Windows App of the Week: Rufus
We’re launching several new weekly features on Lifehacker: profiles of must-have, usually free, apps. We’re going to split them across platforms over the course of a week, just in case you’re a Windows or macOS supporter and have vowed to never (ever ) use another operating system.
To get us started on Windows, we’ll take a look at Rufus , a lightweight utility that makes creating bootable USB drives incredibly easy.
The weirdest name for the most useful utility
We don’t really know the name, but that’s okay. Rufus developer Pete Batard could call the utilityPoopsmith and we would still use it on a regular basis. Since we live in an era where the concept of a “DVD drive” or “Blu-ray player” has largely gone down the path of the dinosaurs on desktop and laptop PCs, it is incredibly useful to use a flash drive as a “reusable DVD”. kind.
For example, let’s say you want to save a fresh copy of the Windows 10 ISO image to a flash drive so you can easily reinstall it at any time. Or, for that matter, maybe you just want to create an ISO file with a simple working installation of Windows 10 to use as a handy backup.
There are even times when you might need a bootable USB stick – say, to update your motherboard firmware, or if you just want to play around with a valid version of an alternate operating system for whatever reason. You might even want to run a bootable application like MemTest86 + .
(Just the other day, I used Rufus to create a bootable macOS High Sierra ISO to play with; don’t say Cupertino.)
Rufus is not only easy to use but also very fast. As Batard notes:
“Oh, and Rufus is fast. For example, it is about twice as fast as UNetbootin, Universal USB Installer, or Windows 7 USB Bootloader when creating a Windows 7 installation USB drive from an ISO. It’s also slightly faster when creating a bootable Linux USB stick from ISO. “
As an added bonus, the app doesn’t require you to install anything to use it. Just download the executable file and double click. You can probably leave most of the default settings, although you probably want to set the file system of the USB drive to FAT32 for maximum compatibility in most cases. Click the disc icon to download the ISO, click start and enjoy your new bootable USB drive. It is so simple.
Do you have a Windows app (paid or free) that you really like? Tell us about it: david.murphy@lifehacker.com .