When comparing dd vs Rufus, 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 dd is ranked 7th. 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
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Many features
It can do anything.
Pro Ported to almost any OS
There exist ports for Windows, Mac and even Android.
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
Cons
Con Easy to completely nuke an unrelated hard disk by accident
It is a cli app and there are no safety features to prevent a complete data loss if the user adds a wrong syntax.
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