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 3.19 Beta changelog:
Add a new selection dialog for Windows 11 setup customization:
- Secure Boot and TPM bypass have now been moved to this dialog
- Also allows to bypass the mandatory requirement for a Microsoft account with Windows 11 22H2
- (NB: Network MUST be temporarily disabled or unplugged for the local account creation to be proposed)
- Also add an option to skip all collection questions (Sets all answers to "Don"t allow"/"Refuse")
- Also add an option for setting internal drives offline with Windows To Go
Note: These customization options are only proposed when using a Windows 11 image.
Other changes:
- Add support for distros using a nonstandard GRUB 2.0 prefix directory (openSUSE Live, GeckoLinux)
- Add the ability to ignore USBs (See here for details)
- Change drive listing to always list in increasing order of size
- Update exceptions needed by Red Hat and derivatives for latest versions
- Update UEFI:NTFS drivers to latest
- Reassign a letter for drives written in DD mode that don"t have an ESP (CoreELEC)
- Fix Windows refusing to mount Linux MBR partitions on FIXED drives
Download: Rufus 3.19 Beta | 1.3 MB (Open Source)
Link: Rufus Home Page | Project Page @GitHub