Rufus, by Pete Batard, is a tool that will format a USB flash drive to your specifications, with the ability to burn any bootable image to it. It's the ideal tool for making an install drive for any given operating system. With no image selected, you can format a drive as FAT32, NTFS, UDF, exFAT, ext2, or ext3, with GPT, MBR, or Super Floppy Disk partition tables. It also has basic functionality for creating a VHD image file from an existing drive.
Where Rufus really shines is making bootable drives. It has built-in support (with automatic download) for FreeDOS, SysLinux, Grub 2, ReactOS, Grub4DOS, and UEFI:NTFS. You can select an ISO, and it will show you options depending on the operating system; one of its most useful features is the ability to create a Windows 11 install drive that works on unsupported machines and will allow creation of a local account (as long as the target computer has no network connection during installation). This can be used for semi-automation of the Windows install process. When a Linux image is selected, Rufus can be configured to create a persistent partition, to allow changes to a live USB boot to persist between uses. Rufus has an extensive FAQ covering a wide variety of questions and use cases, including cheat codes for advanced users.
Rufus can even download Windows 8.1, 10, or 11 ISOs automatically, using the drop-down arrow next to the SELECT button.
Rufus is open source. Download here. GitHub here.
