on it. The downside is the creator tool is Windows only.

If you have specific needs, they also list a whole load of other similar and related tools.

But I'll definitely be taking a look at Ventoy now.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: Been using Yumi for years

Good to know! Thanks to you too, and that's another one for my file.

[Rabbit80]

I tried ventoy a while back, but had some issues with certain os's not being able to see the virtual cd drive after beginning the boot sequence. In the end I settled for an IODD device (a rebadged Zalman?), Stuck a 2TB SSD in it and it's awesome. Not only does it emulate CD ROM drives, but can also mount virtual hard disk files, virtual memory sticks etc

[W.S.Gosset]

Thanks!

That's going in the files for future reference.

[Joe Drunk]

Longtime user of RMPrep, Rufus and Yumi here. Started using Ventoy earlier this year and was impressed. Haven't tried it for installing OSes yet (Rufus for that) but for multiboot USB with utility/PE ISO images. Macrium Reflect, Aomei Partition Assistant, Parted Magic, Sergei Strelec WinPE, Acronis True Image, Puppy Linux. All boot easily and once you create a Ventoy USB adding/updating is a breeze. Just copy your bootable ISO images over.

Didn't work properly with older BIOS PCs but no problems with UEFI.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

There is a bios and UEFI version. The UEFI used to be an experimental fork but is now the default AFAIK

[Liam Proven]

If you're talking about Ventoy – it's not clear to me – then this is incorrect.

The same product installed on the same key boots both UEFI and BIOS computers, including Macs. There are no separate BIOS and UEFI versions; there's only one version and it does both. There is no default or anything; no way to pick one or the other.

[Hol314]

AIO Boot – All-in-One bootable software | Multiboot USB Creator

Being pretty lazy, I went for the easiest (AFAIK) tool available: AIO Boot, which even handles automatically such goodies as Sergei Strelec distribution.

Sadly, it's not been updated in over a year so I might have to try alternatives if it fails to handle newer distributions.

[PRR]

Re: AIO Boot – All-in-One bootable software | Multiboot USB Creator

Link to AIO Boot seems to be munged. Maybe this?

https://www.aioboot.com/en/

(extraneous letter and quotemark removed)

[Anonymous South African Coward]

Thanks for this. Will try a trial run next year as the office is closing for the silly season soon, and the IT dept does not need any distractions at this stage.

[Tom 7]

Be a good time to close for covid - it'll be too late when the govt tells you to.

[Grunchy]

Aw man, and I just figured out how to use PLoP bootloader, too.

Oh well.

(Still figuring out how to multiboot Dos 6.22, Win98, WinXP, and Lubuntu *including* the crucial swap partition, all from a single /dev/sda, I do believe I nearly have it sorted!)

[John Brown (no body)]

"multiboot Dos 6.22, Win98,"

Isn't that more or less the same thing since Win98 is "just" a GUI sitting on top of DOS?

[Joe W]

With Win 3.something you are entirely right (especially MS DOS 6.22 + Win 3.11 / WFW). Win95 watered down the DOS that was included (or that Win95 was sitting atop on), and it got worse with Win98. The main problem I had (oh, more than two decades ago with Win95?) was that some DOS games refused to run. The biggest problem was freeing up enough lower memory and moving stuff to himem.

Yeah makes sense to me (for a given value of sense, not that my projects are more sensible :D )

[John Brown (no body)]

I don't recall any real issues booting MS-DOS 7/7.1 in DOS mode back in the day. For gaming, I was using a config.sys/autoexec.bat menu system that customised the boot sequence for particular configs for games and memory usage, primarily to maximise "low RAM" availability. or to use the defaults to Windows.

IIRC there was a file I kept two custom copies of, one of which had to be copied to the correct filename to enable/disable loading of Windows98. I vaguely seem to recall that some DOS utilities were in different places in a default Windows install. I can't remember if I copied them to where DOS stuff expected to find them or just added to the path variable.

It's a long while ago now, but it worked with pretty much everything with pretty much the same caveats that came with DOS 6.22, i.e., some stuff, games in particular, didn't like some high memory managers and/or used their own, and so need those custom config/autoexec options in my menu system. Likewise, I don't recall any missing DOS tools or utilities. Either I found them elsewhere on the W'98 CD or never used them so never noticed they were missing :-)

[man_iii]

Hit or Miss

Ive been using Ventoy for Fedora openSuse and others and there is the legacy BIOS, UEFI and UEFI-SecureBoot installs to the USB.

But not all images will work properly with Ventoy. For example ProxMox and ESXi and Citrix Xenserver. Those didnt boot at all for me. I think might be due to drive /dev might be hardcoded with some by-UUID or by-Label but i cant tell for sure.

But i think i still do recommend Ventoy. Grub2 is also supposed to help do similar to Ventoy but i felt Ventoy is more friendly to normal users.

[Mark 65]

Re: Hit or Miss

Maybe see if multisystem works if you use Linux

[anothercynic]

Ohhhh goodie!

This is brilliant! Will have to download and do this with one of my 1TB sticks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Rufus for a number of years, but being able to put more than one OS on a boot stick is a great idea! Good project to call out. :)

[melcom]

I enjoy Easy2boot,(https://easy2boot.xyz/) but this seems an interesting alternative.

[Zebo-the-Fat]

Nice

Been using it for a few months, seems to work with all the windoze and linux ISO's I have tried

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

multi ISO yeah yeah good good , i used to use grub

But can we talk about the use of the word "key" in this article?

Those USB mass storage devices have never had a proper name , but "KEY" is a new on on me!

Memory stick seems most common.

"Pendrive" ??? urrrrgh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Key vs stick etc

Maybe a left/right pond thing? Always known them as USB keys myself. Loathsome terms like 'pendrive' and 'thumbdrive' seem to emanate from the US - and 'memory stick' (like fishstick) also seems to me a more prominantly left-pondian term.

[AbortRetryFail]

Really impressive

I have one of the aforementioned Zalmann enclosures and the biggest issue is that the selected ISO is not retained on power loss, so if the PC you plug it into and try to boot from interrupts power to the USB port then tough luck - you'll be booting the first ISO on the list rather than the one you selected.

I've tried other multi-boot USB solutions in the past but without much success and ended up with a small keyring of USB sticks with one ISO per stick. Usually written with Rufus these days.

Ventoy actually seems to just work. And it is as easy to use as the Zalmann drive inasumuch as you just copy the ISOs across and that's it. And, unlike the Zalmann, it presents you with a menu on bootup and pauses boot until you make a selection.

Really impressive.

[Update: Only downside is that on one of my older PCs it doesn't detect the USB3 card so I have to plug an extra keyboard into one of the on-board USB2 ports. But that's a minor thing]