rufus/README.md

Rufus: The Reliable USB Formatting Utility
==========================================

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![Rufus logo](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pbatard/rufus/master/res/icons/rufus-128.png)

Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives.

Features
--------

* Format USB, flash card and virtual drives to FAT/FAT32/NTFS/UDF/exFAT/ReFS/ext2/ext3
* Create DOS bootable USB drives, using [FreeDOS](https://www.freedos.org) or MS-DOS (Windows 8.1 or earlier)
* Create BIOS or UEFI bootable drives, including [UEFI bootable NTFS](https://github.com/pbatard/uefi-ntfs)
* Create bootable drives from bootable ISOs (Windows, Linux, etc.)
* Create bootable drives from bootable disk images, including compressed ones
* Create Windows 11 installation drives for PCs that don't have TPM
* Create [Windows To Go](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go) drives
* Create persistent Linux partitions
* Create VHD/DD images of a drive
* Compute MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 and SHA-512 checksums of the selected image
* Perform bad blocks checks, including detection of "fake" flash drives
* Download official Microsoft Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 or Windows 11 retail ISOs
* Download [UEFI Shell](https://github.com/pbatard/UEFI-Shell) ISOs
* Modern and familiar UI, with [38 languages natively supported](https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#What_languages_are_natively_supported_by_Rufus)
* Small footprint. No installation required.
* Portable. Secure Boot compatible.
* 100% [Free Software](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw) ([GPL v3](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0))

Compilation
-----------

Use either Visual Studio 2019 or MinGW and then invoke the `.sln` or `configure`/`make` respectively.

#### Visual Studio

Rufus is an OSI compliant Open Source project. You are entitled to
download and use the *freely available* [Visual Studio Community Edition](https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/community/)
to build, run or develop for Rufus. As per the Visual Studio Community Edition license,
this applies regardless of whether you are an individual or a corporate user.

Additional information
----------------------

Rufus provides extensive information about what it is doing, either through its
easily accessible log, or through the [Windows debug facility](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/debugview).

* [__Official Website__](https://rufus.ie)
* [FAQ](https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ)

Enhancements/Bugs
-----------------

Please use the [GitHub issue tracker](https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues)
for reporting problems or suggesting new features.