Rufus (The Reliable USB Formatting Utility, with Source) is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

portable application A portable application (portable app), sometimes also called standalone, is a program designed to read and write its configuration settings into an accessible folder in the computer, usually in the folder where the portable application can be f ...

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

that can be used to format and create bootable

USB flash drives A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since first ...

Live USB A live USB is a portable USB-attached external data storage device containing a full operating system that can be booted from. The term is reminiscent of USB flash drives but may encompass an external hard disk drive or solid-state drive, thou ...

History

Rufus was originally designed as a modern

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

replacement for the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool for Windows, which was primarily used to create DOS bootable USB flash drives. The first official release of Rufus, version 1.0.3 (earlier versions were internal/alpha only), was released on December 04, 2011, with originally only

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

support. Version 1.0.4 introduced

FreeDOS FreeDOS (formerly Free-DOS and PD-DOS) is a free software operating system for IBM PC compatible computers. It intends to provide a complete MS-DOS-compatible environment for running Legacy system, legacy software and supporting embedded system ...

support and version 1.1.0 introduced

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

image support. Until 1.2.0, two separate versions were provided, with one for MS-DOS and one for FreeDOS.

UEFI UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a set of specifications written by the UEFI Forum. They define the architecture of the platform firmware used for booting and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples of ...

boot support was introduced with version 1.3.2,

localization Localization or localisation may refer to: Biology * Localization of function, locating psychological functions in the brain or nervous system; see Linguistic intelligence * Localization of sensation, ability to tell what part of the body is a ...

with 1.4.0 and

Windows To Go Windows To Go is a feature in Windows 8 Enterprise, Windows 8.1 Enterprise, Windows 10 Education and Windows 10 Enterprise versions prior to the May 2020 update, that allows the system to boot and run from certain USB mass storage devices such ...

with 2.0. The last version compatible with

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

and

Vista Vista usually refers to a distant view. Vista may also refer to: Software *Windows Vista, the line of Microsoft Windows client operating systems released in 2006 and 2007 * VistA, (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) ...

is 2.18.

Features

Rufus supports a variety of bootable

.iso An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. I ...

files, including various

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

s and Windows installation .iso files, as well as raw

disk image A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data storage device, such as a hard disk drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc, or USB flash drive. A disk image is us ...

files (including compressed ones). If needed, it will install a bootloader such as SYSLINUX or

GRUB Grub can refer to Grub (larva), of the beetle superfamily Scarabaeoidea, or as a slang term for food. It can also refer to: Places * Grub, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Switzerland * Grub, St. Gallen, Switzerland * Grub (Amerang), a hamlet in Bavaria, ...

onto the flash drive to render it bootable. It also allows the installation of

onto a flash drive as well as the creation of

bootable media. It supports formatting flash drives using

FAT In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers spec ...

FAT32 File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by c ...

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred fil ...

exFAT exFAT (Extensible File Allocation Table) is a file system introduced by Microsoft in 2006 and optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards. exFAT was proprietary until 28 August 2019, when Microsoft published its specificati ...

, UDF and

ReFS Resilient File System (ReFS), codenamed "Protogon", is a Microsoft proprietary file system introduced with Windows Server 2012 with the intent of becoming the "next generation" file system after NTFS. ReFS was designed to overcome problems tha ...

filesystems. Rufus can also be used to compute the MD5,

SHA-1 In cryptography, SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) is a cryptographically broken but still widely used hash function which takes an input and produces a 160-bit (20-byte) hash value known as a message digest – typically rendered as 40 hexadecima ...

and

SHA-256 SHA-2 (Secure Hash Algorithm 2) is a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and first published in 2001. They are built using the Merkle–Damgård construction, from a one-way compression ...

hashes of the currently selected image. Rufus is capable of downloading retail ISO DVD images of

Windows 8.1 Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pre ...

, various builds of

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

and

Windows 11 Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...

directly from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

's servers. This ISO download feature is available only if

PowerShell PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell (computing), shell and the associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it ...

3.0 or later is installed, and 'Check for updates' is enabled in the program's settings (on first usage, Rufus prompts the user whether they want to enable the update check or not).Rufus Security wiki page—Remote script execution
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References

External links

* {{Official website, https://rufus.ie/ Linux installation software Live USB Windows-only free software

History

Features

See also

References

External links