Rufus is a small utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc.
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
Despite its small size, Rufus provides everything you need!
Non exhaustive list of ISOs Rufus is known to work with:
Arch Linux, Archbang, BartPE/pebuilder, CentOS, Damn Small Linux, Fedora, FreeDOS, Gentoo, gNewSense, Hiren's Boot CD, LiveXP, Knoppix, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, NT Password Registry Editor, OpenSUSE, Parted Magic, Slackware, Tails, Trinity Rescue Kit, Ubuntu, Ultimate Boot CD, Windows XP (SP2 or later), Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, etc.
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. It is also marginally faster on the creation of Linux bootable USB from ISOs.
What's New
- Allow the provision of an arbitrary local account username in the Windows User Experience dialog
- Improve Windows version reporting from ISO/.wim
- Update UEFI:NTFS' NTFS drivers to v1.4 and exFAT drivers to v1.9
- Switch to remote download for nonstandard GRUB (Fedora 37, openSUSE Live, GeckoLinux)
- Fix UEFI:NTFS partition not being set in MBR mode for ISOs with a >4GB file (UwUntu)
- Fix GRUB support for Arch and derivatives, when a non FAT compliant label is used
- Fix incorrect detection of GRUB with nonstandard prefixes
- Fix tab order not working on the Windows User Experience dialog
