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 3.16 changelog:
- Fix ISO mode support for Red Hat 8.2+ and derivatives [#1777]
- Fix BIOS boot support for Arch derivatives
- Fix removal of some boot entries for Ubuntu derivatives
- Fix log not being saved on exit
- Add Windows 11 "Extended" installation support (Disables TPM/Secure Boot/RAM requirements)
- Add UEFI Shell ISO downloads (retroactively applied through FIDO)
- Add support for Intel NUC card readers
- Improve Windows 11 support [#1779]
- Improve Windows version reporting
- Speed up clearing of MBR/GPT
Download: Rufus 3.16 | Portable 1.1 MB (Open Source)
Link: Rufus Home Page | Project Page @GitHub