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Ventoy: One USB Drive for Every ISO You Own

Stop reflashing your USB drive for every OS install. Ventoy lets you boot any ISO by dropping it onto a drive — perfect for homelabbers juggling Proxmox, Ubuntu, GParted, and more.

Josh Hall··10 min read

If you’ve built more than one server, you’ve been here: you need to boot a Proxmox installer, but your USB drive still has Ubuntu on it. So you reflash it. Then you need GParted. Reflash. Then you realize the first node needs a reinstall. Reflash again.

Ventoy solves this permanently. You install it on a USB drive once, then copy ISO files onto it like any normal drive. At boot, Ventoy shows you a menu of everything on the drive. Pick one, boot it. Done.

No reflashing. No Rufus, no Balena Etcher, no dd. Just drag and drop.

What Ventoy Actually Does

Ventoy partitions your USB drive into two parts:

  1. A small EFI + boot partition that holds the Ventoy bootloader
  2. A large exFAT data partition where you put your ISOs

When the system boots from the USB, Ventoy intercepts the BIOS/UEFI hand-off and presents a menu. It uses loop-mounting to boot ISOs directly from the data partition — the ISO file is never extracted or written to raw sectors, so adding or removing ISOs is as simple as copying files.

It supports BIOS (legacy), UEFI, and UEFI Secure Boot. It works with virtually every major OS ISO: Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Proxmox, Windows 10/11, GParted, Clonezilla, TrueNAS, pfSense, and hundreds more.

Why Homelabbers Love It

When you’re running a multi-node homelab, you regularly need:

  • Proxmox ISO — reinstall or fresh node
  • Debian/Ubuntu — baseline OS for testing
  • GParted Live — fix partition tables, resize, clone
  • Clonezilla — image whole drives before destructive changes
  • Memtest86 — RAM health check on new hardware
  • Windows ISO — some hardware needs it for firmware updates

With Ventoy, all of these live on one drive permanently. My own lab USB has 7 ISOs on a 32GB drive with room to spare. I haven’t reflashed it in over a year.

Tip

Get a quality USB 3.0 drive — ISOs can be 4–5 GB each and a slow USB 2.0 drive makes boot times painful. A Samsung or SanDisk USB 3.1 drive is worth the few extra dollars.

Recommended hardware for a dedicated Ventoy drive:

Before You Start

Ventoy will erase the USB drive during installation. Back up anything on it first. After installation, the data partition is formatted as exFAT, so you can still use it to transfer files between machines — ISOs just live alongside regular files.

You’ll need:

  • A USB drive of at least 8 GB (16 GB+ recommended)
  • The Ventoy installer for your OS
  • The ISO files you want to boot

Task 1 — Windows: Install Ventoy with the GUI

Download Ventoy

Go to ventoy.net/en/download.html and download the Windows package. It will be a zip file named something like ventoy-1.x.xx-windows.zip.

Extract and run Ventoy2Disk.exe

Extract the zip. Open the folder and run Ventoy2Disk.exe. No install wizard needed — it’s a portable executable.

Warning

Run it as Administrator. Right-click → “Run as administrator”. If you skip this, Ventoy can’t write to the drive.

Select your USB drive

In the Ventoy2Disk window, the top dropdown shows available drives. Select your USB drive carefully — Ventoy will erase whatever you pick. Double-check the drive letter against File Explorer before proceeding.

Choose Secure Boot support (optional)

If your machines use UEFI Secure Boot, go to Option → Secure Boot Support and enable it before installing. This adds a signed shim so Secure Boot won’t block the bootloader. You can enable it later too, but it’s easier to do now.

Click Install

Click Install. Confirm the two warning dialogs. Ventoy installs in about 10 seconds. When it says “Install Successfully!”, you’re done.

Copy ISOs onto the drive

The USB drive now appears in File Explorer as a large exFAT partition (your full drive minus ~32 MB). Just drag and drop your ISO files onto it — no subfolders required, though you can organize them into folders if you prefer. Ventoy scans recursively.

Example drive layout
E:├── proxmox-ve_8.2-1.iso
├── ubuntu-24.04-desktop-amd64.iso
├── gparted-live-1.6.0-3-amd64.iso
└── tools  ├── clonezilla-live-3.1.2-9-amd64.iso
  └── memtest86+-7.00.iso
Boot from the USB

Insert the drive into the target machine and reboot. Enter the BIOS boot menu (usually F8, F11, F12, or Esc during POST — varies by manufacturer) and select the USB drive. Ventoy’s menu appears listing every ISO on the drive.

Select an ISO and press Enter. A sub-menu asks whether to boot normally or in GRUB2 mode — the default (normal) works for almost everything.

Task 2 — Linux: Install Ventoy from the Command Line

The Linux installer is a shell script that works on any distribution. You don’t need a GUI.

Download and extract Ventoy
Terminal
# Download the latest Linux package
wget https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/releases/download/v1.0.99/ventoy-1.0.99-linux.tar.gz

# Extract it
tar -xzf ventoy-1.0.99-linux.tar.gz
cd ventoy-1.0.99

Check github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/releases for the actual latest version number and update the URL accordingly.

Identify your USB drive
Terminal
# List block devices to find your USB drive
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,TYPE,MOUNTPOINTS,MODEL

# Or use dmesg right after plugging in the drive
dmesg | tail -20

Look for a device like /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc matching the size of your USB drive. Do not use /dev/sda — that’s almost certainly your system disk.

Run the Ventoy installer
Terminal
# Install Ventoy to your USB drive (replace sdX with your drive)
sudo bash ventoy-1.0.99/Ventoy2Disk.sh -i /dev/sdX

# With Secure Boot support enabled:
sudo bash ventoy-1.0.99/Ventoy2Disk.sh -i -s /dev/sdX

The -i flag installs fresh. If Ventoy is already on the drive and you want to update it while keeping your ISOs intact, use -u instead of -i.

Warning

The script asks for confirmation twice. Type y both times. After that it formats the drive and installs in under 30 seconds.

Copy your ISOs

After installation, Ventoy creates two partitions. The large one (partition 1) is your exFAT data partition. Mount it and copy ISOs:

Terminal
# Mount the data partition
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/ventoy
sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/ventoy

# Copy ISOs
sudo cp ~/Downloads/proxmox-ve_8.2-1.iso /mnt/ventoy/
sudo cp ~/Downloads/ubuntu-24.04-server-amd64.iso /mnt/ventoy/

# Unmount cleanly
sudo umount /mnt/ventoy

Or simply open the partition in your file manager — most Linux desktops auto-mount it once Ventoy installs.

Boot and verify

Reboot the target machine with the USB inserted. Select the USB in the BIOS boot menu. The Ventoy grub menu loads and shows each ISO file. Navigate with arrow keys, press Enter to boot.

Tip

If your machine uses UEFI and you’re getting a “Secure Boot violation” error, you need to either disable Secure Boot in BIOS settings or reinstall Ventoy with the -s flag to add Secure Boot support.

Task 3 — macOS: Install Ventoy

Ventoy provides a macOS GUI starting from version 1.0.51. If you prefer the terminal, you can also use the cross-platform Python installer.

Option A: GUI (macOS 11+)

Download the macOS package

From ventoy.net/en/download.html, download the macOS package (a .tar.gz with VentoyGUI.arm64 or VentoyGUI.x86_64 depending on your Mac).

Extract and launch
Terminal
# Extract
tar -xzf ventoy-1.0.99-macos.tar.gz
cd ventoy-1.0.99

# Launch the GUI (Apple Silicon)
sudo ./VentoyGUI.arm64

# Or Intel Mac:
sudo ./VentoyGUI.x86_64

macOS will likely show a Gatekeeper warning (“cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer”). Go to System Preferences → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

Select drive and install

The GUI is identical to the Windows version. Select your USB drive from the dropdown, optionally enable Secure Boot support under Options, then click Install. Confirm the warnings.

Option B: Terminal (any macOS version)

Identify the USB drive
Terminal
diskutil list

Look for your USB drive — it will show as /dev/diskN where N is a number. Note the full identifier (e.g. /dev/disk4).

Unmount the drive (keep it connected)
Terminal
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4
Run the Ventoy installer script
Terminal
cd ventoy-1.0.99
sudo bash Ventoy2Disk.sh -i /dev/disk4
Copy ISOs

After installation, the large partition appears on the Desktop (or in Finder under Locations). Drag and drop ISOs onto it. Eject the drive cleanly before unplugging.

Useful Ventoy Features

Persistence — Some Linux distros (Ubuntu, Kali) can be configured to save changes between boots using a persistence file. Create a file named <distroname>.ext4 on the Ventoy partition and configure it via ventoy.json. See the Ventoy docs for the syntax.

ventoy.json — Ventoy’s configuration file, placed at the root of the data partition. Lets you set boot timeouts, filter which files appear in the menu, configure persistence, restrict ISOs to specific directories, and more.

Theme — Ventoy supports custom GRUB themes. Drop a theme folder on the partition and reference it in ventoy.json for a styled boot menu instead of the default.

Memdisk mode — For ISOs that don’t support loop-booting (rare, mostly very old ISOs), Ventoy can load the ISO entirely into RAM before booting it. Use with caution on systems with less than 4 GB RAM.

Auto-install — Ventoy can inject an auto-install script (Kickstart for RHEL/Fedora, preseed for Debian, autoinstall for Ubuntu) into an ISO without modifying it. Useful for unattended deployments.

Common Issues

“No bootable device found” — The machine’s BIOS isn’t finding the USB. Check that USB boot is enabled in BIOS settings and that the boot order puts USB above the internal disk. On some HP machines, you need to disable “Fast Boot” as well.

Secure Boot blocks Ventoy — Either disable Secure Boot in BIOS or reinstall Ventoy with Secure Boot support enabled (Option → Secure Boot Support in GUI, or -s flag on the CLI).

ISO not appearing in menu — Ventoy only shows files with .iso, .img, .wim, .vhd, .vhdx, or .efi extensions. Make sure the file finished copying fully before rebooting (check file size matches the original).

Ventoy menu appears but ISO fails to boot — Some ISOs have unusual bootloaders. Try pressing Tab on the ISO in the Ventoy menu to switch boot modes (GRUB2 vs. normal). GRUB2 mode has broader compatibility for Linux ISOs; normal mode is better for Windows.

macOS Gatekeeper blocks the binary — After clicking Open Anyway in System Preferences, you may still need to run xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./VentoyGUI.arm64 to fully clear the quarantine flag.

Summary

Ventoy is one of those tools that once you use it, you can’t imagine going back. A single USB drive handles every OS you’ll ever install. Drop new ISOs on, remove old ones — the drive is always ready.

For homelab builders specifically, having Proxmox VE, Ubuntu Server, GParted, Clonezilla, and Memtest all on one drive has saved me significant time during builds and recoveries.

Once you have your ISOs ready, the natural next step is installing Proxmox VE on your nodes. If you’re still choosing hardware, the homelab hardware guide covers what to look for in a mini PC cluster.

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Product Link
Samsung 64GB USB 3.1 Amazon
SanDisk 128GB Ultra USB 3.0 Amazon