Rufus is an easy-to-use and configurable tool which quickly creates bootable USB drives from ISO images. We created a bootable USB version of the Windows 8 Professional image, for instance, and found the program was around 25% faster than another popular boot drive creator, UNetbootin. For a Linux or Mac, you need to use other rufus alternatives. However, it is only available in the portable. This is a widely used application for creating bootable CDs from ISO files. If you want to create a bootable USB on Windows, you must first download Rufus. And the program even includes some advanced format options which may help your drive be recognised on older PCs, although normally these shouldn't be necessary.Īnd if this is a task you need to carry out often, then you'll be pleased to hear that Rufus is reasonably speedy. 14 Rufus alternatives for Linux, Mac, and windows. There's now support for both UEFI and GPT boots. If you need more control, though, you're able to configure how the USB drive will be formatted (file system, cluster size and so on). Getting started could be as simple as browsing to your ISO image and clicking the "Start" button: the program will then walk you through everything else it needs to know. It'll automatically detect your USB drive, for instance, so you may not have to select that.
Rufus doesn't require any installation, and is generally very straightforward to set up. USB keys are also easier to carry around, less likely to be damaged, and faster, which may be important if you need to use the disc often. This won't help you much if your target system doesn't have an optical drive, though. Of course if you have an ISO image then you could simply burn this to a CD or DVD. Rufus is a simple utility which makes it easy to build bootable USB drives from ISO images.