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Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

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Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#131

Post by scbrg »

cesarb wrote: post #78
hansel_der wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably because on most linux distros provide an image (iso) that can simply be written on any media and boots. like: cat ubuntu.iso >/dev/sdd or dd if=./ubuntu.iso of=/dev/sdd

Or you can go the GUI way, and use for instance gnome-disks to write the image to the disk (which also reduces the chance of writing to the wrong disk; when writing through the command line, I prefer to use the /dev/disk/by-path symlinks for that reason).

> I prefer to use the /dev/disk/by-path symlinks for that reason

That was a neat trick. Thank you for mentioning it.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#132

Post by tlamponi »

breakfastduck wrote: post #114
tlamponi wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UNetbootin has done this since 2007: https://unetbootin.github.io/ > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin > This is barely a year old and comes all, besides a handful of comments, from one account https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/graphs/contributors Personally and subjective this rings quite some alarm bells for me, seems just a bit sketchy and in any way really young, so not as much time out on the field and thu…

That doesn't look like it does the same thing at all. I'm not sure why a piece of software being built by one person is sketchy but ok.

It is similar though, but yes it misses the "more ISOs" part, which I actually find weird because at that point that would be almost cheap to do - that's why I did not reverified that bit, sorry.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#133

Post by jabroni_salad »

vxNsr wrote: post #60
jz9yu616 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is built on top of Ventoy https://gbatemp.net/threads/medicat-usb-a-multiboot-linux-us...

I saw a comment in there about how files will get deleted by over zealous av's when you plug it into a live system, I didn't feel like reading through 60 pages of comments to see if someone solved that issue but I was wondering if you have any suggestions for preventing that.

Delete the tools that are meant to compromise a computer.

If you are the sysadmin, put the target computer in a policy group that doesn't include live scanning temporarily.

There are also USB drives you can get that have a write protection switch, but that doesn't mean you will be allowed to actually run the software.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#134

Post by wooben »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #96
foxrider wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WoeUSB is what you have to use on Linux to create a bootable Windows thumbdrive, dd only works for isohybrid images, and Windows isn't one.

WoeUSB hasn't been very reliable for me. I've had better results booting up a Windows VM to use Rufus with USB passthrough to the drive instead.

I'm love/hating this idea because now I want to burn a LiveUSB running Linux with a QEMU Windows VM already set up on it. I can run it live and have Windows 10 "PE" or I can install it to a host and have Windows up and running fairly smoothly without going through the OOBE.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#135

Post by Strom »

Stratoscope wrote: post #42
sdlion wrote: post #28

Windows images that are over 4.3GB(I don't remember the exact max size) most image burning tools will fallback to NTFS on the USB formatting and some motherboards/laptops don't like this. (Even on my rather modern Dell laptop) The best solution so far I've found is to manually partition the USB into a 1GB FAT32 partition and the rest NTFS. Then you extract the files where needed [0] I learned this method just last ye…

I'm as big a Rufus fan as anyone, but for Windows 10 why wouldn't I just use Microsoft's boot image creator? That's what I've done lately, and it works every time with no fuss. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Edit: I just remembered that you might not be on a Windows device, in which case you may well want to download the ISO and use Rufus to make a bootable stick from it.

The official Windows media creation tool is a bit of an abomination. Primarily because it is slow and has very quirky requirements that it doesn't advertise and only checks for at the very last second.

You download the tool and want to create a Windows 10 bootable USB, so you run the executable.

Then you find out that it won't let you choose where to save the temporary ISO file that it wants to download. It's hardcoded to the C:\ drive which can easily be a small SSD that is already almost full. You grumble a bit, proceed to delete/move some files off of C:\ so that it could download the ISO and then restart the tool.

This time the download finishes successfully, but after the download you get an error because it turns out it wants to extract what it downloaded - and of course hardcoded to the C:\ drive. You moan a bit, proceed to delete/move even more files off of C:\ and restart the tool.

Third time's the charm right? Well after waiting around forever, it has once again downloaded the ISO and this time also extracted it. Then it informs you that it can't actually create the bootable USB stick because it needs to be run as an administrator. You scratch your head in disbelief, wondering why instead of giving you an error message it doesn't just launch a privilege escalation prompt - or at least have the privilege requirement defined in its manifest.

The fourth time has to work. You manually run it as administrator, it re-downloads & re-extracts the ISO, and you still get the error message that it needs to run as an administrator. What is going on? You google for answers and realize that you've found the only Windows app in existence that is not satisfied with mere privilege escalation but instead demands you to be running directly as the administrator.

You log out of your regular user account, log in as the administrator, re-download & re-extract the ISO - and then finally the tool is willing to create the bootable USB.

...

On the other hand it is possible to create the Windows 10 bootable USB with just the command line [1] and this can be done without having the ISO on your C:\ drive, without having to extract the ISO files to a temporary location before being copied to the USB, or having to directly log in as administrator. A simple escalated privilege command prompt will do just fine.

Thus I'm left wondering what is going on at Microsoft. Did they assign some random intern to create the Windows 10 installation media tool? It is very incompetently made.

--

[1] https://davidzych.com/install-windows-10-from-a-usb-flash-dr...

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#136

Post by alvarop »

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

I keep hearing great things about GRC's InitDisk. Unfortunately it's windows-only, but it's able to format almost anything you throw at it:

https://www.grc.com/initdisk.htm

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#137

Post by userbinator »

Strom wrote: post #135
Stratoscope wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm as big a Rufus fan as anyone, but for Windows 10 why wouldn't I just use Microsoft's boot image creator? That's what I've done lately, and it works every time with no fuss. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Edit: I just remembered that you might not be on a Windows device, in which case you may well want to download the ISO and use Rufus to make a bootable stick from it.

The official Windows media creation tool is a bit of an abomination. Primarily because it is slow and has very quirky requirements that it doesn't advertise and only checks for at the very last second. You download the tool and want to create a Windows 10 bootable USB, so you run the executable. Then you find out that it won't let you choose where to save the temporary ISO file that it wants to download. It's hardcod…

Thus I'm left wondering what is going on at Microsoft. Did they assign some random intern to create the Windows 10 installation media tool? It is very incompetently made.

I get the same feeling with a lot of other things in Win10 (which I'm only using because I'm forced to). IMHO it's a sign of the shift to a metrics-driven culture, where the "unquantifiable" parts of quality are being completely ignored in favour of bettering numerical ones. Microsoft isn't the only one, this seems to be happening industry-wide.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#139

Post by zymhan »

muppetman wrote: post #99
odyslam wrote: post #11

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

I love that something that basically clones what "dd" can do is ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR MEGABYTES. And people just accept that as normal. dd is 76k Imagine if the binary is 128MB how big the source code repo must be.

I'll take a GUI that helps me triple-check I'm not dd-ing my root volume

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#140

Post by gnu8 »

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

One use case not covered by Ventoy is building the USB equivalent of a DOS boot disk, useful for flashing BIOSes.
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