Rufus Bootable USB

Download Free Rufus for PC

Free Rufus Bootable USB Software

Rufus is a free and downloadable windows based program that creates bootable USBs. Bootable USBs are created to allow installation of different system level programs as well as Operating System. Free Rufus USB bootable disk software is available here to download. This product is windows based only but the USBs created can carry installable OS including Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, CentOS, Unix, etc.

Technical Specifications

Title:   Rufus for Windows

OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2003, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, 

Language: English

License: Free

Author: Peter Batard

What are Rufus’s Features?

Rufus is a utility program that creates bootable USBs. A bootable USB looks like a CD to a system and can be used to install Operating Systems. Rufus creates ISO files and copies them on a USB. ISO is a cabinet file format that hold the complete image and data which can be viewed after installation on a target PC. All the target files can then be converted to a single ISO image for portability. Once the image is installed on a target PC, the drives are formatted. Rufus supports creating MBR files for UEFI and BIOS for different devices as well. Rufus also works for UEFI devices which allow installation of Windows 10 and later OS.

Rufus is safe to download and extract. It has no advertisement and does not consume resources or installs as a background process. This software takes the image file and installs on a USB and does not write onto the hard drive or SSD. However, the target USB is formatted, and data can be lost if prior copies are not made. 

This software has the ability to change the Registry Keys, so a user should be careful in making bootable USBs via Rufus. Rufus has been used by many professionals and the ISO images are correctly and professionally generated.

What are Rufus’s limitations?

Rufus is a Windows based software does not support creating ISO files on other operating systems. Currents support is for Windows 7-10 only as the authors has discontinued support for older versions. 

Rufus installs only one ISO file in a USB and the free space cannot be further utilized for storage of ISO files. A larger capacity USB for an OS installation is wasted because of underutilization of available space. One needs to create a single USB per ISO image.

Where to Download Rufus?

Rufus Bootable USB disk  is freely downloadable here by clicking download button at the end of this article.

Install and Run:

Download the file and navigate to the folder. Extract the file and it is expanded in a target folder. Double click the Rufus Exe file to run it. Rufus is not installed but rather extracted and used. 

License: 

Free to install, download, and run.

Standard: 

Since, this program is individually owned, there are hardly any patches. The main website provides FAQs, and the owner responds actively to the questions and problems posed by users. The code is open sourced, and any programmer can use and modify it. Over more than a decade of its use, Rufus has reached up to its 3rd major version release.