Updating & reinstalling Ventoy

Ventoy itself gets updates. BootForge can refresh it on a drive you already prepared — usually without touching your images.

Update in place

When you connect a Ventoy drive whose version is older than the recommended one, the drive card shows Update available → (version) and an Update Ventoy button.

Updating:

• refreshes Ventoy to the newer version;
• keeps all your images — they’re preserved byte-for-byte;
• leaves the drive bootable.

You’ll confirm (“This updates Ventoy to … and keeps all your images”), then BootForge runs it in stages. Don’t disconnect the drive or close the app while it runs. When it’s done you’ll see Ventoy updated — your images are intact and the drive still boots.

”This drive can’t be updated in place”

Sometimes a drive looks like Ventoy but its on-disk layout differs from the one BootForge writes — usually because it was set up by a different tool or a much newer/older version. BootForge can’t safely update that in place.

The only safe option it offers is Erase & reinstall, which:

• erases the drive and writes a fresh BootForge Ventoy layout;
• removes all images (you’d re-add them afterward).

As always, nothing changes until you confirm the erase. You can read the full explanation in the app via About this drive.

Reinstalling on purpose

You can also reinstall deliberately — for example to change the partition style or other advanced options. Reinstall is destructive (it erases the drive), so it carries the same clear erase warning and confirmation as a first-time prepare.

Updating your images vs updating Ventoy

These are separate things:

• Update Ventoy — the boot loader, above.
• Image updates — newer versions of the ISOs you’ve added, tracked in the library (Pro).