Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives.
- Format USB, flash card and virtual drives to FAT/FAT32/NTFS/UDF/exFAT/ReFS/ext2/ext3
- Create DOS bootable USB drives using FreeDOS or MS-DOS
- Create BIOS or UEFI bootable drives, including UEFI bootable NTFS
- Create bootable drives from bootable ISOs (Windows, Linux, etc.)
- Create bootable drives from bootable disk images, including compressed ones
- Create Windows 11 installation drives for PCs that don't have TPM or Secure Boot
- Create Windows To Go drives
- Create VHD/DD, VHDX and FFU images of an existing drive
- Create persistent Linux partitions
- Compute MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 and SHA-512 checksums of the selected image
- Perform runtime validation of UEFI bootable media
- Improve Windows installation experience by automatically setting up OOBE parameters (local account, privacy options, etc.)
- Perform bad blocks checks, including detection of "fake" flash drives
- Download official Microsoft Windows 8, Windows 10 or Windows 11 retail ISOs
- Download UEFI Shell ISOs
- Modern and familiar UI, with 38 languages natively supported
- Small footprint. No installation required.
- Portable. Secure Boot compatible.
- 100% Free Software (GPL v3)
Use either Visual Studio 2026 or MinGW and then invoke the .sln or configure/make respectively.
Rufus is an OSI compliant Open Source project. You are entitled to download and use the freely available Visual Studio Community Edition to build, run or develop for Rufus. As per the Visual Studio Community Edition license, this applies regardless of whether you are an individual or a corporate user.
Rufus provides extensive information about what it is doing, either through its easily accessible log, or through the Windows debug facility.
Please use the GitHub issue tracker for reporting problems or suggesting new features.