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Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

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Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#121

Post by Tsiklon »

user3939382 wrote: post #19

It’s weird that it’s 2021 and when I have to go do a bare metal OS install I still make sure I have a DVD burner/drive because I can’t 100% rely on installing from USB.

Any new system I’ve used since about 2011 has been able to boot reliably from USB. The only issues really come down to how the thumb drive is prepared.

Usually `dd` is good enough for Linux/Unix disk images, and preparing an exFAT/NTFS thumb drive (your mileage may vary on whether exFAT is supported on your system) and copying the contents over with `rsync` works good for windows 7+ images

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#122

Post by larrybud »

odyslam wrote: post #11

I have always used Etcher[0] and I love it. [0] https://www.balena.io/etcher/

Unfortunately, etcher has a long history of privacy violations which I find completely unacceptable (especially for an open source project!) https://forums.balena.io/t/serious-privacy-concerns-with-etc...

As in, even when I turned off 'report usage statistics', it kept making outbound network connections. That was it for me... trust lost; uninstalled immediately.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#123

Post by Algent »

mrjin wrote: post #66

Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

Just tried it because it seem great and it booted parted magic fine but trying to boot on W10 20H2 iso just got me stuck on a black window inside ventoy.

Too bad because I'd really like to have a single USB with everything I could really carry around instead of a bunch of small one.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#124

Post by vetinari »

chrisandchris wrote: post #82
antibuddy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My memory is a bit hazy, but I remember dd not working for Windows images. Did you test that recently?

Some SO user mention it seems to work with dd, however I did not test that recently. Most comments seem to mention that it‘s more difficult than dd. [0] https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/598632

Normally, for UEFI boot, you could be able just to create a FAT32 partition and copy the ISO content there. In the past, it was perfectly workable way to do so.

Except for the unfortunate install.wim file. The first releases of Windows 10 were fine, they had it under 4GB, but some of the half-year releases have it grown over 4GB, and FAT32 cannot handle that. Thus all the mitigations you see here.

The Microsoft's USB tool does not use install.wim; it contains install.esd instead. It is basically the same thing, but with different compression, so it is still a bit under 4GB. You can recompress install.wim into install.esd, if you have the inclination ...and a windows machine nearby (dism /export-image).

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#126

Post by sloshnmosh »

mrjin wrote: post #66

Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

Wow! Thanks for the heads up on Ventoy!

The only reason I even keep an old Windows based laptop around for was to burn ISO’s to flash drives with Rufus for repairing computers of friends and family members.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#127

Post by pnutjam »

mft_ wrote: post #95
mrjin wrote: post #66

Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

FWIW I couldn’t get Ventoy working a while back, from MacOS, trying to boot to a Windows ISO for a bootcamp installation. That said, fully appreciate this is a tricky endeavour at the best of times!

The windows installer iso never works. You have to build a bootable PE environment and then have a folder with the install files to run.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#128

Post by pnutjam »

I like the idea of bootable usb, but 9 times out of 10 it's easier for me to do a PXE boot to an iso. I have a linux computer setup to provide the PXE boot stuff in my lab.

I used to have a vmware player image that would run pxe boot on a 2nd nic I put in my laptop (USB), but it's been awhile since I've needed to do that.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#129

Post by squarefoot »

mrjin wrote: post #66

Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

What a great tool! There goes my collection of small old 1-8 GB USB thumb drives, just use a big one for installs.

A nice companion could be a small *PI like board with a script that scans repositories for iso updates then downloads them using torrent to avoid taxing the servers too much, then when necessary (but not more than once every N days to avoid wearing the memory) updates the dongle automatically overnight. Just stick the dongle when you're back at home and the next morning if necessary it is updated to the latest images.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#130

Post by mjsir911 »

dataflow wrote: post #118
Poiesis wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the benefit of those who may not know, this has been possible (by way of Grub2) with many Linux distros for a while now without custom software. Typically you just add extra boot arguments that point to the iso and flag that booting from it is desired. Unfortunately the required arguments tend to be poorly documented and quite specific to each distro. This looks like a neat tool that's sidestepping that issue. If…

Assuming you loopback mount the ISO, I think these are the major args... fill in the "..." wherever you see them: # Ubuntu linux .../vmlinuz boot=casper file=.../ubuntu.seed iso-scan/filename=... initrd ... # Arch linux .../vmlinuz img_dev=... img_loop=... earlymodules=loop initrd ..._ucode.img .../archiso.img # Kali linux ... boot=live components findiso=... # noautomount initrd ... # GParted linux ... boot=live uni…

And you can find an aggregated list of grub files for various distro's at aguslr's multibootusb:

https://github.com/aguslr/multibootusb/tree/master/mbusb.d

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