Rufus is a small utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc. Despite its small size, Rufus provides everything you need! Oh, and Rufus is fast. For instance it"s about twice as fast as UNetbootin, Universal USB Installer or Windows 7 USB download tool, on the creation of a Windows 7 USB installation drive from an ISO (with honorable mention to WiNToBootic for managing to keep up). It is also marginally faster on the creation of Linux bootable USBs from ISOs. A non-exhaustive list of Rufus supported ISOs is available here.
It can be especially useful for cases where:
- you need to create USB installation media from bootable ISOs (Windows, Linux, UEFI, etc.)
- you need to work on a system that doesn"t have an OS installed
- you need to flash a BIOS or other firmware from DOS
- you want to run a low-level utility
Rufus 3.12.1710 changelog:
- Add optional SHA-512 digest algorithm (Alt-H)
- Add a cheat mode (Alt-+/-) to increase/decrease application priority
- Enable direct provision of install.wim/install.esd for Windows To Go
- Move Windows To Go ESP to the beginning of the drive, on systems that allow it
- Enforce a minimum volume size of 256 MB for ext2/ext3 partitions [#1576]
- Speed up the scanning of ISOs with lots of Rock Ridge deep directory entries [#1575]
- Fix detection of GRUB version and update embedded GRUB for Ubuntu 20.10 support [#1573, #1616]
- Fix user interface labels for accessibility [#1467]
- Work around a Windows bug where the wrong drive letter may be returned
Download: Rufus 3.12.1710| Portable Rufus 1.1 MB (Open Source)
Link: Rufus Home Page | Project Page @GitHub