I finally stopped using a million loose flash drives for OS installs

I mean, for years I'd have a drawer with like 15 different USB sticks, each with a different Windows version or Linux distro. It was a mess, especially when a client needed a fresh Windows 10 install and I'd grab the wrong one. About six months ago I set up a Ventoy drive on a 256GB SanDisk Ultra Fit, and now I just drop all the ISO files onto it. Has anyone else switched to a multi-boot tool, and which one do you prefer?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jenny1mo ago

That "win10 maybe?" drive being Shrek 2 made me laugh. Something nobody brings up with Ventoy though is how it handles drives that aren't pure SSDs. I run a 128GB SATA SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure for mine, and it boots Windows ISOs noticeably faster than a standard flash drive. The random read speeds on cheap USB sticks really bottle things down when you're extracting setup files. If anyone has an old 120GB SSD lying around, it's worth trying just for the speed difference on bigger installs.

eric_morgan592mo ago

My old system was so bad I had a flash drive labeled "win10 maybe?" that turned out to be a bootleg copy of Shrek 2. I'm with you and val_craig37, a single Ventoy drive saved my sanity.

val_craig372mo ago

Oh man, I felt that. I had the same drawer full of mismatched drives, half of them not even labeled. I wasted so much time trying to figure out which one had the updated Windows 10 image versus the old one. Making the switch to a single multi-boot drive was such a relief. It just makes everything so much simpler.