I'll be real, this is part of why I didn't understand Ventoy. I keep a bunch of large, fast thumbdrives around blank and available. When I need/want to put an OS on there, I do it when I need it, and then I'm always installing the most current version of the install. It takes under 5 minutes, at best.

I used to try to keep various installs on thumbdrives... but it would be two years down the line by the time I needed to use it again and by that time it's literally pointless to be using two year old installation media.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Ventoy wasn't a foolproof solution but it really did beat the hell out of using 6 different USB drives. Most USB "pen drives" don't make labeling easy and without labeling I'm just plugging them in one by one till I find the one I want.

[–] mbirth@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I remember various different concepts of USB flash drives with integrated LCDs that would display a label and the remaining capacity. Then they vanished and the only thing left were the Lexar Echo drives. Until a few years ago, when they have been pulled from the markets. Probably, because they didn't work with the now default GPT and its many different partition types.

[–] KnightontheSun@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

IODD makes some. I had the older HDD version that stopped working after it got dropped, so now I use this one:

https://www.iodd.shop/IODD-SSD-drive-with-mini-USB-30-with-secure-256-bit-encryption

[–] NobodyElse@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

I use this thing all the time. It will serve up ISOs and VMDK images also. It’s quite fast

[–] mbirth@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The IODD is basically a small drive enclosure, not a "stupid" USB drive.

I was more thinking of devices like this, this or this. Which have the simplicity of a normal USB device (just plug it in and go) and come with an automatically updating label so you can find the correct dongle.

But yeah, nowadays, I'd probably prefer the IODD thing.

load more comments (3 replies)