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 4.3.2090 changelog:
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Add support for symbolic link preservation when NTFS is used
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Add an exception to enforce NTFS for Linux Mint"s LMDE
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Add an expert feature to restrict a Windows installation to S Mode
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Fix persistence support for Debian 12 in BIOS mode
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Fix a regression that prevented the opening of .vhd images (#2309)
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Update UEFI:NTFS to report a more explicit error on bootmgr security issues
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Improve the search for conflicting processes, by running it in a background thread
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Improve support for Slax Linux (#2336)
Download: Rufus 4.3 | Portable 1.3 MB (Open Source)
Download: Rufus 32-bit | ARM64 1.4 MB (Open Source)
Link: Rufus Home Page | Project Page @GitHub