Rufus — The Complete Guide: Make a Bootable USB Drive from an ISO in Minutes
Rufus, by Pete Batard, is a small Windows tool that formats a USB stick and prepares it to boot from an ISO file. It runs without installation, supports UEFI and legacy BIOS, and is released as open source (GPL-3.0) for any use. The official website shows ads; the program itself does not.
Rufus
Pete Batard
Creates bootable USB drives from Windows or Linux ISO images, in a small program that runs without installation.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Clean Windows install — an install drive for a workstation that needs a fresh start.
- Linux distributions — a live drive to try a system on an old PC.
- Rescue drive — run diagnostic tools when a computer will not start.
- DOS for firmware — BIOS or firmware updates that need a DOS environment.
- UEFI and BIOS — choose the partition scheme and target system to match the computer.
Before you press Start
Rufus erases the entire contents of the selected drive. Copy any important file off the USB stick first, and check twice in the list that the right drive is selected — not an external backup disk that happens to be plugged in. Each run writes one system only, and Rufus exists for Windows only.
Related tools
For one drive that holds several ISO files at once — Ventoy. To write an image from macOS or Linux, or to an SD card — balenaEtcher. To manage partitions from a live drive — GParted.
Ventoy
longpanda (Ventoy project)
One USB drive that boots many ISO files: copy the images to the drive and pick one from a menu, with no reformatting.
Get it from the vendor
balenaEtcher
balena
Flashes OS images to USB drives and SD cards in three steps, with write verification and system drives hidden.
Get it from the vendor
GParted
GParted project (GNOME)
A graphical partition editor to create, resize, move and copy partitions, also as a live system booted from USB on any PC.
Get it from the vendor
Clonezilla
NCHC Free Software Labs
Disk and partition imaging and cloning from boot media, including deployment to dozens of machines at once over a network.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
The standard Windows tool for making an install drive: fast, small and reliable. Just double-check which drive is selected.