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 3.15.1812 changelog:
- Update GRUB to version 2.06
- Add support for .vtsi files (Ventoy Sparse Image, courtesy of @ventoy)
- Add workaround for openSUSE Live ISOs
- Move default app directory to %LocalAppData%\Rufus\ and always save a log there on exit
- Fix AppStore version of Rufus not being able to store downloaded files [#1744]
- Fix failure to open Syslinux/GRUB files when Rufus is located at the root of a drive [#1747, #1761]
- Prevent the creation of System Volume Information on ESPs written in DD mode
- Prevent drive letter assignation to the UEFI:NTFS partition [pbatard/uefi-ntfs#25]
- Prevent persistent partition creation errors due to size
- Enhance safety checks before running the Fido ISO download script
- Other internal fixes and improvements [#1727, etc]
Download: Rufus 3.15.1812| Portable Rufus 1.1 MB (Open Source)
Link: Rufus Home Page | Project Page @GitHub