About this project

Rufus is a free, open-source (GPL v3) utility for Windows that formats USB flash drives, memory cards and virtual drives, and creates bootable media. It is distributed as a small, portable application that requires no installation and is Secure Boot compatible. Formatting and filesystem support - Formats USB drives, flash cards and virtual drives to FAT, FAT32, NTFS, UDF, exFAT, ReFS, ext2 and ext3. - Can create DOS bootable drives using FreeDOS or MS-DOS. - Supports creating BIOS or UEFI bootable drives, including UEFI bootable NTFS. Bootable media creation - Creates bootable drives from bootable ISOs such as Windows and Linux images. - Creates bootable drives from disk images, including compressed images. - Can create Windows 11 installation drives for PCs without TPM or Secure Boot. - Supports Windows To Go drives and persistent Linux partitions. - Can create VHD/DD, VHDX and FFU images of an existing drive. Verification and diagnostics - Computes MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 and SHA-512 checksums of the selected image. - Performs runtime validation of UEFI bootable media. - Performs bad block checks, including detection of fake flash drives. Windows installation helpers - Improves the Windows installation experience by automatically setting up OOBE parameters such as local account and privacy options. Downloads - Can download official Microsoft Windows 8, Windows 10 or Windows 11 retail ISOs. - Can download UEFI Shell ISOs. Interface and distribution - Modern, familiar UI with 38 natively supported languages. - Small footprint, no installation required, portable, Secure Boot compatible. - Licensed under GPL v3 as free software. Building - Can be built with Visual Studio 2026 or MinGW by invoking the .sln file or configure/make respectively. - The project states that the freely available Visual Studio Community Edition may be used to build, run or develop for Rufus, for both individual and corporate users. Additional information - Rufus provides detailed logging and integrates with the Windows debug facility for diagnostics. - Official website, FAQ and security documentation are linked from the repository. - Issues and feature requests are handled through the GitHub issue tracker.