BootForge

Make a bootable drive

Preparing a drive

Turning a blank or ordinary USB stick into a bootable Ventoy multiboot drive — and what the warnings mean.

Preparing a drive installs Ventoy on it: a small boot loader plus a large data partition where your ISO files live. Afterwards you just copy images onto it and boot.

Start preparing

When you connect a drive that isn’t set up for multiboot, Home shows Prepare this drive with a Prepare USB button. (If you’ve never downloaded Ventoy’s boot files, BootForge fetches them first — see Ventoy boot files.)

The erase confirmation

Preparing is destructive, so BootForge shows a confirmation that includes:

  • the drive’s name and capacity, so you can be sure it’s the right one;
  • a plain warning: this will erase all data on the drive and cannot be undone;
  • a checkbox — “I understand all data on this drive will be erased” — you must tick;
  • the action button Erase and install.

Do not unplug the drive or close the app while it runs.

What happens during install

BootForge writes Ventoy in clear, verified stages and shows each one:

  1. Planning the layout
  2. Writing boot record
  3. Verifying boot record
  4. Writing Ventoy core
  5. Verifying Ventoy core
  6. Formatting data partition
  7. Writing Ventoy system image
  8. Verifying Ventoy system image
  9. Finalizing

Every write is read back and checked. If anything doesn’t match, BootForge stops rather than leave you with a half-written drive.

When it finishes

You’ll see Ventoy installed — the drive is now a bootable Ventoy USB. The next step is to add ISO files and copy them to the drive.

BootForge also remembers the drive (see Known drives) so it recognises it next time you connect it.

If it’s cancelled or fails

  • Cancelled — the drive is incomplete and won’t boot. Just run the install again.
  • Failed — check the details shown and run the install again. Nothing partial is left bootable.

Advanced options

Most people should use the defaults. If you need control over the filesystem, partition style (MBR/GPT), 4 KB alignment, reserved space, or the Ventoy version, open Advanced settings in the confirm dialog — see Advanced setup options.