How to Build a Bootable Drive with Rufus

botond published 2018/04/21, Sat - 15:20 time

Content

 

Introductory

It used to be harder to start installing an operating system. The downloaded (usually) ISO image file had to be written to a CD, which was slow at first, and then came newer, faster, and cheaper CD / DVD writers that could write the operating system installer in just a few minutes. At the same time, of course, the size of the installers was fattening as newer Windows / Linux came out, so the big installers could only fit on DVDs. The DVD era even had some drawbacks, including scratches on the discs, so they weren’t timeless if we didn’t take good care of them. And of course, the downside was that these installers were used once. Thus, if an operating system ran out, became obsolete, the installation disk could be dusted deep in the cabinet or end up in the trash.
And then I won't even mention the earlier DOS, floppy disk era ...

Fortunately, the situation is different today. Now there are USB 2, 3 ports that allow you to install any operating system very quickly, because computers can boot from USB as well.

Now that we’re past a little nostalgia, let’s see how we can make an installation flash drive with a free program called Rufus.

 

Update 2018/10/22:
In the meantime, this description has been completed by more recent version. However, anyone who works with the older version should use this description.

 

 

Obtaining a Rufus program

Download the latest Rufus program from your site: https://rufus.ie/
The program does not require installation and can be started immediately.

 

Creating a bootable installer flash drive

At the time of writing this, I have the latest version of Rufus 2.18 (2017.11.07 release).

Once started, the one-panel program will run:

Rufus - Homepage

 

Beállítások

  • Device: Select the target flash drive for which you want to create the installer.
  • Partition schema and target system type: Leave by default, as shown in the picture
  • Filesystem: Default setting
  • Cluster size: Default setting
  • New volume label: Enter a name, for example, the installation system name, verb, or leave it blank.

 

Formatting options

  • Quick Format: Be 
  • Creating a bootable disk: Select the ISO image file here, then select the image file with the navigation icon next to it.
  • Create extended label and icon files: It can stay.

When browsing the ISO image, the New Volume Label field is filled in with the title in the ISO file, so no need to change it above.

 

Launching

Rufus - Startup - Download required

Depending on the operating system you want to write to the flash drive at boot time (Debian Netinstall 8.10 for me), a panel may appear asking you to confirm certain downloads. Rufus needs to download some of the files needed to build the bootable system, so click Yes here.

 

Rufus - Startup - ISOHybrid image detected

Then another window will pop up immediately, leave it at the recommended option, then press OK.

 

Rufus - Start - Cancel warning

And there is only a warning window to let you know that the contents of the entire flash drive will go into the soup. But we're not even scared of it, let's get this down.

 

Rufus - Booting - Creating a File SystemRufus - Startup - Copy ISO files

And here the copying of the files starts. It took me about 5-6 minutes to write the 260 Mb image file.

 

You have the bootable flash drive ready to install your favorite operating system.