Rufus is a small utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives. It can be especially useful 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!

Non exhaustive list of ISOs Rufus is known to work with:

Arch Linux, Archbang, BartPE/pebuilder, CentOS, Damn Small Linux, Fedora, FreeDOS, Gentoo, gNewSense, Hiren's Boot CD, LiveXP, Knoppix, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, NT Password Registry Editor, OpenSUSE, Parted Magic, Slackware, Tails, Trinity Rescue Kit, Ubuntu, Ultimate Boot CD, Windows XP (SP2 or later), Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, etc.

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 the creation of a Windows 7 USB installation drive from an ISO. It is also marginally faster on the creation of Linux bootable USB from ISOs.

What's New

  • Fix persistent partition not working with Ubuntu 23.04
  • Fix out of range pointer error with Ubuntu 23.04 when booting in BIOS mode
  • Fix boot freeze with Ubuntu Studio when Secure Boot is enabled
  • Fix incorrect architecture detection when checking for updates
  • Fix a Windows Store application crash when processing GRUB bootloaders
  • Fix a Windows Store application crash when enumerating processes that contain a % sign
  • Fix a Windows Store application crash when using German localization
  • Note that the major version was bumped on account of:
    • New versions of Rufus requiring Windows 8 or later
    • New versions of Rufus defaulting to a 64-bit executable
    • Old versions of Rufus potentially not being able to update properly

Previous release notes

  • Add SHA-1 and SHA-256 x86 acceleration on CPUs that support it (courtesy of Jeffrey Walton)
  • Add an option to disable BitLocker device encryption in the Windows User Experience dialog
  • Add a cheat mode (Ctrl-P) to preserve the log between sessions
  • Fix potential media creation errors by forcing the unmount of stale WIM images
  • Fix potential access errors in ISO → ESP mode by forcing Large FAT32 formatting
  • Fix user-specified label not being preserved on error/cancel
  • Fix some large SSD devices being listed by default
  • Fix processing of Rock Ridge CE fields
  • Work around the use of Rock Ridge symbolic links for Linux firmware packages (Debian)
  • Remove the ISO download feature on Windows 7
  • Note: This is the last version of Rufus that can run on Windows 7