Saturday, June 8, 2024

Ventoy FULL walk-thru and review! #Backup Multiple OS and your key files on USB Flash Drive


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

Welcome to Ask Your Computer Guy! My name is Scott, and I've got 30+ years experience with computers. On this channel, I make complicated tech solutions easy for the average person. I also offer tutorials, Windows tips & tricks, as well as helpful how-to videos on how to enhance your Windows experience! 

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Instead of having multiple flash drives with multiple ISO utility files on each, how about ONE drive with EVERYTHING on it - and as a bonus, I'm going to show you how to also use this one flash drive for your personal file backups as well! 

 Ventoy: http://www.ventoy.net #ventoy #bootableusb #bluescreenofdeath How large of a flash drive do you need? Find out here!    

Flash drives: 

Here are tools that I highly recommend and use personally every day... 

 ðŸ’¢ Hardware --- 

 ðŸ’¢ Here is some helpful/useful and FREE everyday software that you might enjoy! 

💢 Hey, do you want even MORE in-depth techie stuff? Check out my friend Nico's page, Nico Knows Tech. Tell him I sent you and watch the obscenities fly LOL ✔    / nicoknowstech   

Summary

 Scott, an IT professional, shares his discovery of a new tool called Ventoy that has revolutionized the way he creates bootable utility drives. Ventoy allows users to consolidate multiple ISO files onto a single flash drive, making it easy to access various utilities, repair disks, and installation media without the need for separate drives.

The video provides a step-by-step guide on how to download and set up Ventoy, as well as how to add ISO files for Windows 10, Windows 11, Linux Mint, and Hiren's Boot CD. The speaker also demonstrates how to boot from the Ventoy drive and access the various utilities.

In addition to the bootable utilities, the speaker explains how to use the Ventoy drive for personal file backup by creating a dedicated folder and using a free program called FBackup. This allows users to have a single flash drive that serves as both a utility drive and a personal backup solution.

Scott emphasizes the importance of choosing the right size flash drive based on the number of ISOs and personal files to be stored. He also provides resources for troubleshooting and recommends the essential utilities to include on every Ventoy drive.

Overall, the speaker is impressed with Ventoy and believes it is a game-changer for IT professionals and Windows users alike, simplifying the process of creating bootable utility drives and providing a convenient backup solution.

Transcription

Here is the cleaned up transcript with corrected grammar, spelling, and added punctuation:

You know, one of the problems with 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. We're not usually very receptive to change, but 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 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.

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 Hiren's, which allows you to get in your computer, access your files, make changes, fix things, 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 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 Ventoy." 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 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 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 you think I'm getting a little too far ahead of you, just feel free to pause and rewind and go over that section. 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. Simply plug in your flash drive into your computer, and you're going to get a pop-up window like this. Make note of the drive letter, and then double click on that drive 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 downloaded, you want to go to your downloads folder, 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 "Ventoy2Disk.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 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. 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 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. 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 and click on the Media Creation Tool and start the program. 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. "Create 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 edition. 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". 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 "Download". You're going to get prompted to choose your language. Go ahead and select that and then click "Confirm". A couple minutes will go 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 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 Hiren's Boot USB". I'm going to click on the link here that takes me to the Hiren's 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 ISO file. Go ahead and click on that and save it to your computer if you want Hiren's.

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 Hiren's 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 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 to the Ventoy 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 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 Ventoy 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 Ventoy disk. Then I will get the Ventoy 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 Ventoy disk. This is great if you need to go in and do any kind of file 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 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 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 Hiren's Boot CD, which is another great troubleshooting utility. Now, I know MediCat is the new and improved version that everybody loves. I'm an old school guy, so I'm still using Hiren's, but I will be making a video about MediCat soon. Either way, select Hiren's, load it, and next thing you know, you are at the Hiren's desktop interface, which gives you access to tons of troubleshooting utilities to possibly get you back into your computer or save your files.

So I restarted again and loaded Ubuntu 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 Ventoy 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 that you have a plethora of utilities or repair disks or installation disks. But I decided to take it a bit further because ultimately, Ventoy 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 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 FBackup. 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 FBackup 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 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 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.

It's super easy. And now this one 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 Ventoy disk needs at least your Windows installer disk, the Hiren's or MediCat, and also maybe a copy of Linux, just in case. But at least with those, you should have everything you need to repair your computer.

So what'd you think of Ventoy? 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 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 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?

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