When it comes to creating bootable flash drives, Ventoy is one of the greatest tools ever made even though most people recommend Etcher. And why wouldn’t Etcher be recommended? It’s cross-platform and open source, it’s easy to use and has a beautiful UI.
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Well, it runs on Electron which for some people is a big no-no out of the gate, but most importantly there was quite a bit of controversy recently, regarding network traffic that’s going on in the background.
So if you want to create a bootable flash drive, and a multi-iso bootable flashdrive is an overkill for you, you should take a look at USBImager.
USBImager is a very minimal GUI app that can write compressed disk images to USB drives. It’s also open source and cross platform. And… it’s small. Very small. Depending on the patform, USBImager comes in at 150-180KB ( compared to Etcher which is 90-140MB ).
To download USBImaged, visit the link above. There’s a Windows .zip file that you should extract to C:\Program Files. A macOS .zip file which you should extract to /Applications.
For Linux there’s a .deb file, and Raspberry Pi version. Arch Linux users ( and derivated ) can install USBImager from the AUR. There’s also a generic Linux version which can either be extracted to /usr to install it permanently or by copying the extracted USBImager folder to your prefered location, opening the bin folder in a terminal session and run the tool with ./usbimager.
Using USBImager can’t be simpler. All you have to do is point USBImager to the location of your .iso image, insert your USB drive and choose it from the list and click “Write”.
USBImager not only creates bootable flash drives for you but it also allows you to back up your USB drive. To do that, insert the USB drive that you want to back up, select it from the list and click on the “Read” button.
