Ventoy Bootable USB Creator Adds Persistence Support For Arch Linux And Fedora

Ventoy, a tool to create a bootable USB drive by simply copying the ISO to the USB, has been updated to version 1.0.40, bringing support for creating persistent USB drives for Fedora and Arch Linux (including ArchMan, ArchBang, BlackArch, etc.).

Ventoy is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux, and it can create bootable USB drives containing Linux and Windows ISO files.

You need to install Ventoy to a USB drive, then every time you want to create a bootable USB drive, all you have to do is copy the ISO to the USB. There's no need to format the USB drive. You can copy as many ISO files as you wish (even combined Windows and Linux ISOs), and when booting from the USB, Ventoy shows a list of available ISO files, allowing you to boot from the one you select.

What's more, since you don't need to format the USB drive, you can continue to use it for other purposes. So you can copy other files to the USB, and it won't interfere with Ventoy.

Ventoy supports both legacy and UEFI Secure Boot, it has persistent support for some Linux distributions, it has auto-installation support (for Windows and Linux distributions that support this), and it supports ISO files larger than 4 GB. Also, you can upgrade Ventoy without having to reformat the USB disk.

The latest Ventoy 1.0.40 adds persistence support for Fedora and Arch Linux (including ArchMan, ArchBang, BlackArch, etc.). The Ventoy developer notes that this has been tested for Fedora / Arch Linux using archlinux-2021.03.01-x86_64.iso and Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-33-1.2.iso.

It's important to note that in order to create a persistent USB using Ventoy for Arch Linux or Fedora, you'll need to set the persistence image label to vtoycow when creating it using CreatePersistentImg.sh (part of Ventoy). It's also worth noting that the system is slower when using persistence than booting a regular ISO.

Other changes in Ventoy 1.0.40 include:

Support RHEL6/CentOS6 auto install
Clear input key before showing main menu
Fix a bug when booting special Windows/WinPE ISO file
Added workaround for Ventoy not booting from a new Intel Tiger Lake based laptop

Bootable USB-related articles you might like:

Download Ventoy

For how to use Ventoy, check out its documentation. The article about Ventoy I've previously written on Linux Uprising also includes Ventoy installation instructions, as well as how to create a bootable USB drive with persistence (now updated to include instructions for Fedora and Arch Linux).

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