Multiboot Usb Download
Giuseppina Worster
YUMI (Your USB Multiboot Installer) is a multiboot USB boot maker. A USB Windows media creation tool or software that can be used to make a multisystem bootable flash drive. This utility helps you quickly create a custom multi booting USB drive containing several different ISO files and useful system tools.
You can use this bootable USB maker to boot from USB your favorite Live Linux portable operating systems, Linux and Windows Installers, antivirus utilities, disc cloning, backup, penetration testing, diagnostic tools, and much more.
YUMI Multiboot USB creator has been considered by many to be the best tool to make a USB bootable. It replaces our old Multiboot ISOS tool and is also the successor to the Universal USB Installer (UUI). These tools, along with Unetbootin, were among the first ever made for the purpose of creating a bootable flash drive.
Though the utility was originally intended to be used to boot from USB "LIVE Linux" operating systems and tools, using it to install Linux from a flash drive to a hard drive should also work with most distributions. If you find a distro where the installer does not work, please let me know. You can also use this software to create Bootable Windows Installers, enabling you to easily Install Windows 10 from USB.
This tool works much like the classical Universal USB Installer or Rufus, except instead of imaging a single ISO to USB, it can be used to store and run more than one distribution from your flash drive. Enabling you to Boot Multiple ISO files from the same device. Distributions can also easily be uninstalled or removed with the tool!
Question: You might be asking, how can I boot from USB with exFAT?
Answer: The YUMI exFAT media creation tool can be used to automatically create an exFAT bootable USB. The following explains key differences between it and all of the older archived, no longer updated variants:
This is the the latest and suggested variant to use going forward. It allows you to keep using an exFAT format on your USB drive and store files larger than 4GB. Both modern UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes are supported. You can also drag and drop bootable ISO files into folders onto your flash drive to be automatically detected and added to the boot menu at startup.
YUMI exFAT utilizes a bootloader based on Ventoy2Disk along with a custom YUMI theme and configuration enabling you to use advanced Ventoy boot methods with YUMI's helpful front end. Making it easy to find new distributions to download and try.
Create and manage for example; Arch, Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu based distributions with persistent images, or make multiple Windows Media Installers. You can even use the software for installing Windows onto USB in which case each distribution is stored and booted from separate VHDx images.
It is also important to note that this variant is backwards compatible with Ventoy. In fact, if you'd like, instead of using YUMI2USB you can copy YUMI-exFAT-1.0.2.7.exe to the same location as your Ventoy2Disk.exe and the multiboot USB boot tool will autodetect and use it instead for performing installation/updates.
After your select drive has been setup by using "Prepare this Device" option, you can proceed use the front end Installer to learn more about and download distributions and tools to put on the selected drive. The front end will automatically create an organized folder structure and then copy each ISO file to the drive for you. This media creation tool will also keep track of your installations, which can come in handy for removal later on.
Your Universal multiboot Installer software can also create persistent storage files for you along with any related .json entries. Note that each Arch, Fedora, Debian or Ubuntu based distribution can have its own persistent storage.
You can also create your own storage folders within the YUMI folder on the flash drive and then just drag and drop your ISO, IMG, WIM, VHD(x), VDI.vtoy, and EFI files into those folders on the USB flash drive. During startup, the system will add entries for discovered items. Stored files can be larger than 4GB.
Yes, this variant makes use of the upstream Ventoy Secure Boot. Simply select VTOYEFI and then set ENROLL_THIS_KEY_IN_MOKMANAGER.cer as the Select Key to be enrolled into the MOK database.
Recommended flash drives: You will have the best experience when using a fast solid state flash thumb drive. I've put together a list of the best USB flash drives that I've personally used and highly recommend. All of them are all SSD and super fast.
WARNING Backup Data: You must backup any data you wish to keep before using the "Prepare this Device" option. While preparing the drive, ALL volumes/partitions on the selected (Disk #) even if hidden, will be wiped clean.
Here are some bootable Live Linux distros, portable Operating Systems, Windows Installers, and system diagnostic tools that you can install and boot from USB using this software. Keep in mind that this list is by no means all inclusive.
Please inform me of unlisted "FREE" Live Linux distributions or version revisions, and I will attempt to update the USB Multiboot Tool to support them. Additionally, developers who wish to have their Live Linux distribution added, can direct me to a copy to try.
Can I use YUMI on Linux? Yes, you can use the YUMI4Linux "YUMI.sh" script to make a Multibooting USB from within Linux. After preparation, you'll be able to drag and drop ISO files into the YUMI folder on the prepared drive. ISO files stored there will be detected and then added to the menu for USB booting.
Here's how to get started using YUMI in Linux:
The following steps assume that gzip and WINE packages are already installed on your system. If they, aren't you'll want to install them both before proceeding.
Once finished, the included YUMI-exFAT-1.0.2.7.exe can be run from WINE to learn more about a distro, download related ISO files, and install additional distributions + create persistence files on any prepared drive.
The Persistence feature is currently broken with Newer Debian based distributions due to changes upstream. Debian now requires the persistent block file and label to be named persistence instead of live-rw, and it must hold a persistence.conf file containing / Union. This has been partially Fixed with the most recent releases and does work for some distributions such as KALI Linux with persistence.
Excluding a Drive from being detected: To exclude a drive from being detected by YUMI, you can create a blank text file named "excludedrive.txt" and place it at the root of the drive to be excluded.
You can try to force the selection of an ISO file for ISO filenames that do not appear when you browse for a select distribution. This is useful in situations where you know that a distribution is based on another existing distro, but an installable entry or option for it does not yet exist.
Some flash drives ship formatted (without a partition), but this USB boot tool requires the drive to contain a partition with a MBR (Master Boot Record). To ensure compatibility, the installer will format your device during preparation.
Troubleshooting USB Boot Errors:
When booting Linux distributions from some laptops such as the Lenovo Yoga with a touchscreen, the acpi=off boot parameter might be necessary in order to successfully boot.
If you don't have a floppy drive and get fd0 errors while booting, simply add floppy.allowed_drive_mask=0 to the append line for the troubled entry. Although the best fix is to simply disable floppy in BIOS.
The casper-rw persistence feature is used for some (but not all) Debian and Ubuntu based distributions. Yes, you can also have multiple persistent distributions, as each distro utilizes its own block file.
In order to load Ophcrack tables, the tables folder needs to exist at the root directory of the USB device; (example F:\tables\vista_free). You can get Ophcrack Tables from the Official Ophcrack site. Once downloaded, simply unzip them to the root of the USB. Because you're using this method, you can have your Windows 11/10/8/XP tables all working together on the same device.
TAILS: If your USB drive is detected as a "fixed" hard drive and not a "removable" disk, (a few of the larger AXE and SanDisk drives have the removable bit flipped this way), you'll need to remove occurrences of the boot parameter "live-media=removable" or consequently TAILS will fail to find the live filesystem.
YUMI was among the first tools to pioneer the creation of multi-system bootable USB drives, designed for the purpose of booting multiple operating systems and tools from a single USB device. It originated as a Windows-based USB multi-boot software developed back in 2010 and was publicly released on March 13, 2011. The latest version can be run on either Windows or within Linux using WINE.
The exFAT variant is an iteration that utilizes the newer Ventoy boot process in place of its older USB multi-booting methods while retaining YUMI's familiar frontend and popular features. These features include user-defined automated persistence file creation, the ability to create VHD containers for running Windows from USB, and a means of providing users with categorized information, website links, and download links for each bootable distribution or tool.
Key features, such as A1ive's (AGFM) Grub File Manager-based Boot Menu, were already integrated into the exFAT variant before the existence of Ventoy. At its inception, Ventoy also adopted AGFM along with Rufus partitioning methods to use separate partitions for boot and storage. This setup allows for NTFS or exFAT large file storage, along with a small FAT partition for BIOS boot support. This feature, originally pioneered by Pete Batard (the developer of Rufus), eventually became a standard across these utilities, providing a method for all of them to natively support both BIOS and UEFI USB booting.