Guides:Making a Bootable USB with Ventoy

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This warning exists to make users wary of running random commands or following instructions they see on the internet blindly and that they understand what they are doing to their system. Dangerous commands or instructions should be reported to an administrator immediately.

Setting up a bootable USB drive using Ventoy

Ventoy is an open source tool commonly used to create bootable USB drives for various linux installations. The main benefits to this tool is that it allows you to store multiple bootable ISO files on one USB drive.

Download and installation

1. The Ventoy application can be found at https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
2. Extract the downloaded zip file
3. Insert your USB drive
4. Inside the Ventoy folder, run the Ventoy2Disk.exe file
5. Now inside the application, select your desired USB drive
6. Press the Install button

Warning: Creating a bootable USB drive will delete all data stored on said USB. Backup your data and use with caution. After installing Ventoy you can copy a linux ISO file onto the USB drive, thus creating a bootable USB drive. After installation you may need to disable secure boot, depending on your chosen Linux distribution.

Once the USB drive is made bootable, you can proceed to the next step, which is booting from USB though the BIOS menu.

Booting from USB though the BIOS menu

1. Restart your computer
2. Access the BIOS menu, typically by pressing ESC, Delete, or one of the 12 function keys (F1, F2, F3...)
3. Enter the boot menu (Usually the key to enter the boot menu will be specified near the bottom of the screen)
4. From the boot menu, select the USB drive
5. If you have multiple ISO files on the same USB device, you will need to select which one you would like to boot into
6. Selecting "boot in normal mode" will boot into the live environment, allowing you to try out, or install your Linux distribution

If you wish to install Linux, most distributions, such as Linux Mint, will have an application with a graphical interface to assist you in this process.

Alternatives to Ventoy

If Ventoy fails to create a bootable USB drive, or for any other reason, there are other tools available, such as:
- Rufus (Windows only)
- balenaEtcher
- Fedora Media Writer