Installing ISO files hasn't always been the easiest of things to do. Many users will use USB drives to manage their ISOs and install them. However, the problem lies in the fact that a lot of times, to mount a new ISO to your USB drive, you have to format it. However, that has all changed thanks to Ventoy. Ventoy is an open-source tool created to make bootable USB drives as easy to use as copying your ISO and pasting it on your drive.

One of the main benefits of Ventoy is that you can still use your USB drive as normal, as you don't have to format it every time you want to add a new ISO. This means any files you want to keep on it will remain there as you can just delete an old ISO and add a new one. This could mean that instead of having multiple USB drives with various operating system ISOs, you could use a single drive for them all.

Installing Ventoy on your USB drive

Once you've downloaded Ventoy from their official website, it takes no time at all to get it installed on your USB drive. The whole process is so seamless that you will wonder why you haven't done this sooner!

1. Insert your USB drive and open the Ventoy2Disk.exe to install. Ensure the correct drive is selected from the device drop-down menu and select Install.
2. The same warning will pop up twice letting you know the drive will be formatted, and all data will be lost. Select Yes both times to continue with the installation.
3. Once the installation is done, the empty folder for the USB drive will appear, allowing you to transfer your ISOs to the drive.
4. Simply drag and drop your ISO onto the USB drive and that's it, job done.

It really is that simple. Once Ventoy is installed on a USB, you can simply drag and drop your ISOs onto it, and they will be bootable. You can also add non-bootable files to the USB and not have to worry about losing them. When you want to swap ISOs, no need to reformat or reinstall Ventoy, you just delete the old ISO and transfer the new one to the USB drive.

Booting and installing an ISO

Now comes the fun part. You can install or boot your ISO. Whether you want to install Windows 11 or boot a Linux Distro from your USB, these are both done the same way. Make sure your USB drive is inserted into your PC, and then you will want to boot from USB. There are a number of ways this can be done, so choose which works best for you. Once you have booted into Ventoy from the USB, installing your ISO is easy. Ventoy has some menu options at the bottom of the screen. These will help you with various things, but for now, we are going to focus on installing an ISO.

1. Hit the F2 Key on your keyboard to browse the ISO files on your USB drive.
2. Select the ISO you want to install or boot.
3. Some ISOs may bring up another screen, which is pretty common with Linux Distros. You can select the version you want to install.
4. Sit back and watch it install. Depending on the operating system you are installing, you may have to select options and input info along the way to help it complete the installation.

Compatibility and supported devices

The best thing about Ventoy is that there doesn't seem to be any limit to how many ISOs you can install on a USB. For my testing, I used a 64GB USB drive and had absolutely zero issues. Everything worked as it should, whether it had a single ISO on it or ten. Ventoy is compatible with both Linux and Windows and has support for loads of image files and ISOs. Ventoy has been tried and confirmed to work with over 1200 image files. It is also compatible with over 90% of the distros on distrowatch.com.

This really is a must-have tool for system builders or anyone in IT who has to install multiple operating systems. If needed, you can even have multiple versions of Windows 11 on it. This would allow you to test if new updates work, and if not, have the older working version on the same USB. This could save a lot of time and hassle, especially if you are in charge of multiple PCs.

If you are interested in Linux and not quite sure which distro is for you, you could have loads of different ones on the USB and then boot them up without actually installing them. This would let you check them out and see which has the features you need without having to actually install them. It wouldn't take long at all. If you install Linux to dual boot alongside Windows but decide it's not quite for you, worry not as you can remove Linux from dual boot in a few steps.

Ventoy is probably the easiest tool I have come across for booting ISOs from a USB. You can install it on your USB and be up and running in under 5 minutes. Ventoy is 100% open source, plus it's free, so you really can't go wrong with it.