A rescue drive is something you should not take for granted. It seemed like a small thing at first, but I’ve lost track of how many times that USB drive came in clutch since I started using it.
Of course, this applies to homelabs too, and a multi-boot USB drive hosting a boatload of ISO files quickly turned out to be one of the simpler but more important projects I’ve completed recently. Here’s how to make your own.
Grab a USB drive with at least 128GB of storage
Surplus space for ISOs and backups
Before we begin, a word of caution — pick a USB drive that has more than enough space to house bootable ISO files. If you’d ask me, 128 GB is the sweet spot, having enough space to hold both bootable discs and a few extras.
You could technically go with a 64 GB drive, but I like to keep a bit of extra headroom. Do not use lower-capacity drives, as you’ll quickly fill them up with the sheer number of ISO files alone.
Since the tool we’re going to be using reads ISO files (and not any other format), we can make a separate backup folder to store things like our configuration files. I use mine for both dotfiles and wallpapers, so it’s easier to migrate things between installations.
Ventoy is the secret sauce and the base of your rescue disk
Multi-ISO boot utility
Ventoy is the glue that holds the whole USB tool together. Ventoy is a free bootloader tool that essentially lets you boot multiple ISO files off a single drive. First, flash Ventoy onto a USB drive, then drag your ISO files onto the Ventoy drive.
Upon boot, Ventoy loads up and populates the entire list of available ISO files, which can be booted from individually. This is what the rescue disk is, essentially being a Ventoy drive with specialized bootable images for both Windows and Linux.
Dumping ISOs and making a config directory
The more, the merrier
Once Ventoy has been flashed onto the drive, you can begin copying ISO files to it. Before you get started, though, it’s worth creating an additional “backup” folder of sorts to house your files and configs. Ventoy won’t read folders, so you can chuck in your dotfiles and documents here.
Going back to the list of recommended ISOs, there are a few intended for a recovery environment:
- Proxmox ISO: This is the stock Proxmox installer image for whatever the latest version is. Intended for use as a recovery image for your existing Proxmox server, in case things go horribly wrong and you can’t boot from it anymore.
- SystemRescue: Yet another Linux-based live environment. SystemRescue is a Swiss Army knife of rescue utilities that can be used for disk management and repairing corrupted boot volumes.
- MemTest86+: This is a RAM diagnostic tool that is used for detecting hardware failures. An essential pick.
- Rescuezilla: Rescuezilla provides a graphical user environment along with a few extra tools for Clonezilla, like disk resizing using GParted. The end result is a really easy-to-use disk management utility that has never failed me once.
- Hiren’s BootCD PE: A Swiss Army knife of Windows utilities. More focused on Windows 11, with tools like password reset, malware scanning, and file recovery software.
If things go south quickly, you’ll often need a fresh reinstallation. This is also where the rescue disk comes in handy, and I usually keep a bunch of installers around, just in case:
- Windows 11 installers (stock and LTSC): This includes the latest versions of Windows 11 from Microsoft’s official downloader site. It’s a completely unmodified version of Windows 11, ready to be deployed on PCs. The LTSC version is what I primarily use, since it’s a lot less bloated to begin with.
- Arch Linux installer ISO: The latest ISO of the Arch Linux installer. While it essentially just drops you into a TUI, it’s still a full-fledged recovery disk. The installer has a few rescue utilities and can be used to enter the host system (with manual mounting) to fix things from inside.
- Linux Mint live CD: Assuming you need a live desktop environment, Linux Mint is a solid choice. While the disc image might be a bit outdated (for its housed packages), it is still very usable and just about enough for quickly browsing hard drives to copy data over.
Ventoy can also be updated directly from the installer utility, which I recommend doing from time to time.
Might not be usable on very old systems
Ventoy, for all its advantages, suffers from compatibility problems often. If you’re using this on a relatively modern system, you shouldn’t have any issues. However, once we move up to a bit more obscure or niche systems, things start to fall apart.
Ventoy straight up refuses to work, and the only option is to flash the ISO directly to another USB drive and boot from it. It’s usually not needed, but as a fail-safe, it might just be nice to have.
