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Ventoy
In each review, Adam Hunt is careful to mention Ventoy and the ease with which one can simply copy and paste ISOs onto a USB key equipped with it, in order to test and/or install the various distros, without fuss or worry.
My computer (a 4 and a half year old ASUS) works quite well under Windows 11. Almost every other computer in the house, including my husband’s, is equipped with Ubuntu MATE. But I do have a small Samsung laptop with Windows XP on it (I think). At any rate, it is OLD. I suspect it may even be 32-bit, but I don’t know.
To make a long story short, I thought I’d try out various distributions on it and so I downloaded Ventoy (01 July, 2022) and, after a rather disastrous trial with a 32GB stick, put it on a 64GB USB stick. I have put a number of distros on the stick. This morning, when I checked to see if I could find the version of Ventoy, I saw there were two partitions: one for all the files and folders of Ventoy, and the other for the distros.
The reason I’m writing this letter is that I have found that Ventoy seems to cannibalise the USB stick. Let me explain: once Ventoy is on a USB stick, it seems impossible to get rid of it. It also seems impossible to find out what version of Ventoy I have. I wanted to put movies on the 32GB stick on which I had installed Ventoy first, but found that it was impossible to get my 12-year-old TV to read them. I also found it impossible to turn that USB stick into a normal stick. I ended up reformatting the stick in NTFS slowly (not a quick reformat) and, afterwards, (and, of course, after I put a few movies on it), when I plugged it into the TV, I was able to see only the movies. Victory! Or so I thought!
Yesterday, however, when I wanted to watch one of those films, I found myself unexpectedly in a Ventoy directory. After fiddling around with the Source to the TV, I found that the USB stick had two partitions, one with Ventoy and the other with the movies (which could be watched). Yet I had been under the impression that I had truly suppressed Ventoy.
So I would like to ask Adam Hunt: even though Ventoy works beautifully if you use it for what it’s intended, how do you remove it if you want to use the USB stick for something else entirely?
Elizabeth (AuntieE) French Translation Team
Thank you for your email. This is an interesting puzzle and one I have not encountered, although I have generally run into USB sticks that start misbehaving, won't mount, or won't eject, transfer data, etc. I am never totally sure what causes this, but it often seems to be a file system formatting sort of issue.
It is worth noting that Ventoy leaves the USB stick with two partitions, a large storage partition in exFat format, and a small (32 MB) EFI boot partition in FAT16 format, of all things. The Ventoy home website seems to have no documentation on removing Ventoy from a stick. In theory, it should be possible to use it as a regular storage device with any computer or other hardware that can read exFat , but it is quite possible that older TVs, like yours, have a file system compatibility issue there. I am pretty unfamiliar with Windows and its tools these days, so this explanation will be for Linux computers.
I haven't had to do this with a Ventoy-equipped stick, but, in general, what I have found to get a balky USB stick working again is: • Try a simple reformat (which you tried) using a tool such as Gnome Disks. This alone will sometimes fix a stick. • Try a more capable tool, such as GParted. Use “Device > Create partition table” as this will completely reformat the USB stick and should erase anything on it. • If that is not successful, try the Linux command-line program badblocks (which comes with all Ubuntu derivatives).
The command is: sudo badblocks -wsvb 1024 -c 512 /dev/sdh
You should use GParted to confirm the exact mount point on the individual computer, however, as it may be /dev/sdh, or /dev/sdi, etc. You do not want to run this on the wrong device!
Badblocks will test the USB device, completely erase the whole device and overwrite each sector in testing it. Running it may take a while, depending on the computer's processor speed and the capacity of the device. Once that has completed, a check with GParted should show that the USB is empty and not formatted. It can then be formatted to a suitable format, like FAT32 or NTFS and used normally.
If none of that fixes it, then I would suspect that the USB stick is failing at a hardware level.
To address your other note, yes you are correct, Ventoy does not report its version number, at least not easily! There are only two ways I have found to figure out which version you have installed. The first is to just keep the current download folder, which has the number on it, or to run the Ventoy update GUI from any Ventoy download folder and it will report the version number. It would be a nice addition if, on booting it up, it reported the version number!
I hope this all helps. If any readers have more, or better information, please do write to Full Circle and share your knowledge and experiences!
Adam Hunt Reviewer Extraordinaire
In order to try out the Gparted solution, I plugged it into a computer with Ubuntu MATE on it. Guess what? It shows up as ‘Unnamed’ - NOT two partitions – with only the films and a folder called System Volume Information on it. There is no hint whatsoever of Ventoy. Curiouser and curiouser.
I thought I would do the Gparted solution anyway to see whether Ventoy has completely disappeared when the stick is read by Windows and by the television. BUT, when I looked at the stick with Gparted, both partitions were actually present: sdb1 ntfs with the flag boot, and sdb2 fat16 with the label VTOYEFI and the flag esp. When I tried to do Device > Create partition table, I got a long message, saying it was impossible to do so because some of the partitions were active (although neither was selected). I unmounted the USB stick that showed up as Unnamed, but that made no difference whatsoever. My conclusion is that the Ventoy partition is the active one. Ventoy seems to be sticking like glue.
I’ll try the badblocks solution tomorrow and report back on that.
…
The first message I got from badblocks was ‘/dev/sdb is apparently used by the system ; it is not prudent to run badblocks!’
So I waited, restarted the computer, put the stick in and ejected Unnamed. This time, the message was ‘No support found when badblocks tried to determine the size of the device’. Although I had ejected Unnamed, when I went to Computer, I found that a ‘generic flash disk’ existed. I ejected it but nothing changed until I took the stick out anyway. I waited a bit and put it in again. Unnamed was visible, but, when I ran badblocks once again, I got the original message. I can only guess that, because the stick is ‘used by the system’, I cannot run badblocks.
Incidentally, when I restarted the computer with the USB stick plugged in, it almost immediately came up with Ventoy. It would seem that the version is 1.0.78 UEFI. At least I could ‘Press Enter’ to reboot.
Under Windows, I formatted only the Ventoy partition, leaving Unnamed untouched, and Windows now says that the Ventoy partition is empty. Maybe I can use badblocks, so it’s back to Ubuntu MATE to see. Although all that is visible in the Ventoy partition is Volume Information, badblocks tells me once again that ‘/dev/sdb is apparently used by the system ; it is not prudent to run badblocks!’ But, when I rebooted Ubuntu with the USB stick in position, I no longer got the Ventoy screen, which must be a good sign. Back to Gparted, both partitions were active, or so it said. I unmounted them, to no avail. So I’ll reboot, unmount the partitions on sdb (the USB stick) and then try Gparted. Oh yes, although most of Ventoy is gone, that partition is still named VTOYEFI, so I will rename it to something else. Rename was unavailable for VTOYEFI in Ubuntu or in Windows. So, in Windows, I reformatted it to be able to give it the name Hindrance. Strangely enough, that became HINDRANCE.
Creating a new partition table in Gparted continued to be impossible. But I tried one last time with badblocks and it seems to be working! All that was needed was not only reformatting, to eliminate any bit of Ventoy in that partition, but also eliminating any reference to Ventoy in the name of that partition.
My final goal is to have a normal USB stick with only one partition. And, Adam, thanks to you and your suggestion of badblocks, it looks like I’m on my way!
Elizabeth (AuntieE) French Translation Team
Wow that was a torturous process. Hopefully badblocks resolved it for you in the end, and you were able to reformat it after? badblocks won't work if there is a process running on the drive, which must have been Ventoy itself.
Adam Hunt Reviewer Extraordinaire
Yes, thank you, Adam. I just reformatted the USB stick with only one partition on it. All is well.
Elizabeth (AuntieE) French Translation Team
THE END