Ventoy Setup Guide (Single USB, Multi-ISO)

Ventoy lets you put multiple ISOs on one USB drive and pick which to boot from a menu. This is ideal when you only have one USB — you can have both CachyOS live ISO and Windows LTSC ISO on it.

⚠️ Warning: Installing Ventoy will wipe the USB drive. If you previously flashed CachyOS with dd, you'll re-add it as a file afterward.

1. Identify Your USB Drive

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,TYPE,MODEL

Find your USB (e.g., /dev/sda). Not nvme0n1 — that's your main drive.

2. Download and Extract Ventoy

cd ~/Downloads
wget https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/releases/download/v1.1.05/ventoy-1.1.05-linux.tar.gz
tar -xzf ventoy-1.1.05-linux.tar.gz
cd ventoy-1.1.05

If v1.1.05 isn't the latest, check https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/releases.

3. Install Ventoy to the USB

sudo ./Ventoy2Disk.sh -i /dev/sdX

Replace /dev/sdX with your USB device. It will ask you to confirm twice — type y both times.

This creates two partitions on the USB:

Partition	Format	Purpose
/dev/sdX1	exFAT	Drop ISO files here
/dev/sdX2	EFI	Ventoy bootloader (don't touch)

4. Copy ISOs to the USB

# Mount the large exFAT partition
sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt

# Copy CachyOS ISO (needed later for GRUB restore in step 8)
cp ~/Games/cachyos-desktop-linux-260308.iso /mnt/

# Copy Windows LTSC ISO
cp /path/to/your/windows-ltsc.iso /mnt/

sudo umount /mnt

Replace /path/to/your/windows-ltsc.iso with the actual path to your Windows ISO.

5. Add Windows 11 TPM/Secure Boot Bypass Config

This bypasses TPM, Secure Boot, CPU, and RAM checks during Windows 11 installation.

sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/ventoy

Create the file /mnt/ventoy/ventoy.json:

{
  "control": [
    { "VTOY_WIN11_BYPASS_CHECK": "1" }
  ]
}

sudo umount /mnt

6. Boot from the USB

1. Reboot your machine
2. Hit F12 or F2 to open the BIOS boot menu
3. Select the USB drive
4. Ventoy will show a menu listing all ISOs on the drive
5. Select the Windows LTSC ISO to start the Windows installation

After Windows is installed, you can boot the same USB again and select the CachyOS ISO for GRUB restore (step 8 of the dual boot guide). One USB, both ISOs — no reflashing needed.