Part 1: Install Ventoy, add partitions

Step 1: Planning the layout

All tasks should be given room to breathe in their respective file systems

  • Ventoy ISOs:
    100 GiB is plentiful and convenient
    30 GiB is clausthrophobic but compatible with more BIOS
  • Windows 11: Recommended minimum of 80 GiB (initial usage < 20 GiB)
  • Ubuntu Linux: Recommended minimum of 30 GiB (initial usage < 10 GiB)
  • FreeDOS: Recommended minimum of
    64 MiB for plain install (usage is < 30 MiB)
    512 MiB for full install (usage is < 325 MiB)
  • FAT16 partition: 1 GiB for quickly sharing files with DOS (and maybe some dumb devices)

Thus a USB drive with 256 GiB or more capacity is recommended when including Windows, 64 GiB when excluded.

USB write speeds range from 4 to 4.000 MiB/s. If you go shopping, check reviews on write speeds first. My personal experience with a PNY Pro Elite V2 has been very good (around 500 MiB/s writes).

Example partition layout plan for 256 GiB:

  • "Ventoy" 120 GiB exFAT for ISOs and small VHDs (1 GiB DOS VHD, 1 GiB Ubuntu /boot)
  • "VENTFAT" 1 GiB FAT16 (share files with DOS)
  • "VentWin" 80 GiB exFAT for Windows VHD
  • "VentMore" 55 GiB for Ubuntu VHD and other files (ISOs accessed via F2)

Example using a 2 TiB USB NVMe:

  • "Ventoy" 120 GiB
  • "VENTFAT" 1 GiB
  • "VentWin" 200 GiB
  • "VentMore" 1.4 TiB

Example using 64 GiB:

  • "Ventoy" 30 GiB
  • "VENTFAT" 1 GiB
  • "VentMore" 33 GiB

Adjust to your preferences. The guide will assume the 256 GiB example.

Step 2: ventoy2disk

Have Ventoy installed.

Run ventoy2disk

  • Select the correct destination
  • Select partition style GPT
  • Enter partition configuration
    • Keep exFAT filesystem
    • Preserve X GiB of space, X = total available - 120 (Ventoy partition size)
  • Install
  • Double check the Ventoy partition is about 120 GiB in size

Step 3: Disk Management

Run Disk Management or any other capable partitioning tool (Disk Genius, gparted)

  • Note how Ventoy consists of two partitions by default
  • Never change size or location of these two partitions
  • Add partition "VENTFAT", 1 GiB, format as FAT (in fact FAT16, not FAT32)
  • Add partition "VentWin", 80 GiB, format as exFAT
  • Add partition "VentMore", all remaining space (minus overprovisioning, if you're into that), format as exFAT

Up next: Windows

Continue with Part 2: Install Windows 11 along Ventoy in a VHD file