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Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

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Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#181

Post by rubyist5eva »

ZFH wrote: post #173
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

Rufus has other use cases: imaging distros for Raspberry Pi, and (especially handy) reformat HFS, APFS and Ext4 pendrives for FAT or NTFS under Windows without jumping through hoops.

Balena Etcher is great for imaging rpi as well.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#182

Post by merb »

jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote: post #157
elmo2you wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ventoy is indeed one of the best (if not THE best) tool for this. Even if it does not support absolutely everything (last time I checked), it is by far the most hassle free and sure-fire solution. For context, I have professionally deployed Linux on USB, ever since around 2004. I honestly don't care to remember all the odd issues/failures I've encountered during those 17 years. The situation certainly got better/easi…

> For context, I have professionally deployed Linux on USB, ever since around 2004. Could you point to some good sources that explain in detail the whole "bootable USB" world? It seems it's always a hassle to get right, especially when preparing a Windows bootable USB.

rufus is good for preparing a windows bootable usb with uefi boot (so you can later enable secure boot, after install), so stick to that. ventoy is great, might be better than rufus, when you want multiple os's on a stick, but for the average person it's also way more complex than rufus. (rufus only works on windows tough)

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#184

Post by e12e »

elmo2you wrote: post #100
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

Ventoy is indeed one of the best (if not THE best) tool for this. Even if it does not support absolutely everything (last time I checked), it is by far the most hassle free and sure-fire solution. For context, I have professionally deployed Linux on USB, ever since around 2004. I honestly don't care to remember all the odd issues/failures I've encountered during those 17 years. The situation certainly got better/easi…

I have a couple of old dusty laptops at work, that I think are just old enough to have 32bit uefi (or bios?) and cpu with 64bit support. Are there any current distros that should work, I wonder?

I suppose I could dig up an old Debian Iso-but I'd prefer something with a recent-ish kernel (wireguard) and a half-secure libssl and opensshd.

Hm, maybe openbsd (current) still has support?

Ed: I've been doing Linux installs since the 90s... Around kernel 1.3 or there abouts - but it's been a while since dipped my toes in 32bit/hybrid x86 systems. .

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#185

Post by juangacovas »

alvarop wrote: post #136
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

Thanks for this, indeed I've been able to recover a stick that went non-visible anymore, by using InitDisk

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#187

Post by rdslw »

rubyist5eva wrote: post #181
ZFH wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rufus has other use cases: imaging distros for Raspberry Pi, and (especially handy) reformat HFS, APFS and Ext4 pendrives for FAT or NTFS under Windows without jumping through hoops.

Balena Etcher is great for imaging rpi as well.

It is not. hundred+ MB electron app, instead Rufus being few hundreds of KB and around 10x more flexible in corner cases.

I really despise BE from engineering perspective.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#188

Post by sokoloff »

rdslw wrote: post #187
rubyist5eva wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Balena Etcher is great for imaging rpi as well.

It is not. hundred+ MB electron app, instead Rufus being few hundreds of KB and around 10x more flexible in corner cases. I really despise BE from engineering perspective.

It never occurred to me to judge a flashing tool based on its internal architecture and language/framework choice.

I judge it based on whether I get a bootable bit of flash out the other side.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#189

Post by Hello71 »

chociej wrote: post #155
birriel wrote: post #148

Rufus is really neat. However, for writing distro images, the dd command is my favorite. Per the Arch Wiki: dd bs=4M if=path/to/archlinux-version-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdx conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress

Lazy mode: # /dev/sdx; sync

this is a zsh-ism. on bash it will have no effect.

Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility

#190

Post by Nexxxeh »

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 wouldn't say "far better". It's different. Rufus is superb for specific tasks.

I especially like the interface, including the automatic download of the current Windows 10 ISO. I find the whole process (and more importantly, walking others through the process) a breeze.

I like the cheat mode codes that let me walk people through tasks easily, but still retaining functionality I want for myself. https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Power_keysCheat_mo... Alt+E being one that I use myself, but absolutely would not want enabled for a novice user.

That's not to take anything away from Ventoy (although I'm an IODD user myself). Just saying one is better or worse doesn't feel fair to me.

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