The LAST flash drive you will ever need! Ventoy FULL walk-thru and review!

Summary

The video by Ask Your Computer Guy introduces Ventoy, a tool that transforms how ISO files are used on flash drives. Traditionally, separate utility drives were needed for each ISO, but Ventoy allows for multiple ISOs on a single drive, consolidating their function. It takes viewers through the step-by-step process of downloading and installing Ventoy, as well as adding and using different bootable ISO files like Windows installers and Linux. Additionally, the video explains how to back up personal files onto the same flash drive, maximizing its utility and space. A recommendation for a 128GB flash drive is suggested as an ideal size for most users.

Highlights

• Ask Your Computer Guy discovers Ventoy as a revolutionary tool for ISO management. 🌌
• Ventoy simplifies creating bootable flash drives by allowing multiple ISOs on one drive. 💾
• The step-by-step tutorial covers how to install and set up Ventoy efficiently. 📚
• Ventoy transforms flash drive utility by enabling both bootable and personal file storage. 💡
• Recommended flash drives and detailed guides make the implementation seamless. 🛍️

Key Takeaways

• Ventoy is a game-changer for IT professionals and everyday users alike. 🚀
• You can consolidate all your ISO files onto one flash drive with Ventoy. 😍
• The tool is user-friendly even for novices, ensuring easy setup and use. 👍
• Ventoy allows not only bootable tools but also personal file storage on the same drive. 📂
• With Ventoy, troubleshooting and repair tools are always just a boot away. 🛠️

Overview

Ventoy is taking the IT and tech world by storm, offering a new, consolidated way to manage ISO files. As someone stuck in my ways, Ventoy presents a refreshing change by allowing multiple ISO files to stay on a single flash drive, moving away from having stacks of individual drives. I mean, who wouldn't want to carry less stuff? Here's how I implemented it!

To get started, you'll just need a flash drive and an internet connection. The process of setting up Ventoy is surprisingly simple, even if you're not tech-savvy. The magic lies in how you can easily load multiple ISO files, offering endless utility for troubleshooting, installations, and even file recovery all from a single device. It's like having a Swiss army knife of ISOs in your pocket!

Maximizing your flash drive's potential, Ventoy also supports storing personal files. By creating a dedicated folder for your personal data and setting up automatic backups, your trusty flash drive becomes indispensable. You now have a one-stop solution for bootable utilities and file storage. A large enough flash drive can indeed be the last one you'll ever need. It's functionality and practicality rolled into one neat package!

The LAST flash drive you will ever need! Ventoy FULL walk-thru and review! Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 you know one of the problems being in the IT industry is that we tend to get set in our ways after we've done hundreds and thousands of jobs we tend to do things the way we've always done it and we usually think our way is the best way or the only way and we're not usually very receptive to change until today this old dog just learned a new trick so let me briefly explain to you why this is such an absolute Game Changer if you've watched any of my videos you know I specialize in Windows tips tricks repair things like that but this doesn't just benefit me as a computer tech if you have a Windows
• 00:30 - 01:00 computer and maybe you've run into problems before or maybe you've never had problems before whether you've backed up your personal files or you've never done a backup this new process is going to blow your mind so not too long ago I published a video on this channel showing you how to make two individual utility drives one of them was a Windows installer drive and the other was a utility called hyrins which allows you to get in your computer access your files make changes fix it things like that well the method that I showed you in the video is one I've used for 20 plus years in the industry and it's pretty much the only way I've ever done
• 01:00 - 01:30 it the video was super popular and a lot of you found a lot of value in that video and then the comments came by the hundreds I got so many comments telling me use ventoy use ventoy use ventoy this method is outdated use ventoid I said what's ventoy I figured this many people saying the same thing over and over again couldn't be wrong so I decided to check it out for myself and then make an updated version to my older video showing you this new method so in a nutshell this program allows you to
• 01:30 - 02:00 consolidate multiple ISO files onto one disk instead of having one separate disk for each individual utility so now you can take this and make it look like this and that is an added bonus I tweaked it a little bit to make it even better for you you're absolutely going to love what I'm going to show you so today I'm going to show you how this new method is going to be so beneficial for you and then I'm going to show you step by step how to download and install the files you need it's not hard to do even as a novice just make sure you follow the exact steps I lay out in the video all you need is an internet connection
• 02:00 - 02:30 and a flash drive and stick around to the end of the video to hear my personal opinion of ventoy and whether or not you think it'd be a great solution for you so if at any point during the video that you think I'm getting a little too far ahead of you just feel free to pause and Rewind and go over that section and just follow each of my steps and I'll walk you all the way through it so let's get into it step one you want to insert and identify your flash drive so simply plug in your flash drive into your computer and you're gonna get a pop-up window like this make note of the drive letter and then double click on that drive
• 02:30 - 03:00 letter and make sure that there are no files on that drive you need to save step two you want to download the ventoy software go to ventoy.net click on downloads click on the very first link you see which is going to be a zip file on the next page that comes up scroll all the way down and click the fourth link here which should be a ventoy zip file go ahead and download it to your computer and make note of where you saved the file to once the file is
• 03:00 - 03:30 downloaded you want to go to your downloads folder you want to right click and extract that file using your extraction program of choice go ahead and extract the files and then you'll see a pop-up like this with one folder inside of it and a handful of other files double click on the file that says ventoy to disk.exe this will run the ventoy program and you will see a window like this make sure your flash drive is the one that is selected and once you've done that go ahead and click on install and accept the defaults all the way
• 03:30 - 04:00 through it confirm that you don't have any files on that flash drive because they will be wiped by this program it'll take a couple seconds and then you'll get a congratulations window just go ahead and click ok then you can go ahead and close any open Windows now the next step is to put some ISO files on that disk so the first thing I want to do is to download the Windows media creation tools which will give us access to Windows 10 and windows 11 ISO files so open your browser and type in download Windows media creation tool the first link should be a Microsoft link and
• 04:00 - 04:30 you'll see it take you to this page I'm going to right click on the Windows 10 and windows 11 links and have them open in a new tab I'm going to then select the download Windows 10 Tab and scroll down until I see download now and click on it and it's going to go ahead and download the media creation tool I need this to create the Windows 10 installation media as before make note of where you downloaded the file because we will need to run it once it's done downloading after the download is complete go ahead
• 04:30 - 05:00 and click on the media creation tool and start the program and you should see a window that pops up that looks like this when prompted go ahead and accept the Microsoft agreement now the next screen that comes up gives you two choices great installation media is the one we want so select that and then click next the next screen comes up prompts you for your language and addition just go ahead and select next unless you need to change that on this next screen you want to click on ISO file and then click next
• 05:00 - 05:30 go ahead and download the file and make note of what folder you download it to at this point the ISO file will start downloading just be patient wait for it to finish now if you'd like a Windows 11 ISO you can switch over to the other Tab and then scroll down and select download Windows disk image ISO for x64 devices so you're going to want to First click on the select download and choose the windows 11 install and then click
• 05:30 - 06:00 download you're going to get prompted to choose your language go ahead and select that and then click confirm couple minutes ago by and then you'll get prompted with a blue button to click 64-bit download go ahead and choose that and put it in whatever download folder you want again make sure you pay attention to the folder you're putting the file in now if you have a Windows computer these are totally optional I am going to go ahead and download Linux Mint just to have it on that drive because apparently it is really good for being able to recover your files if you don't want
• 06:00 - 06:30 Linux don't worry about it just skip this part now the next thing I'm going to do is download hiren's boot CD so I'm going to go to Google and type download hyruens boot USB I'm going to click on the link here that takes me to the highens website and I'm going to click on the download button up at the top and that will take me to this page and at the very bottom of the page you'll see next to file name there's an
• 06:30 - 07:00 ISO file go ahead and click on that and save it to your computer if you want hirons now I'm going to go ahead and address this now because this is one of the biggest comments I got your browser may tell you that the hybrids download is not safe it's malicious trust me it's fine I've downloaded it thousands of times it's just your browser being overprotective just go ahead and tell your browser it's okay save the file now there's a zillion other recovery disks you can download I'm only covering these basic ones because these are ones that
• 07:00 - 07:30 you absolutely need but at the end of the day once you've downloaded them all if you go into that downloads folder you'll see the ISO files that you actually downloaded that's what we're going to copy to the ventoy disk so from here I would just simply hold down control in Windows and select the ISO files that you want to move to ventoy and then when you're done let go of the control key and the mouse now there's several different ways to do this you can right click and copy and then paste
• 07:30 - 08:00 to the ventoid drive or you can right click and send to the ventoy drive or you can just physically click the collection of files and drag them on top of the ventoy drive all of that does the same thing and it'll begin the copying process now once the files are copied open up your Windows File Explorer and click on the ventoy drive and you should see all of those ISO files right there in the directory that's great that's exactly what you want and now you're ready to boot to the drive and get started now the next step of the process is to
• 08:00 - 08:30 select your boot device when you turn your computer on now it differs with each manufacturer sometimes it's F12 sometimes it's hit escape and then F9 each manufacturer has a different boot order so you need to investigate and find out with a quick Google search how to access your boot menu from your manufacturer now we're ready to boot to the ventoid disk in my case I hit f11 and then I can select my drive and then I get this I'm going to choose partition 2 which is my ventoid disk then I will
• 08:30 - 09:00 get the ventoid menu from here you just simply select whichever ISO you want to boot from in this case I'm going to go ahead and select Linux Mint scroll down hit enter and then it will boot Linux choose normal mode and Let It Go and just like that within just a few seconds I am running a full version of Linux on a Windows PC booted off a ventoid disk this is great if you need to go in and do any kind of file
• 09:00 - 09:30 recovery or any other utilities anything like that you can just run Linux or you can install it so I've rebooted the computer I have selected my boot drive and again loaded ventoy this time I'm going to select the Windows 10 installer disk so I can go in and do some Advanced troubleshooting in Windows scroll down select Windows 10 tell it to boot in normal mode and just like that there's your windows installer you would click next and then go to repair and then you have access to all the
• 09:30 - 10:00 windows troubleshooting Tools in case your Windows PC doesn't boot correctly restarted the computer again and again selected the partition 2 which is my ventoy and this time I'm going to choose the windows 11 installation software so that I can go in and make changes to my windows 11 system select boot to normal mode and once again just like Windows 10 you have the option to click next and then go to repair my computer and if you have a Windows 11 computer with issues then
• 10:00 - 10:30 you'll be able to use this disk to get to those Advanced troubleshooting steps so this time I'm going to restart and load the hyruens boot CD which is another great troubleshooting utility now I know metacat is the new and improved version that everybody loves I'm an old school guy so I'm still using hybrids but I will be making a video about Medicap soon either way select tyrants load it and next thing you know you are at the higher ends desktop interface which gives you access to tons of troubleshooting utilities to possibly get you back into your computer or save
• 10:30 - 11:00 your files so I restarted again and loaded umbuntu off the ventoy disk so as you can see you have tons of options anything that you can download as a bootable ISO you can load to this ventoid disk and explore Play Fix whatever you want to do all you have to do to add another ISO is simply download it and copy it to the ventoy drive turn around and reboot select that ISO and next thing you know you're loading it so far I've showed you how to easily load ISO files onto one flash drive so
• 11:00 - 11:30 that you have a plethora of utilities or repair disks or installation disks but I decided to take a bit further because ultimately vento is just a flash drive and flash drive means file storage so if you get a large enough flash drive you could not only have all the utilities that you need on this one bootable disk but there's no reason you can't put your personal files on it too let me show you how to do that so the process is very simple actually what we're going to do is just access the ventoy drive right click somewhere
• 11:30 - 12:00 in an empty space and choose new folder and then we have a folder to put our personal files into now you can name this folder whatever you want I'm just going to call it personal now you can manually back up your personal files if you want to and I'll put a video on the screen showing you how to do that but let's automate the process so that you literally don't have to do anything other than create this folder and install it in a simple program now the program I recommend is called f
• 12:00 - 12:30 backup I've been using this for many many years and installed it on many clients and it's just a great free program that just does exactly what it's supposed to do which is back up your files I'll put a link to F backup in the description once you download and install the software it's super simple you create a new job and tell it to use the removable device in this case your flash drive and then you can browse to the folder that you want to put these files into and guess what we're going to go to the ventoy drive and point it to
• 12:30 - 13:00 that personal folder and at that point now every time the drive backs up and you have that ventoy flash drive plugged in it's not only going to have all those uh ISO files on it but now it's also going to back up all your personal stuff as well you can go through the individual settings you can choose which personal files you want to include documents pictures things like that you can pretty much backup anything you want as long as you have a large enough flash drive five super easy and now this one
• 13:00 - 13:30 ventoy flash drive serves two purposes personal files and you also have all these tools available so you truly need this one disk for everything going forward so back to the isos for a second when you go to the ventoy.net page and you click on trusted isos up at the top you'll see a huge list of isos that are certified to use for this so that will help guide you in case you don't know exactly what you want to download in my opinion every ventoid disk needs at least your windows installer disk the
• 13:30 - 14:00 hirons or medicat and also maybe a copy of Linux just in case but at least those you should have everything you need to repair your computer so what'd you think eventually personally I'm impressed and that's hard to do because I've been doing this a long time and not a whole lot impresses me so a couple things I want to point out to you first of all if you have any problems with any of this there are tons of resources available but feel free to leave me a comment and let me help you out secondly when it comes to how big of
• 14:00 - 14:30 a flash drive you need that really depends on two things how many isos do you plan on putting on the drive and also if you choose the personal file backup option how much stuff do you have so I did make a video a while back I'll link to it at the top so you can figure out exactly how much stuff you have and then that will help guide the size of the flash drive that you need now personally for most people something like this a PNY 128 gigabyte should be more than enough I think I got this for
• 14:30 - 15:00 under ten dollars and delivered next day by Amazon I'll put a link for the drives that I recommend for all different sizes and you can choose the one that works for you pop it in start the video next thing you know you've got all the utilities you'll ever need Plus a built-in fast personal backup what's better than that