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Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

589 points by quyleanh 5y ago

senectus1 5y ago
yup. a staple for the toolkit.
imperialdrive 5y ago
Just used it today due to Microsoft removing their Windows USB utility. Lifesaver.
- AmVess 5y ago
  The Windows 10 downloader makes a bootable USB as an option. Certainly not useful for early versions of Windows, but works fine for W10.
  - Tsiklon 5y ago
    I had a big problem with it last week when creating a 20H2 installation USB, it created a FAT32 disk instead of a NTFS disk. Unfortunately install.wim on that image is bigger than the FAT32 max file size. Meaning that while the USB booted in the system, the installation was not possible. Of course the installer doesn’t keep the disk image it downloads to make the usb, so it’s another 5-6G download to try again - this may be problematic for people on limited bandwidth connections. Personally I just created an NTFS partition on my USB drive and copied the contents of another windows iso over to it.
invokestatic 5y ago
I've had issues with most bootable USB creation tools, including Rufus, particularly with CentOS (even though it's listed as known working!). I'm not sure whose fault this is, really. I think the problem is that the tools just try to be too "smart" instead of simply dd-ing the bytes over. The best tool I've found for this on Windows is Rawrite32.
- AmVess 5y ago
  Rufus has issues with some early UEFI implementations and may not work at all. I haven't had a problem with current hardware, however.
  - samplatt 5y ago
    The early UEFI days were just a headache for everyone involved, really.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Same, although unetbootin in has been the most reliable for me.
pronoiac 5y ago
Note: it's Windows only.
graton 5y ago
Another similar/related project is: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing that is extremely helpful.
- jz9yu616 5y ago
  This is built on top of Ventoy https://gbatemp.net/threads/medicat-usb-a-multiboot-linux-usb-for-pc-repair.361577/ https://gbatemp.net/threads/medicat-usb-a-multiboot-linux-us...
  - vxNsr 5y ago
    I saw a comment in there about how files will get deleted by over zealous av's when you plug it into a live system, I didn't feel like reading through 60 pages of comments to see if someone solved that issue but I was wondering if you have any suggestions for preventing that.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - jabroni_salad 5y ago
      Delete the tools that are meant to compromise a computer. If you are the sysadmin, put the target computer in a policy group that doesn't include live scanning temporarily. There are also USB drives you can get that have a write protection switch, but that doesn't mean you will be allowed to actually run the software.
  - smusamashah 5y ago
    Reminds of Hiren boot cd
- ehsankia 5y ago
  Ventoy is AWESOME. No more continuously formatting your drive for every ISO you want. You just copy your ISOs on and off the drive and they all just work.
runlevel1 5y ago
In case others have the same question I did: Only supports Windows, no Linux or macOS support planned.[1] [1]: https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#do-you-plan-to-port-rufus-to-linuxmac-ossome-other-os https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#do-you-plan-to-por... EDIT: running on, not creation of boot volumes for
- gruez 5y ago
  You shouldn't need it on linux because you can just use dd
  - shassard 5y ago
    or cp ... cp my.iso /dev/sdc
    - abrowne 5y ago
      The Debian manual agrees to use `cp` and then to run `sync` to make sure all data is really written to the disk. I've been doing this for a year or two now with no issues, even from a Mac.
spijdar 5y ago
With the disclaimer than I'm primarily a Linux user and may be missing something from Microsoft, isn't it weird that there are no tools for this functionality that come with Windows? I've tried a few times through the life of Windows 10 to make installer USB drives from inside Win10 with only microsoft tools but never found anything that worked. Rufus comes through for me again and again, but why do we need to download a 3rd party tool for even basic configs? Nothing fancy, just a windows installer on USB.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  It's not weird at all given the target audience of windows. 99.9999% of windows user don't need this, so why include it ?
  - spacemanmatt 5y ago
    Because the small percent of users that do need it serve many other Windows users. Seems sorta obvious that SOMEone needs the functionality.
    - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
      People that have this need have the skill to install the required tool.
      - spacemanmatt 5y ago
        That's why we're here talking about Rufus. I'm not sure what you were getting at but thank you for demonstrating my point.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Microsoft provide a fantastic program for creating Windows boot disks that "just works" (Media Creation Tool), and have done so for years. It doesn't support Linux images, though, for reasons that should be obvious.
odyslam 5y ago
I have always used Etcher[0] and I love it. [0] https://www.balena.io/etcher/ https://www.balena.io/etcher/
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Nice, how does the reliability compare to unetbootin ?
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  I get great mileage out of Etcher but I need Rufus to make a USB boot to Windows install.
- Lammy 5y ago
  I tried this once but was annoyed at it being an Electron app, and sure enough it has analytics that spy on your usage by default including "information about the type of SD cards and USB drives": https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/collected-data/#balenaetcher https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/collected-data/#balena...
  - ______- 5y ago
    Then flash it on an OS that's not connected to the Internet? That's what I do anyway. For some that's a pain, but over time I learned to have an OS that's airgapped for privacy reasons.
    - Lammy 5y ago
      Obviously it’s not the end of the world for technical people who are in the habit of looking inside all new applications’ settings and reading their privacy policies, but it means I could never recommend this app to anyone in good conscience knowing they will probably skip all of that and get spied on.
- cosmotic 5y ago
  Etcher is easy to use but why on earth did they decide to make it an electron app?
user3939382 5y ago
It’s weird that it’s 2021 and when I have to go do a bare metal OS install I still make sure I have a DVD burner/drive because I can’t 100% rely on installing from USB.
- ToFab123 5y ago
  Why can't you rely on installing ftom USB. It is many years, and many baremetal installs, since I had had access to a DVD drive. Curious about what kind of issues you are having with installing ftom USB
  - rstat1 5y ago
    I can 2nd that. Maybe its just that I buy low quality USB drives, but I sometimes have go through the process a few times with different drives before getting one that actually works. Its a lot less hit or miss with Windows ISOs, but Linux ones can be VERY finicky.
    - user3939382 5y ago
      People downvoted me but this was kind of my point. USB drives do usually work, but I still have experiences however rare, that a particular server and USB combination is not working so when there are situations that I have to travel somewhere and be 100% certain that an OS install is going to be possible I still feel the need to have an optical drive.
- Tsiklon 5y ago
  Any new system I’ve used since about 2011 has been able to boot reliably from USB. The only issues really come down to how the thumb drive is prepared. Usually `dd` is good enough for Linux/Unix disk images, and preparing an exFAT/NTFS thumb drive (your mileage may vary on whether exFAT is supported on your system) and copying the contents over with `rsync` works good for windows 7+ images
AcerbicZero 5y ago
This has been my go to for years now. It’s especially useful whenever a friend or family member hits me up with a “computer question” that inevitably leads to “let’s just reinstall whatever you had before” and I just need something quick that works.
- gumby 5y ago
  How do ordinary people manage bung up their systems so badly that the thing to do is reinstall the whole thing? And this happens often enough that it’s worth carrying around a tool to do this? I thought that by now systems would be adequately armoured against this.
  - chihuahua 5y ago
    Usually there is a recovery partition, and Windows 10 has a built-in function for a refresh/reinstall from the recovery partition. No USB drive needed. I did this recently over the phone for a relative's computer, but I forgot the exact name of this feature in the settings/control panel. In my case, it was necessary because the computer had not been used for months and was unable to connect to various websites, perhaps due to an out-of-date certificate. Rather than troubleshoot the issue, it was easier to just do the refresh.
    - cricalix 5y ago
      "Reset this PC" is one possibility that you're thinking of. Has options for saving or deleting all user-dir files, (afaik) always removes installed applications. Can also fully format the disk, and pull a clean copy of the installer from the 'net.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    Within the last year on the same system I've had both windows 10 and a linux install commit suicide via update with no particularly special conditions. I later figured out what happened with the linux system only after some frustration and paving over it. It was a defect in a distro provided config file that resulted in the initramfs not having the proper support for the filesystem. With windows no automated repair could fix it and the whole system is so opaque that I will probably never know what happened other than it works after reinstall. Even if nothing ever goes wrong you will eventually need to install to a new system and usb drives are incredibly cheap with a 64GB USB 3.1 weighing in at all of $8-$12. You needn't carry it around just stick it in a desk drawer.
sdlion 5y ago
Windows images that are over 4.3GB(I don't remember the exact max size) most image burning tools will fallback to NTFS on the USB formatting and some motherboards/laptops don't like this. (Even on my rather modern Dell laptop) The best solution so far I've found is to manually partition the USB into a 1GB FAT32 partition and the rest NTFS. Then you extract the files where needed [0] I learned this method just last year but it seems it's pretty universal. At least for Win10 ISOs. And I don't have to boot Windows and wait for its updates! [0] https://techbit.ca/2019/02/creating-a-bootable-windows-10-uefi-usb-drive-using-linux/ https://techbit.ca/2019/02/creating-a-bootable-windows-10-ue...
- pxeboot 5y ago
  That seems far more complicated than just using DISM, PowerShell or wimlib (on Linux or Windows) to split the install.wim file into two parts, which I believe older versions of Rufus (or a similar utility) offered to do. https://wimlib.net/man1/wimsplit.html https://wimlib.net/man1/wimsplit.html
  - jevinskie 5y ago
    Yep, wimlib is the portable magic that makes FAT32/4GB a non-issue. It is still annoying to have to use Windows to run NTLite. ;) https://evanshortiss.com/create-a-windows-install-usb-via-macos https://evanshortiss.com/create-a-windows-install-usb-via-ma...
  - vxNsr 5y ago
    Or use ventoy and never worry about large files again.
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  I'm as big a Rufus fan as anyone, but for Windows 10 why wouldn't I just use Microsoft's boot image creator? That's what I've done lately, and it works every time with no fuss. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Edit: I just remembered that you might not be on a Windows device, in which case you may well want to download the ISO and use Rufus to make a bootable stick from it.
eitland 5y ago
Lately all my usb thumb drives have been overheating when using any tool so last time I ended up using an external hard drive after burning through a number of thumb drives. Anyone has an idea how to artificially limit write speed besides running it over a USB 1 hub?
- wincy 5y ago
  This happened to me until I bought a $35 Samsung usb-c drive that’s got a metal enclosure. Stopped overheating.
MarkSweep 5y ago
Rufus is great for writing Windows ISOs to thumb drives. Sometimes it tries to be too smart though. In particular I had trouble writing a SmartOS disk image successfully. I tried writing something[1] that would be a little smarter than Win32 Disk Imager. That is, it will adjust EFI partition labeling. Otherwise it will just write the image. After some experimentation that is what was needed to get a SmartOS disk image to boot on my old laptop. It sounds obvious in retrospect, but you can’t use something like dd to write invalid disk partitioning data and expect it to boot. EFI expects there to be a header at the beginning and end of the disk. Furthermore, I can’t try to “optimize” my disk image writer by skipping zeroed sectors and expect everything to work out fine. Without knowledge of the file system format, leaving sectors uncleared causes all kinds of fun data corruption. [1]: https://github.com/AustinWise/SimpleDiskImager https://github.com/AustinWise/SimpleDiskImager
unixhero 5y ago
For Linux usb writing from Windows, I have had great success for many years with Lili https://www.linuxliveusb.com/ https://www.linuxliveusb.com/
SkyMarshal 5y ago
Easy2Boot is another good one. Creates USB boot disks with multiple OS ISOs on and boot into any of them. It’s no longer being updated, but still works, just used it this week. https://www.easy2boot.com/ https://www.easy2boot.com/ The only caveat is you need to make sure each ISO is stored on the USB in a contiguous file, since it tricks the host machine into thinking each ISO is separate partition. It includes a .cmd script for doing this on Windows, or on Linux you can use `rsync —preallocate` to copy the ISOs continuously.
- vxNsr 5y ago
  Why do you say it's no longer being updated? Looks like he last posted 3/30/21. He's actually great, when he's online he has a chat option on his website and he'll help you with any questions you have, I somehow screwed up an E2B MBR and he very graciously walked me through fixing it.
  - SkyMarshal 5y ago
    Hmm, I could have sworn I saw a comment somewhere on the site that it’s no longer in development, but can’t find it now, maybe I just hallucinated it. Good to know it’s still going then!
radium3d 5y ago
Rufus has been my go-to for maybe decades now? It's one of those software that I keep a copy of in cold storage for the apocalypse.
floatingatoll 5y ago
I enjoyed reading the FAQ tonight, thanks for sharing this.
sam0x17 5y ago
I find it amusing if not a bit sad that the best utility for making bootable Linux flash drives is currently on Windows instead of Linux. The current state of making bootable USB drives on linux is actually quite crappy. UNetbootin used to be a good option but has stopped working on a lot of distros. Etcher.io worked great for a while, but has also stopped working for most situations. The built-in disk image creator in ubuntu flavors works, but only for certain situations. But at least good ole Rufus works :) Wish we could get something like Rufus (or even better, YUMMI) working perfectly on Linux
- FnuGk 5y ago
  What is wrong with just using dd?
  - mrwm 5y ago
    To tag on, what's wrong with plain ol' cat or cp?
    - ggm 5y ago
      dd can do seek, skip, re-block. It's unusual to need the features but they exist for good reasons. I used dd to transfer 4.1BSD release tapes to a vax 11/720 via rl02 10meg pack and reconstruct the chunks on the receive side, long ago.
      - ok123456 5y ago
        ddrescue will do this for you automatically to recover from a bad block.
  - ball_of_lint 5y ago
    Not everyone is comfortable using the command line or even knows that dd exists.
    - sam0x17 5y ago
mrjin 5y ago
Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
- mft_ 5y ago
  FWIW I couldn’t get Ventoy working a while back, from MacOS, trying to boot to a Windows ISO for a bootcamp installation. That said, fully appreciate this is a tricky endeavour at the best of times!
  - pnutjam 5y ago
    The windows installer iso never works. You have to build a bootable PE environment and then have a folder with the install files to run.
- yarcob 5y ago
  Holy whackamoly! Booting directly from .iso files on a thumb drive? What kind of black magic is that? This is the neatest thing I've seen on HN since the actually portable executable!
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    as stated elsewhere, the magic is that grub is able to directly boot a iso.
  - jtriangle 5y ago
    Not just iso files, it'll boot vhd's as well.
    - icelancer 5y ago
      This is the real insane feature for me. Wow.
deknos 5y ago
what's the equivalent (especially handling bios and uefi and stuff) on linux for it? i would be really interested.
- numlock86 5y ago
  same tools really ... stuff like syslinux is included, and for "flashing" you could just use dd.
  - wodny 5y ago
    And it's also worth noting that eg. Debian has been providing hybrid images for years. Hybrid meaning you can write them directly to block device like USB drive or burn on CD. They exploit the fact that ISO images have first blocks empty and unused so you can put a classic MBR boot loader there.
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  Surprisingly there isn't, though a port is often requested. (Nevertheless there're similar tools with either too many or less/none options.) But considering what it offers can be attained with dd+mkfs maybe a Rufus-like program can be hacked with aforementioned tools, some bash, and yad...
willis936 5y ago
Rufus is nice and all, but these days I want a dozen different OS installs and live cds on not-a-dozen thumb drives. YUMI is my one-stop shop.
mlvljr 5y ago
I think this was the tool that was happily reporting copying my files over to a USB stick despite there being copying errors (for which it didn't check, apparently). Left me puzzled with regard to why copying over a new image still led to the older one booting for a while. Switching to a different USB slot (2 VS 3) solved it, iirc (and I think I never used Rufus again).
fomine3 5y ago
In my experience, nowadays just format as FAT32 and copy all files is fine for most situation, thanks to UEFI.
nemetroid 5y ago
I recently had to create a bootable USB drive, and tried following the instructions on the Arch wiki[1] to just use coreutils: # cat path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso > /dev/sdx or # dd bs=4M if=path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdx conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress However, this was ridiculously slow. I waited a long time for cat, but not long enough to figure out if it would ever finish. dd reported speeds of less than half a MB/s, gnome-disk-utility was about eight times faster. I wonder if a different set of options to dd would have given better results. From what I can tell, gnome-disk-utility is just open() and write() (with suitable flags) in the end. 1: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB_flash_installation_medium#Using_basic_command_line_utilities https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB_flash_installation_medi...
- MayeulC 5y ago
  You sometimes have to use a bit of guesswork to find the best `bs` value, 8M is usually faster IME. I think gnome-disk benchmarks it? Now, you could also do without fsync, and call `sync` at the end, it could be faster.
puzzlingcaptcha 5y ago
Rufus also has the nifty and often overlooked ability to create VHD images from drives. https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Saving_an_existing_drive_to_VHD https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Saving_an_existing...
fctorial 5y ago
Unless you're trying to flash some decade old operating system 'dd' should do the job. I haven't seen a non hybrid iso in years.
amelius 5y ago
Does anyone know of a reliable way to install Ubuntu on a USB disk? (I don't mean Ubuntu Live, I'm talking about a full-fledged install which works on BIOSes that are picky about things like EFI).
polyterative 5y ago
balena etcher is also nice and easy https://www.balena.io/etcher/ https://www.balena.io/etcher/
znedw 5y ago
DriveDroid (https://www.drivedroid.io https://www.drivedroid.io) is pretty good for this sorta thing
pnutjam 5y ago
I like the idea of bootable usb, but 9 times out of 10 it's easier for me to do a PXE boot to an iso. I have a linux computer setup to provide the PXE boot stuff in my lab. I used to have a vmware player image that would run pxe boot on a 2nd nic I put in my laptop (USB), but it's been awhile since I've needed to do that.
- pastage 5y ago
  PXE is great but it needs infrstructure that I usually do not have available. I use netinstall from grub instead.
croutonwagon 5y ago
Rufus has only ever given me a problem once....It failed to format tails on a cruzer micro. Anytime that USB drive was stuck in a computer on boot it would be able to half boot tails. I ended up having to use dd to wipe it and all was good.
birriel 5y ago
Rufus is really neat. However, for writing distro images, the dd command is my favorite. Per the Arch Wiki: dd bs=4M if=path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdx conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress
- chociej 5y ago
  Lazy mode: # <image.iso >/dev/sdx; sync
  - Hello71 5y ago
    this is a zsh-ism. on bash it will have no effect.
    - chociej 5y ago
      TIL. Thanks for the pointer!
ball_of_lint 5y ago
From personal experience, Rufus is an excellent project with a responsive and helpful owner/maintainer. I once had an issue using it with a certain computer + SD card adapter combination. I posted some logs and they responded within a few days with a fix. Thank you pbatard!
mynameisvlad 5y ago
I have been running https://netboot.xyz/ https://netboot.xyz/ from a docker container for years and don't look back. I even set it up to have local copies of the distros I most install, so it picks it up from a local server instead of downloading a fresh copy each time.
throwaway8581 5y ago
Do not use Rufus to make Windows 10 install media. Rufus sucks for this purpose. It uses a weird partition scheme and custom bootloader that doesn't work with secure boot. You don't need any of this shit. Partition the drive as NTFS, mark the partition as active through Disk Management, and simply copy and paste the contents of the iso into the drive. For maximum compatibility, just use FAT32 instead of NTFS. The official images will fit in a FAT32 volume. If you have a custom image that's more than the 4GB max file size of FAT32, and your device doesn't support ntfs or exfat, then you can use a single command to split the wim file into multiple chunks as explained here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/install-windows-from-a-usb-flash-drive https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur...
- GranPC 5y ago
  > The official images will fit in a FAT32 volume. Some official Windows 10 images, as of a few years ago, no longer fit on FAT32 volumes and need to be split. The official Microsoft tool does not work on Linux, so I use WoeUSB for that, which in my experience has worked fine with Secure Boot.
- system2 5y ago
  For simple windows installation isn't official Microsoft Media Creation Tool enough anyways? Rufus is a great tool to install ESXi, linux variants and other custom ISOs.
  - bwat49 5y ago
    for some reason I can never get the media creation tool to work, it always downloads the ISO and then fails to write it to the USB with some ridiculously vague error code. rufus on the other hand always works without issue
- Bancakes 5y ago
  Weird, for me Etcher doesn't make proper Windows bootables, and Rufus works flawlessly.
- x86ARMsRace 5y ago
SLWW 5y ago
Been using Rufus about 13 times today, it gets the job done. I like it
in9 5y ago
why is creating a bootable USB stick so hard? By the look of the comments it's not something that tools can do reliably. How can I learn more about these types of issues? Booting an OS in general, that is.
mcdevilkiller 5y ago
Rufus is so good. If you have your ISO downloaded and your media plugged in, it takes 6 clicks and 10 seconds to start writing to the bootable device. So easy and simple, and it works with everything.
breakfastquark 5y ago
For anyone complaining that there is no nice GUI for dd on Linux and macOS, I recently discovered Fedora Media Writer [1] which works great for this job. Despite it’s name, it can be used with any ISO just like dd. [1] https://github.com/FedoraQt/MediaWriter https://github.com/FedoraQt/MediaWriter
plgonzalezrx8 5y ago
I used Rufus for the longest time until I moved to Balena Etcher. IMO Its a better utility.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
more recent Rufus discussion from a posting only 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25341341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25341341

589 points by quyleanh 5y ago

senectus1 5y ago

yup. a staple for the toolkit.

imperialdrive 5y ago

Just used it today due to Microsoft removing their Windows USB utility. Lifesaver.

AmVess 5y ago
The Windows 10 downloader makes a bootable USB as an option. Certainly not useful for early versions of Windows, but works fine for W10.
- Tsiklon 5y ago
  I had a big problem with it last week when creating a 20H2 installation USB, it created a FAT32 disk instead of a NTFS disk. Unfortunately install.wim on that image is bigger than the FAT32 max file size. Meaning that while the USB booted in the system, the installation was not possible. Of course the installer doesn’t keep the disk image it downloads to make the usb, so it’s another 5-6G download to try again - this may be problematic for people on limited bandwidth connections. Personally I just created an NTFS partition on my USB drive and copied the contents of another windows iso over to it.

invokestatic 5y ago

I've had issues with most bootable USB creation tools, including Rufus, particularly with CentOS (even though it's listed as known working!). I'm not sure whose fault this is, really. I think the problem is that the tools just try to be too "smart" instead of simply dd-ing the bytes over. The best tool I've found for this on Windows is Rawrite32.

AmVess 5y ago
Rufus has issues with some early UEFI implementations and may not work at all. I haven't had a problem with current hardware, however.
- samplatt 5y ago
  The early UEFI days were just a headache for everyone involved, really.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Same, although unetbootin in has been the most reliable for me.

pronoiac 5y ago

Note: it's Windows only.

graton 5y ago

Another similar/related project is: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

michaelmrose 5y ago
Thanks for sharing that is extremely helpful.
jz9yu616 5y ago
This is built on top of Ventoy https://gbatemp.net/threads/medicat-usb-a-multiboot-linux-usb-for-pc-repair.361577/ https://gbatemp.net/threads/medicat-usb-a-multiboot-linux-us...
- vxNsr 5y ago
  I saw a comment in there about how files will get deleted by over zealous av's when you plug it into a live system, I didn't feel like reading through 60 pages of comments to see if someone solved that issue but I was wondering if you have any suggestions for preventing that.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jabroni_salad 5y ago
    Delete the tools that are meant to compromise a computer. If you are the sysadmin, put the target computer in a policy group that doesn't include live scanning temporarily. There are also USB drives you can get that have a write protection switch, but that doesn't mean you will be allowed to actually run the software.
- smusamashah 5y ago
  Reminds of Hiren boot cd
ehsankia 5y ago
Ventoy is AWESOME. No more continuously formatting your drive for every ISO you want. You just copy your ISOs on and off the drive and they all just work.

runlevel1 5y ago

In case others have the same question I did: Only supports Windows, no Linux or macOS support planned.[1] [1]: https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#do-you-plan-to-port-rufus-to-linuxmac-ossome-other-os https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#do-you-plan-to-por... EDIT: running on, not creation of boot volumes for

gruez 5y ago
You shouldn't need it on linux because you can just use dd
- shassard 5y ago
  or cp ... cp my.iso /dev/sdc
  - abrowne 5y ago
    The Debian manual agrees to use `cp` and then to run `sync` to make sure all data is really written to the disk. I've been doing this for a year or two now with no issues, even from a Mac.

spijdar 5y ago

With the disclaimer than I'm primarily a Linux user and may be missing something from Microsoft, isn't it weird that there are no tools for this functionality that come with Windows? I've tried a few times through the life of Windows 10 to make installer USB drives from inside Win10 with only microsoft tools but never found anything that worked. Rufus comes through for me again and again, but why do we need to download a 3rd party tool for even basic configs? Nothing fancy, just a windows installer on USB.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
It's not weird at all given the target audience of windows. 99.9999% of windows user don't need this, so why include it ?
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  Because the small percent of users that do need it serve many other Windows users. Seems sorta obvious that SOMEone needs the functionality.
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    People that have this need have the skill to install the required tool.
    - spacemanmatt 5y ago
      That's why we're here talking about Rufus. I'm not sure what you were getting at but thank you for demonstrating my point.
AussieWog93 5y ago
Microsoft provide a fantastic program for creating Windows boot disks that "just works" (Media Creation Tool), and have done so for years. It doesn't support Linux images, though, for reasons that should be obvious.

odyslam 5y ago

I have always used Etcher[0] and I love it. [0] https://www.balena.io/etcher/ https://www.balena.io/etcher/

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Nice, how does the reliability compare to unetbootin ?
spacemanmatt 5y ago
I get great mileage out of Etcher but I need Rufus to make a USB boot to Windows install.
Lammy 5y ago
I tried this once but was annoyed at it being an Electron app, and sure enough it has analytics that spy on your usage by default including "information about the type of SD cards and USB drives": https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/collected-data/#balenaetcher https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/collected-data/#balena...
- ______- 5y ago
  Then flash it on an OS that's not connected to the Internet? That's what I do anyway. For some that's a pain, but over time I learned to have an OS that's airgapped for privacy reasons.
  - Lammy 5y ago
    Obviously it’s not the end of the world for technical people who are in the habit of looking inside all new applications’ settings and reading their privacy policies, but it means I could never recommend this app to anyone in good conscience knowing they will probably skip all of that and get spied on.
cosmotic 5y ago
Etcher is easy to use but why on earth did they decide to make it an electron app?

user3939382 5y ago

It’s weird that it’s 2021 and when I have to go do a bare metal OS install I still make sure I have a DVD burner/drive because I can’t 100% rely on installing from USB.

ToFab123 5y ago
Why can't you rely on installing ftom USB. It is many years, and many baremetal installs, since I had had access to a DVD drive. Curious about what kind of issues you are having with installing ftom USB
- rstat1 5y ago
  I can 2nd that. Maybe its just that I buy low quality USB drives, but I sometimes have go through the process a few times with different drives before getting one that actually works. Its a lot less hit or miss with Windows ISOs, but Linux ones can be VERY finicky.
  - user3939382 5y ago
    People downvoted me but this was kind of my point. USB drives do usually work, but I still have experiences however rare, that a particular server and USB combination is not working so when there are situations that I have to travel somewhere and be 100% certain that an OS install is going to be possible I still feel the need to have an optical drive.
Tsiklon 5y ago
Any new system I’ve used since about 2011 has been able to boot reliably from USB. The only issues really come down to how the thumb drive is prepared. Usually `dd` is good enough for Linux/Unix disk images, and preparing an exFAT/NTFS thumb drive (your mileage may vary on whether exFAT is supported on your system) and copying the contents over with `rsync` works good for windows 7+ images

AcerbicZero 5y ago

This has been my go to for years now. It’s especially useful whenever a friend or family member hits me up with a “computer question” that inevitably leads to “let’s just reinstall whatever you had before” and I just need something quick that works.

gumby 5y ago
How do ordinary people manage bung up their systems so badly that the thing to do is reinstall the whole thing? And this happens often enough that it’s worth carrying around a tool to do this? I thought that by now systems would be adequately armoured against this.
- chihuahua 5y ago
  Usually there is a recovery partition, and Windows 10 has a built-in function for a refresh/reinstall from the recovery partition. No USB drive needed. I did this recently over the phone for a relative's computer, but I forgot the exact name of this feature in the settings/control panel. In my case, it was necessary because the computer had not been used for months and was unable to connect to various websites, perhaps due to an out-of-date certificate. Rather than troubleshoot the issue, it was easier to just do the refresh.
  - cricalix 5y ago
    "Reset this PC" is one possibility that you're thinking of. Has options for saving or deleting all user-dir files, (afaik) always removes installed applications. Can also fully format the disk, and pull a clean copy of the installer from the 'net.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Within the last year on the same system I've had both windows 10 and a linux install commit suicide via update with no particularly special conditions. I later figured out what happened with the linux system only after some frustration and paving over it. It was a defect in a distro provided config file that resulted in the initramfs not having the proper support for the filesystem. With windows no automated repair could fix it and the whole system is so opaque that I will probably never know what happened other than it works after reinstall. Even if nothing ever goes wrong you will eventually need to install to a new system and usb drives are incredibly cheap with a 64GB USB 3.1 weighing in at all of $8-$12. You needn't carry it around just stick it in a desk drawer.

sdlion 5y ago

Windows images that are over 4.3GB(I don't remember the exact max size) most image burning tools will fallback to NTFS on the USB formatting and some motherboards/laptops don't like this. (Even on my rather modern Dell laptop) The best solution so far I've found is to manually partition the USB into a 1GB FAT32 partition and the rest NTFS. Then you extract the files where needed [0] I learned this method just last year but it seems it's pretty universal. At least for Win10 ISOs. And I don't have to boot Windows and wait for its updates! [0] https://techbit.ca/2019/02/creating-a-bootable-windows-10-uefi-usb-drive-using-linux/ https://techbit.ca/2019/02/creating-a-bootable-windows-10-ue...

pxeboot 5y ago
That seems far more complicated than just using DISM, PowerShell or wimlib (on Linux or Windows) to split the install.wim file into two parts, which I believe older versions of Rufus (or a similar utility) offered to do. https://wimlib.net/man1/wimsplit.html https://wimlib.net/man1/wimsplit.html
- jevinskie 5y ago
  Yep, wimlib is the portable magic that makes FAT32/4GB a non-issue. It is still annoying to have to use Windows to run NTLite. ;) https://evanshortiss.com/create-a-windows-install-usb-via-macos https://evanshortiss.com/create-a-windows-install-usb-via-ma...
- vxNsr 5y ago
  Or use ventoy and never worry about large files again.
Stratoscope 5y ago
I'm as big a Rufus fan as anyone, but for Windows 10 why wouldn't I just use Microsoft's boot image creator? That's what I've done lately, and it works every time with no fuss. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Edit: I just remembered that you might not be on a Windows device, in which case you may well want to download the ISO and use Rufus to make a bootable stick from it.

eitland 5y ago

Lately all my usb thumb drives have been overheating when using any tool so last time I ended up using an external hard drive after burning through a number of thumb drives. Anyone has an idea how to artificially limit write speed besides running it over a USB 1 hub?

wincy 5y ago
This happened to me until I bought a $35 Samsung usb-c drive that’s got a metal enclosure. Stopped overheating.

MarkSweep 5y ago

Rufus is great for writing Windows ISOs to thumb drives. Sometimes it tries to be too smart though. In particular I had trouble writing a SmartOS disk image successfully. I tried writing something[1] that would be a little smarter than Win32 Disk Imager. That is, it will adjust EFI partition labeling. Otherwise it will just write the image. After some experimentation that is what was needed to get a SmartOS disk image to boot on my old laptop. It sounds obvious in retrospect, but you can’t use something like dd to write invalid disk partitioning data and expect it to boot. EFI expects there to be a header at the beginning and end of the disk. Furthermore, I can’t try to “optimize” my disk image writer by skipping zeroed sectors and expect everything to work out fine. Without knowledge of the file system format, leaving sectors uncleared causes all kinds of fun data corruption. [1]: https://github.com/AustinWise/SimpleDiskImager https://github.com/AustinWise/SimpleDiskImager

unixhero 5y ago

For Linux usb writing from Windows, I have had great success for many years with Lili https://www.linuxliveusb.com/ https://www.linuxliveusb.com/

SkyMarshal 5y ago

Easy2Boot is another good one. Creates USB boot disks with multiple OS ISOs on and boot into any of them. It’s no longer being updated, but still works, just used it this week. https://www.easy2boot.com/ https://www.easy2boot.com/ The only caveat is you need to make sure each ISO is stored on the USB in a contiguous file, since it tricks the host machine into thinking each ISO is separate partition. It includes a .cmd script for doing this on Windows, or on Linux you can use `rsync —preallocate` to copy the ISOs continuously.

vxNsr 5y ago
Why do you say it's no longer being updated? Looks like he last posted 3/30/21. He's actually great, when he's online he has a chat option on his website and he'll help you with any questions you have, I somehow screwed up an E2B MBR and he very graciously walked me through fixing it.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  Hmm, I could have sworn I saw a comment somewhere on the site that it’s no longer in development, but can’t find it now, maybe I just hallucinated it. Good to know it’s still going then!

radium3d 5y ago

Rufus has been my go-to for maybe decades now? It's one of those software that I keep a copy of in cold storage for the apocalypse.

floatingatoll 5y ago

I enjoyed reading the FAQ tonight, thanks for sharing this.

sam0x17 5y ago

I find it amusing if not a bit sad that the best utility for making bootable Linux flash drives is currently on Windows instead of Linux. The current state of making bootable USB drives on linux is actually quite crappy. UNetbootin used to be a good option but has stopped working on a lot of distros. Etcher.io worked great for a while, but has also stopped working for most situations. The built-in disk image creator in ubuntu flavors works, but only for certain situations. But at least good ole Rufus works :) Wish we could get something like Rufus (or even better, YUMMI) working perfectly on Linux

FnuGk 5y ago
What is wrong with just using dd?
- mrwm 5y ago
  To tag on, what's wrong with plain ol' cat or cp?
  - ggm 5y ago
    dd can do seek, skip, re-block. It's unusual to need the features but they exist for good reasons. I used dd to transfer 4.1BSD release tapes to a vax 11/720 via rl02 10meg pack and reconstruct the chunks on the receive side, long ago.
    - ok123456 5y ago
      ddrescue will do this for you automatically to recover from a bad block.
- ball_of_lint 5y ago
  Not everyone is comfortable using the command line or even knows that dd exists.
  - sam0x17 5y ago

mrjin 5y ago

Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

mft_ 5y ago
FWIW I couldn’t get Ventoy working a while back, from MacOS, trying to boot to a Windows ISO for a bootcamp installation. That said, fully appreciate this is a tricky endeavour at the best of times!
- pnutjam 5y ago
  The windows installer iso never works. You have to build a bootable PE environment and then have a folder with the install files to run.
yarcob 5y ago
Holy whackamoly! Booting directly from .iso files on a thumb drive? What kind of black magic is that? This is the neatest thing I've seen on HN since the actually portable executable!
- hansel_der 5y ago
  as stated elsewhere, the magic is that grub is able to directly boot a iso.
- jtriangle 5y ago
  Not just iso files, it'll boot vhd's as well.
  - icelancer 5y ago
    This is the real insane feature for me. Wow.

deknos 5y ago

what's the equivalent (especially handling bios and uefi and stuff) on linux for it? i would be really interested.

numlock86 5y ago
same tools really ... stuff like syslinux is included, and for "flashing" you could just use dd.
- wodny 5y ago
  And it's also worth noting that eg. Debian has been providing hybrid images for years. Hybrid meaning you can write them directly to block device like USB drive or burn on CD. They exploit the fact that ISO images have first blocks empty and unused so you can put a classic MBR boot loader there.
forgotpwd16 5y ago
Surprisingly there isn't, though a port is often requested. (Nevertheless there're similar tools with either too many or less/none options.) But considering what it offers can be attained with dd+mkfs maybe a Rufus-like program can be hacked with aforementioned tools, some bash, and yad...

willis936 5y ago

Rufus is nice and all, but these days I want a dozen different OS installs and live cds on not-a-dozen thumb drives. YUMI is my one-stop shop.

mlvljr 5y ago

I think this was the tool that was happily reporting copying my files over to a USB stick despite there being copying errors (for which it didn't check, apparently). Left me puzzled with regard to why copying over a new image still led to the older one booting for a while. Switching to a different USB slot (2 VS 3) solved it, iirc (and I think I never used Rufus again).

fomine3 5y ago

In my experience, nowadays just format as FAT32 and copy all files is fine for most situation, thanks to UEFI.

nemetroid 5y ago

I recently had to create a bootable USB drive, and tried following the instructions on the Arch wiki[1] to just use coreutils: # cat path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso > /dev/sdx or # dd bs=4M if=path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdx conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress However, this was ridiculously slow. I waited a long time for cat, but not long enough to figure out if it would ever finish. dd reported speeds of less than half a MB/s, gnome-disk-utility was about eight times faster. I wonder if a different set of options to dd would have given better results. From what I can tell, gnome-disk-utility is just open() and write() (with suitable flags) in the end. 1: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB_flash_installation_medium#Using_basic_command_line_utilities https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB_flash_installation_medi...

MayeulC 5y ago
You sometimes have to use a bit of guesswork to find the best `bs` value, 8M is usually faster IME. I think gnome-disk benchmarks it? Now, you could also do without fsync, and call `sync` at the end, it could be faster.

puzzlingcaptcha 5y ago

Rufus also has the nifty and often overlooked ability to create VHD images from drives. https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Saving_an_existing_drive_to_VHD https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Saving_an_existing...

fctorial 5y ago

Unless you're trying to flash some decade old operating system 'dd' should do the job. I haven't seen a non hybrid iso in years.

amelius 5y ago

Does anyone know of a reliable way to install Ubuntu on a USB disk? (I don't mean Ubuntu Live, I'm talking about a full-fledged install which works on BIOSes that are picky about things like EFI).

polyterative 5y ago

balena etcher is also nice and easy https://www.balena.io/etcher/ https://www.balena.io/etcher/

znedw 5y ago

DriveDroid (https://www.drivedroid.io https://www.drivedroid.io) is pretty good for this sorta thing

pnutjam 5y ago

I like the idea of bootable usb, but 9 times out of 10 it's easier for me to do a PXE boot to an iso. I have a linux computer setup to provide the PXE boot stuff in my lab. I used to have a vmware player image that would run pxe boot on a 2nd nic I put in my laptop (USB), but it's been awhile since I've needed to do that.

pastage 5y ago
PXE is great but it needs infrstructure that I usually do not have available. I use netinstall from grub instead.

croutonwagon 5y ago

Rufus has only ever given me a problem once....It failed to format tails on a cruzer micro. Anytime that USB drive was stuck in a computer on boot it would be able to half boot tails. I ended up having to use dd to wipe it and all was good.

birriel 5y ago

Rufus is really neat. However, for writing distro images, the dd command is my favorite. Per the Arch Wiki: dd bs=4M if=path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdx conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress

chociej 5y ago
Lazy mode: # <image.iso >/dev/sdx; sync
- Hello71 5y ago
  this is a zsh-ism. on bash it will have no effect.
  - chociej 5y ago
    TIL. Thanks for the pointer!

ball_of_lint 5y ago

From personal experience, Rufus is an excellent project with a responsive and helpful owner/maintainer. I once had an issue using it with a certain computer + SD card adapter combination. I posted some logs and they responded within a few days with a fix. Thank you pbatard!

mynameisvlad 5y ago

I have been running https://netboot.xyz/ https://netboot.xyz/ from a docker container for years and don't look back. I even set it up to have local copies of the distros I most install, so it picks it up from a local server instead of downloading a fresh copy each time.

throwaway8581 5y ago

Do not use Rufus to make Windows 10 install media. Rufus sucks for this purpose. It uses a weird partition scheme and custom bootloader that doesn't work with secure boot. You don't need any of this shit. Partition the drive as NTFS, mark the partition as active through Disk Management, and simply copy and paste the contents of the iso into the drive. For maximum compatibility, just use FAT32 instead of NTFS. The official images will fit in a FAT32 volume. If you have a custom image that's more than the 4GB max file size of FAT32, and your device doesn't support ntfs or exfat, then you can use a single command to split the wim file into multiple chunks as explained here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/install-windows-from-a-usb-flash-drive https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur...

GranPC 5y ago
> The official images will fit in a FAT32 volume. Some official Windows 10 images, as of a few years ago, no longer fit on FAT32 volumes and need to be split. The official Microsoft tool does not work on Linux, so I use WoeUSB for that, which in my experience has worked fine with Secure Boot.
system2 5y ago
For simple windows installation isn't official Microsoft Media Creation Tool enough anyways? Rufus is a great tool to install ESXi, linux variants and other custom ISOs.
- bwat49 5y ago
  for some reason I can never get the media creation tool to work, it always downloads the ISO and then fails to write it to the USB with some ridiculously vague error code. rufus on the other hand always works without issue
Bancakes 5y ago
Weird, for me Etcher doesn't make proper Windows bootables, and Rufus works flawlessly.
x86ARMsRace 5y ago

SLWW 5y ago

Been using Rufus about 13 times today, it gets the job done. I like it

in9 5y ago

why is creating a bootable USB stick so hard? By the look of the comments it's not something that tools can do reliably. How can I learn more about these types of issues? Booting an OS in general, that is.

mcdevilkiller 5y ago

Rufus is so good. If you have your ISO downloaded and your media plugged in, it takes 6 clicks and 10 seconds to start writing to the bootable device. So easy and simple, and it works with everything.

breakfastquark 5y ago

For anyone complaining that there is no nice GUI for dd on Linux and macOS, I recently discovered Fedora Media Writer [1] which works great for this job. Despite it’s name, it can be used with any ISO just like dd. [1] https://github.com/FedoraQt/MediaWriter https://github.com/FedoraQt/MediaWriter

plgonzalezrx8 5y ago

I used Rufus for the longest time until I moved to Balena Etcher. IMO Its a better utility.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

more recent Rufus discussion from a posting only 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25341341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25341341