FOR~GO
(For Geeks Only)
By Joe Callison
10 January 2026
Creating Bootable USB Drives
I have used Rufus: Rufus – Create bootable USB drives the easy way to create bootable USB drives for trial or installation of operating systems or utilities for several years. The only downside is that it utilizes the whole USB space to create one bootable ISO file. It does have some handy options in the settings for bypassing the Windows 11 requirements that would otherwise prevent installation on an unsupported computer.
Ventoy: Download – Ventoy is another option for creating multiple bootable ISO files on a single USB drive. Using a 64GB USB drive, I was able to put 4 different Linux ISO distributions on it after creating the bootable Ventoy drive, and Ventoy created a menu to choose the distribution to load, which you can then run from the USB for trial. Of course, it loads much slower from the USB drive, but once loading is complete, it responds reasonably well. Within the trial version of Linux is the option to install to the main storage drive, with options for either replacing the existing operating system or creating a dual-boot installation. The unused space on the USB drive can be used for additional ISO files or any other files you want to add.
For either of these two vendor options, be very careful not to click on any of the large in-your-face “download” displays that are actually ads that download unwanted junk. Use only the menu or download links that are clearly part of the Rufus or Ventoy sites. Also, know that creating the bootable USB drive will wipe any existing files that were on the drive.
