Probably many users associated with creating bootable media have heard of a program like Rufus. Instructions for its use are quite simple. Nevertheless, there are several key points and nuances that should be discussed separately. For the Rufus 2.7 program, the instructions for use will be considered (although today this particular modification is not relevant).
What is Rufus for?
The application is a universal tool for quickly creating bootable media, which are USB-devices. For the Rufus application, the instructions for use directly indicate that ordinary flash drives, external USB-drives and even removable memory cards can act as storage media (their file system is supported).
Immediately, we note that this program is focused exclusively on USB devices, so creating a bootable media in the form of an optical disk or other hard drive will fail.
Key Features
For Rufus, instructions for creating a bootable USB flash drive indicate one interesting point related to some non-standard features of the application.
The program itself is designed to work in the environment of the operating systems Windows, Linux, etc. (for Windows, support for modifications from XP to 10 is installed). But the most amazing thing is that the application is able to create firmware for BIOS and UEFI or record system images to work on computers on which any OS is missing.
You can’t refuse BIOS support either. For the Rufus application, the instruction indicates that both obsolete versions and the newest ones in the form of UEFI are supported.
The scope of the program is quite wide. You can create bootable media not only for cases when you need to install the operating system from scratch (or reinstall). It is actively used to restore the OS and passwords. In addition, when recording to the media, the application can find bad or problem sectors, format or restore USB drives.
Released Versions
To date, there are two main modifications to the program: stationary and portable. Both versions take up little space, and the difference is that all the settings for the stationary modification are written in the keys of the registry, while the portable one uses a specially created settings file.
Rufus program: instruction. Beginning of work
It doesn’t matter whether the user has launched a portable or stationary version, the first step is to perform the initial setup.
The application interface is configured by default to use English. Therefore, for starters, you need to click on the globe icon located at the top right, and from the menu that appears, select Russian.
Note that the program interface (for Rufus the instruction directly points to this, and the user can see for himself) contains only one window in which all actions will be performed. This completely eliminates the possibility of pressing the wrong button or selecting the wrong parameter.
Partition Scheme Selection
So, the program is running (until the flash drive is inserted, the main fields will be empty). As soon as the user inserts the device into the USB connector, the application detects the drive and fills all the fields automatically!
If several devices are connected, you can select the desired one from the list. For an uninitiated person, this is just a find, because in most cases the parameters set in the main fields do not need to be changed. The only exception is the recording method, but more on that later. But if changes are nevertheless required, we will consider each parameter separately.
At the initial stage, you need to select the type of partition. There are three options here:
- MBR (boot record) for BIOS or UEFI;
- MBR for UEFI only;
- GPT for UEFI.
What to choose from all this? The first option is universal. The second is intended for computers exclusively with UEFI systems. The third option should be selected only if the computer system uses a hard disk with a capacity of more than 2 GB.
File system definition
For Rufus, the instruction in the next step involves selecting a file system. Normally NTFS is suggested by default.
But in principle, if the boot distribution (image) of the installed system has a size of less than 4 GB, you can install FAT32. The cluster size set by default by the program itself can be left unchanged.
Volume Label and Formatting Options
Next, you will need to specify the volume label (but this is not required) and go to the formatting options. To save time, you can leave fast formatting, but if there is any doubt that the media might be damaged, you can use full. In this case, you must leave a mark in the creation field of the bootable media.
Now the most important thing. From the drop-down menu in most cases you should choose to create a disk from an ISO image, after which, using the browse button, you will need to specify the path to the source in the form of a pre-loaded or saved image of the future system.
Record activation
Finally, all preliminary steps are completed. Just in case, we check the set parameters again, just press the start button and agree with the notification that all data on the device will be destroyed during formatting.
Then you just have to wait for the end of the recording process. According to the developers themselves, the process, for example, for the Windows 7 image, can take about 5-10 minutes, no more. It is believed that this indicator is the lowest among all programs with which you can create bootable USB-drives.
Rufus: instructions (Windows 10). Using Windows To Go
A more interesting version of the program looks 2.0 and higher, which is used on Windows 8 and 10. When using it, in the main window you can see a special Windows To Go line that needs to be used instead of the standard system installation.
What it is? It turns out that this method of creating bootable media is designed to write information to the media in such a way that when booting from it you can run a full-fledged Windows Enterprise OS and work with it like with a regular OS!
However, some important conditions must be observed during the recording process. First of all, it is alleged that you only need to use USB drives recommended by Microsoft (if you need Windows as the working OS). The second condition is that the drive must have a volume of at least 32 GB. Otherwise, the whole process is completely identical to the above steps. The only thing you should pay attention to is the installation of the NTFS standard as a file system (in no case FAT).
Conclusion
As a afterword, it remains to say that the program really looks very convenient and fast. This is confirmed not only by many users, but also by professional experts. In addition, to deal with the application will not be difficult even for a person who has never in his life been involved in creating bootable media and is going to do it for the first time. The presence of only one window (workspace) and almost complete automation speak only in favor of this application. Not surprisingly, it has earned so many flattering reviews.
By the way, writing speed is especially noted. Even the portable version works so fast that many similar heavy packages have never dreamed of. And when you consider that you can use the USB 3.0 standard, the write speed increases incredibly. In addition, the creation of a carrier with a full-fledged working system generally causes genuine admiration.