Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pen drives, memory sticks, etc.
It can be beneficial 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!
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 creating a Windows 7 USB installation drive from an ISO. It is also marginally faster in creating Linux bootable USBs from ISOs. (1)
A non-exhaustive list of Rufus-supported ISOs is also provided at the bottom of this page. (2)
