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Rufus vs MS Media Creation Tool - what's the difference?


Question

I don't know what links are allowed here so if you Google this question then find a superuser result then that page will tell you that there's no difference, then someone will talk about MBR & GPT saying there is a difference.

 

I had issues with the media creation tool which have since been resolved so I've actually made this twice & want to know the difference.

 

Windows .iso + Rufus turned an 8GB drive which shows as about 7.2GB in to one that had 1.something spare GB left on the drive.

 

I then used Microsoft Media Creation tool to create the bootable drive - same drive, the spare space on the drive after this process is 2.90GB.

 

Quite a difference & if it's just essentially doing the same thing then why such a difference?

 

For the record, if I go in to disk management right click the drive that is my C drive, go to properties then it says MBR.

 

However I wont be installing on this drive. I've just had a new drive delivered which I'll be installing on.

 

 

As for what I'm wanting to do - my system is a Windows 7 64bit Pro system. I'm wanting to upgrade to Windows 10, for free, but via clean install.

9 answers to this question

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Simple, retrieve your Windows key if you don't already know it, convert your boot drive to GPT so you can enable Secure Boot, use MCT to create Windows 10 x64 English UK bootable USB (takes up 4-5 GB):

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

 

For clean installing Windows 10 there's not going to be any difference (I have used Rufus before). Where did you get your ISO, maybe it was a Multi Edition Multi Language, and therefore bigger.

 

I also use a Windows 7 and 8 key to clean install Windows 10/11.

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Hello,

If you create UEFI-compatible installation media, Rufus will create a FAT32 partition at the beginning which in turn loads support for reading the NTFS file system formatted partition that contains the Windows installation files. 

The Microsoft-created installation media does not need to do this step as it natively has support for NTFS, so it does not need to create that stub bootloader, for lack of a better term.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

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On 05/10/2022 at 12:58, erpster3 said:

Rufus bigtime, especially for creating custom Win11 install media with cpu/tpm bypass & removing the ms account requirement on setup

The OP would better off the Media creation tool as he doing a clean install of Windows 10 Pro so none of that applies to his situation.

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On 05/10/2022 at 16:46, Som said:

I find ventoy to be way more convenient these days

https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

This. Use the media creation tool to download an ISO and drop it into the Ventoy drive. If you want to modify the image, you can do that still before copying over.

 

linuxmemes-g6z.jpg

 

 

 

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On 21/06/2022 at 11:16, Technique said:

As for what I'm wanting to do - my system is a Windows 7 64bit Pro system. I'm wanting to upgrade to Windows 10, for free, but via clean install.

MS is still allowing this? I thought that ticket was punched long time ago... unless you're using your genuine 7/8 key.

 

On 05/10/2022 at 11:58, erpster3 said:

Rufus bigtime, especially for creating custom Win11 install media with cpu/tpm bypass & removing the ms account requirement on setup

Maybe for the original 11 installation package, but I've tested the 22H2 ISO (latest release build ISO) and no matter what options I chose with Rufus, the installation on my FX5830 says:

"We cannot determine if this PC is compatible with Windows 11"

 

Meaning.. even though those options were selected in Rufus, there was something else in the ISO that bypassed the bypass. At least it did for me.

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Hello,

Microsoft seems to really want people to run supported versions of Windows in the consumer space, because having those old unsupported versions of Windows out there means systems with lowered security that can spread malware and attack other computers in the Windows ecosystem.

So, while they haven't made any official statement, it seems like they are still allowing Windows 7 and 8 users to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

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On 05/10/2022 at 18:38, Good Bot, Bad Bot said:

The OP would better off the Media creation tool as he doing a clean install of Windows 10 Pro so none of that applies to his situation.

Just showed up in my notifications.

Don't worry about it - I installed to Windows 10 long ago, probably before the 6 or so weeks it took for a reply to come in :)

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