Ventoy: Create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI Files

The nice thing about Ventoy—and I didn’t fully appreciate this until I used it—is how simple it makes bootable USBs. You just drag and drop ISO images onto the drive, and it can hold as many as will fit. When you boot from the Ventoy USB, you just pick the image you want to install or run—no re-flashing, no fuss.

It’s honestly wild how convenient it is. Ventoy was the only method that worked for me when I needed to install Windows alongside an existing Linux setup for dual-booting. Everything else I tried failed, but Ventoy handled it perfectly.

Notably Ventoy doesn't work with some Windows install ISOs.

Any specifics on which windows install ISOs don't work? That way I'll know which ones will need a dedicated USB stick.

Last week I tried to make a bootable usb with windows 11. I tried using dd on macos, and that seemed to work, but the windows installer errored about "not finding drivers for the hdd". This threw me off because I thought something was wrong with the nvme.

Turns out you can't just dd a windows iso onto a usb drive.

You have to format it to fat32, then manually copy all the files. However there is one big installer file which is above 4gb, so you have to get some tool (also provided by Microsoft) to split the file into multiple files less than 4gb. The windows installer will recognize the split files and use those instead.

It's beyond me why the official windows iso just doesn't have this by default...