Since my laptop is loaded with all the tools I need to get work done on the road, I try to bring it with me always. But there have been times when I left it behind, thinking I don’t need it, only to be stuck with a borrowed machine that’s missing half of the tools or struggles to run Windows 11. That’s when I discovered Ventoy—a handy little utility that lets me pack my favorite ISOs into a USB and boot into them without installation.

With Ventoy, I no longer have to be stranded, wishing I had my setup with me. It helps me account for Murphy’s Law whenever I decide to leave my PC behind. The best part is that it’s quite easy to use, pairs well with several Linux distros, and allows me to install the exact tools I need. With a few tweaks, I even managed to get the sessions to persist, so I don’t always boot into a fresh environment.

Ventoy

OS Windows, Linux

Developer Hailong Sun

Ventoy is an open-source tool that transforms a USB drive into a flexible multi-boot platform. Once installed, you simply drag and drop your bootable operating system files onto the drive and boot directly from them—no reformatting required.

The tool for creating live USB sticks with a twist

What is Ventoy?

Ventoy is a free and open-source utility for creating a bootable drive, whether it’s a flash disk or an external HDD or SSD. Unlike similar tools, such as Rufus or UNetbootin, you can boot directly into the drive without needing to install the operating system. Essentially, it uses the ISO to create a live session.

What’s even better is that you can load as many ISOs as you want into the drive and select the one you want to boot from at that time. There are no minimum requirements for Ventoy—you just need a drive big enough to save and load your ISOs. As long as the computer meets the requirements of the ISO you’re trying to run, you’re good to go.

I recommend a drive that’s 8GB or more. Further, the faster the flash drive (e.g., a USB 3.0 flash disk or an SSD), the better. You will also need a sizeable drive if you plan on creating persistent live sessions.

Creating a travel-ready toolkit with Ventoy

All it takes is a few clicks

I usually use Ventoy with Ubuntu Desktop since the distro comes loaded with some free, open-source tools I already use, such as LibreOffice, Thunderbird, and Firefox. I sometimes use MX Linux for low-end PCs, especially when Ubuntu Desktop is too slow. So before you proceed, ensure you have the latest version of Ventoy and the ISO you need downloaded.

To create a bootable disk with Ventoy, follow the steps below:

1. Go into the Ventoy folder and double-click Ventoy2Disk.exe.
2. Select the USB drive you want to use and click Install.
3. Ventoy will prompt you a few times to confirm your decision because it needs to format the drive and erase the data. Click Yes to each confirmation prompt until Ventoy is installed.
4. Copy the ISO into the Ventoy drive, and you’re done.

Ventoy will then create two partitions on the drive: a small FAT partition containing the bootloader, and a large exFAT partition for ISO storage (it allows files larger than 4GB). Keep in mind that Ventoy can boot various images besides ISOs, such as WIM, IMG, VHD/VHDX, and EFI.

Using the Ventoy drive to create a live session

Launch an entire OS from a USB stick without formatting anything

With the bootable USB drive created, restart your computer and do the following to start a live session:

1. Enter UEFI/BIOS. Depending on your computer, you might need to repeatedly press Del, F2, F10, F12, or Esc when you see the manufacturer’s logo as it boots up.
2. Access the boot menu—on my HP computer, I click Boot Menu or press F9.
3. Select the Ventoy drive from the list of boot drives.
4. Choose the ISO you want to boot.
5. Pick the Boot in normal mode option.

From here, you should be able to boot the operating system you selected.

Since this is a live session, the primary concern is losing data when you shut it down. That means all the apps you’ve installed, files you’ve created, and settings you’ve changed will be gone. But it wouldn’t be the perfect travel-ready toolkit if there wasn’t a workaround, now would it?

Persistence is key

No need to always start afresh

Persistent live sessions are what make Ventoy worth it on the road because they allow you to pick up where you left off on any computer. So, if you’re traveling from place to place, you can switch between machines without losing your data.

Now, for your live sessions to persist, you need two things. The first one is a persistence image file for Ventoy to store data for the live session. The other thing is a configuration file that tells Ventoy which ISO to use for a particular persistence image file. You can create all of these manually, but luckily, you don’t have to.

To get the pre-created persistence image file, do the following:

1. Navigate to the official Ventoy GitHub page and download images.zip in the Assets section.
2. Unzip it. You will see several 7z files that contain image files of various sizes (e.g., 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB).
3. Find out which file to use by going to the Ventoy Persistence Plugin page and matching the distro you’re using to the correct label in the Supported Distros section. For instance, the label for Ubuntu Desktop is casper-rw. That means persistent image files like persistence_ext4_2GB_casper-rw.dat.7z and persistence_ext4_4GB_casper-rw.dat.7z will work.
4. Open the Ventoy drive and create a folder called persistence.
5. Go back to the images folder and extract the 7z you need.
6. Grab the persistence image file inside the extracted folder (it will be a DAT file) and place it in the persistence folder in the Ventoy drive.

To create the configuration file, you’ll need to use the Persistence plugin. Fortunately, you already have it. Follow these steps:

1. Open the folder where the Ventoy executable is and double-click VentoyPlugson.exe.
2. Select the Ventoy drive in the pop-up and click Start. This will open a browser window.
3. Select Persistence Plugin in the left side menu and click Add on the right.
4. Enter the file paths to the ISO and the DAT file in the respective text boxes.
5. Click OK.
6. Open the VentoyPlugson pop-up again and click Stop.

If you go into the Ventoy drive, you’ll see that it has created a Ventoy folder. There, you will find a JSON file with the configurations Ventoy needs to create a persistent live session.

Now, when booting into Ventoy, pick the option that says Boot with persistence/[ISO_name]. When you’re done with your session, all the data, such as files created, apps installed, and settings changed, will be saved.

You can use Ventoy for more than just traveling

I’m sure you can think of a couple more uses for this toolkit other than working while you travel. For instance, you can use it at work or school to get around admin restrictions, troubleshoot other PCs, create a recovery USB drive, or safely test software. If you’re primarily a Windows user like me and would like to try Linux without installing it, Ventoy is an easy way to do it (it certainly got me into Linux).