Looking for recommendations for a versatile USB stick with Ventoy. I’m trying to create the “perfect, all-in-all” USB stick using Ventoy to store various ISOs and rescue tools. So far, I have the following ISOs:
- Arch
- OpenSuse TW
- NixOS
- Bazzite + AuroraDX
- Win10 ISO
- Clonezilla
I’m looking for suggestions on additional ISOs or tools that are compatible with Ventoy. What do you recommend adding to make my USB stick to make it more useful?
Hirens boot cd is a great tool if you’re working with windows. You are not always going to need it, but when you do need it it’s awfully nice to have it.
Haven’t heard of Hiren’s BootCD in like 15 years. Good to see it’s still around!
Do yourself a favor and skip the USB drive - they are ridiculously slow compared to a compact external SSD. I found a cheap m.2 enclosure on Amazon and put an old SSD in it and the speed difference is breathtaking.
My SSD has a bunch of Linux distros grouped into folders along with Windows 10 & 11, every macOS from 10.13 to present, along with Rescuezilla, Hiren’s and a few others I can’t remember at the moment.
Rescuezilla was my #1 go-to during my days of distro hopping. Makes it super easy to try out a distro on bare metal instead of a VM.
Looking at my Ventoy stick i have multiple folders for different OS:
Arch_Based:
- CachyOS
- Garuda
Debian_Based:
- Debian Bookworm
- Mint
- Zorin OS
Fedora_Based:
- Fedora Silverblue
- Nobara
GamingBox
- Bazzite
- ChimeraOS
ServerOS:
- Ubuntu Server
- TrueNAS Scale
Windows:
- Tiny10
- Tiny11
Tools:
- Avira Rescue System
- SuperGrub2
- UBCD
It’s a 64GB stick and i manually keep it in sync with my netbootxyz instance
Ohhh I’ve meant to try out netbootxyz for a while now, thanks for the reminder!
What’s on my USB stick you ask… A bunch of random shit I haven’t touched for 8 years so I have no idea what it is and it’s probably outdated, but I’d be damned if that usb stick is not In my keychain because “I might need it one day”
Ventoy with Arch and Rescue bootable images. And a portable cross platform encryption tool just in case.
