However, after initial tests, I realized that Ventoy is my preferred install media maker for now and the future. Booting a PC from that USB stick, I simply select an OS to install, and that’s it.Īs a Windows purist, I am doing my best to avoid any third party tools, as long as the same can be done with original Windows tools and commands. I can use my custom WIM images, create an ISO, and copy those ISO images to my Ventoy USB stick. With Ventoy, I no longer have to worry about that. I have used a workaround to create my install media as described here: USB install media with WIM file larger than 4GB My problem has always been that my customized Windows WIM images are bigger than 4 GB (the maximum file size in the FAT32 file system). See the list of Open Source code used to create Ventoy at. The ingenuity of this excellent tool is in how it uses various Open Source projects, combining them into a powerful and capable tool.

Ventoy is a good example what Open Source is at its best.

This latter partition –named Ventoy - is the one where you put all your ISO files. The rest of the USB flash drive is formatted as an exFAT partition. How does it work? When installing Ventoy on a USB flash drive, it creates a small (32 MB) FAT32 partition which contains everything to make the USB bootable and to enable it to mount ISO images. Ventoy mounts that ISO, and starts setup to install your selected OS. Boot from that USB, and select the OS to install. Run it, select a USB flash drive to use, add ISO images of any Windows version or Linux distros. Screenshot from a PC booted from Ventoy USB flash disk containing ISO install images of Windows 10 version 2004 build 19041, latest Fast Ring Insider build 19613, and Linux distros CentOS 8.1 and Ubuntu 20.04.

How to install ventoy linux