Creating bootable USB drives the easy way

Description

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 be especially useful for cases where:

• you need to create USB installation media from bootable ISOs (Windows, Linux, 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!

Oh, and Rufus is fast. For instance it's about twice as fast as UNetbootin , Universal USB Installer  orWindows 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 USB from ISOs ⁽¹⁾.
A non exhaustive list of Rufus supported ISOs is also provided at the bottom of this page ⁽²⁾.

Finally, please remember that once formatted, your drive is still usable as before to transfer data: it doesn't have to be dedicated for DOS or ISO installation only.

Download

From version 1.2.0, a single version of Rufus is provided, that includes FreeDOS  support.

If you create a DOS bootable drive and use a non-US keyboard, Rufus will attempt to select a keyboard layout according to the locale of your system. In that case, FreeDOS, which is the default selection, is recommended over MS-DOS as it supports more keyboard layouts.

Once downloaded, the application is ready to use — no installation or other files are necessary.

System Requirements

Windows XP or later, 32 or 64 bit doesn't matter.
If elevation is required, you will be prompted for it.

Usage

Download the executable and run it - no installation is necessary.

The executable is digitally signed and is produced in a 100% transparent manner, from its public source , using a MinGW32  environment.
The signature should state "Pete Batard - Open Source Developer".

ISO Support

The current version of Rufus allows the creation of a bootable USB from an ISO image  (.iso). In a future version, we may add the ability to read files directly from a CD/DVD drive or from a folder...

Creating an ISO image from a physical disc or from a set of files is very easy to do however, through the use of a CD burning application, such as the freely available CDBurnerXP .

License

GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 or later.
You are free to distribute, modify or even sell the software, insofar as you respect the GPLv3 license.

Feedback, Bugs or Enhancement Requests

Please use the github issue tracker . Or you can send an e-mail.

Versions

• Version 1.2.0 (2012.06.04):
  • Single version of Rufus, with FreeDOS embedded
  • Add a toggleable advanced options panel
  • Add taskbar progress (Windows 7 or later)
  • Integrate logging output in the application
  • Add bare Syslinux installation for (FAT partitions only)
  • Fixes unavailable boot option with empty card readers (reported by TheHive)
  • Works around the use of non-ISO compliant LiveXP images (reported by TheHive)
  • Various other bugfixes and improvements
• Version 1.1.7 (2012.04.06):
  • Fixes wrong bootable disk ID introduced in 1.1.6 (reported by Jeff Byers)
  • Fixes support for minint WinPE 1.x images
• Version 1.1.6 (2012.03.27):
  • Add ISO support for Windows XP (SP2 or later), Windows 2003 and BartPE
• Version 1.1.5 (2012.03.12):
  • Fixes detection of devices without friendly name (reported by rschiang)
  • Fixes support of WinPE/AIK ISO images (reported by Dmitry Sokolov)
  • Fixes no disk at launch with empty card readers (reported by ChrisR
  • Add download of vesamenu.c32 for ISOs that need it
• Version 1.1.4 (2012.03.03):
  • Fixes ISO support for directories with extended characters (reported by ChrisR)
  • Fixes bad blocks test issues (reported by steve6375)
  • Read extended labels from autorun.inf when present
  • Update FreeDOS files to latest versions
• Version 1.1.3 (2012.02.24):
  • Fixes an issue on XP when using Windows ISOs (reported by wimb)
  • Disable listing of fixed drives (eg. HDDs)
  • Add 'fake' USB drive detection during bad blocks check
• Version 1.1.2 (2012.02.22):
  • Fixes ISO support for Fedora, openSUSE and Hiren's Boot CD
  • Add icon and extended/international label support
• Version 1.1.1 (2012.02.16):
  • ISO image support (syslinux) - targeted at Linux installation ISOs
  • ISO fixes and UI improvements
• Version 1.1.0 Beta (2012.02.08):
  • ISO image support (NTFS, bootmgr only - targeted at Windows installation ISOs)
• Version 1.0.7 (2012.02.02):
  • Fixes a detection issue on platforms with multiple optical drives  (with thanks to ElGaton)
  • Add number of passes for bad blocks check
  • Improved locale selection for FreeDOS
• Version 1.0.6 (2012.01.03):
  • Log report when bad blocks are found
• Version 1.0.5 (2011.12.25):
  • Keyboard layout detection & support
• Version 1.0.4 (2011.12.16):
  • FreeDOS support
• Version 1.0.3 (2011.12.12):
  • First public release
  • Progress status improvements
  • Filtering of invalid cluster sizes
  • Disable Autoplay on Vista and later while the application is running
• Version 1.0.2 (2011.12.06):
  • Beta release
  • Support for bad blocks check
• Version 1.0.1 (2011.12.04):
  • Alpha release