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Add to SafariWhen comparing Rufus vs Etcher, the Slant community recommends Rufus for most people. In the question“What is the best software for creating Live USB (from ISO files)?” Rufus is ranked 1st while Etcher is ranked 2nd. The most important reason people chose Rufus is:
Rufus finds your USB drive automatically. This minimizes the risk that you will accidentally format your hard drive.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Automatic USB detection
Rufus finds your USB drive automatically. This minimizes the risk that you will accidentally format your hard drive.
Pro GPT/UEFI Support with NTFS UEFI Support
Pro Simple but advanced
Has many options.
Pro Open source
Pro Very fast
Rufus is one of the fastest utilities in the category to complete create a bootable USB. Twice as fast as UNetbootin, Universal USB Installer and Windows 7 USB download tool.
Pro Safe
Zero ways to screw up.
Pro Size
Rufus is small in size.
Pro Multi-language support
Pro Cross platform
Supports Linux, Windows and Mac.
Pro Polished GUI
The gui looks great and is easy to use.
Pro Open source
Free to use and modify. Apache license. Repository link.
Pro Relatively fast
Flashes/burns images relatively fast.
Pro Extremely user friendly
By far, the most user friendly and straight-forward UI I've ever seen in an application like this
Cons
Con Only runs on Windows
Although it can install all flavors of imaginable distros on a key, the software itself only has one official Windows version, effectively excluding Mac and Linux users.
Con Only can install 1 distro / USB
There is no way to install more than one distro on USB
Con Lacking in settings
Compared to its competitors, while trying to keep the software as user-friendly and clean as possible, it also lacks the ability to perform more advanced tweaking, available in something like Rufus.
Con Sends data to balena by default
It is enabled by default, hidden in the settings and you have to turn it manually off.
Con Large file size
Much larger file size in comparison to something like Rufus.
