Tutorial: Create bootable USB drives with

Rufus 5

Article published in and tagged linux r ufus s oftware libre tutorialu sb on July 17, 2014 by Daniel Gacitúa

In this tutorial you will learn how to create bootable USB drives with the "Rufus" tool, a free software utility for
Windows that allows you to load ISO images on pendrives or USB sticks to be used at PC
startup and thus be able to boot operating systems, liveCD distributions. or information
rescue disks.
We are often asked which is the best utility (in Windows) to create bootable USB drives.
The answer is uncertain, due to the constant change in technologies that affect the boot
process of Linux distros. Although in the past YUMI or Unetbootin could be
recommended, the tool that is in vogue now is Rufus , which has made it possible to
create bootable drives with a high success rate, even in adverse conditions such as UEFI
boots.
It is worth mentioning that there are 2 types of booting today: BIOS booting (old, used in PCs and notebooks until
2010) and UEFI booting (new, used in PCs from 2011 onwards).
In order to use Rufus you need:
• Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 Operating System
• A bootable ISO image (can be a LiveCD, operating system, or rescue disk)
• A USB drive (can be a pendrive or memory card)
• The Rufus software (downloadable from its official website )
Once the Rufus .exe file has been downloaded, when we open it we come across the following window:
 We will explain each menu, and the option that should be
included.

Device: In this menu you choose the USB drive that will be
used as a bootable drive, the option to choose depends on the
devices connected to the PC.
Type of partition and target system: For this part we will
use the following rule of thumb ...
• If you are going to boot a LiveCD or Linux distro (either
BIOS or UEFI), choose Partition type MBR for computer
BIOS or UEFI .
• If you are going to boot a Windows 7/8/8.1 image in BIOS
mode, choose Partition type MBR for computer BIOS or
UEFI .
• If you are going to boot a Windows 7/8/8.1 image in UEFI
mode, choose GPT Partition Type for UEFI Computer .
• Any other case not mentioned is treated in the same
way as a Linux distro.
File system: Can be FAT32 or NTFS for BIOS mode
installations. For UEFI installations, FAT32 must be used.
Cluster size: It is advisable to leave it at the default value, it
matters little for our purposes.
New label: Here you can put an identifying name for the drive
To meet the objective we need: in the folder explorer.
Format Options: Only the Quick Format , Create Bootable Disk , and Add Extended Labels and Icons options
should be checked. Using the button with the CD drive symbol, a window opens that allows you to choose the ISO
image to be written to the USB drive.
Once all these parameters have been set, we can start writing on the USB drive with the Start button. It is important
to remember that the USB drive will be formatted and all previous content will be lost (it is recommended
support).
After a while, the drive will be ready to boot at PC startup.
I hope these instructions have helped you start creating your own bootable USB drives! If you have any questions,
you can leave them in the comments.
Greetings!