How to Create a Bootable USB Drive

Gather a few things and the rest is easy:

• A USB flash drive of at least 8 GB (16 GB or more for current Windows installers).
• The official ISO file for the OS or tool you want to boot.
• A free imaging tool such as Rufus, Ventoy, or balenaEtcher.
• A backup of anything currently on the USB drive, since it will be wiped.

Verify the ISO's checksum against the value published on the official site if one is provided. This confirms the download is complete and has not been altered.

Each tool has a sweet spot. Rufus is the fastest and most flexible choice on Windows, with options for partition scheme and boot mode that matter for older or newer hardware. balenaEtcher is the simplest cross-platform option (Windows, Mac, Linux) and is hard to get wrong, which makes it great for Linux distros.

Ventoy is the clever one: instead of writing a single ISO, it installs a small boot loader on the USB drive, after which you simply copy multiple ISO files onto it and pick which to boot at startup. If you juggle several distros or rescue tools, Ventoy saves you from re-flashing the drive every time.

Writing the drive is only half the job. To actually use it, you must tell the computer to boot from USB instead of its internal drive. Restart the machine and press the boot-menu key during startup, which is commonly F12, F10, Esc, or F2 depending on the manufacturer. Choose the USB drive from the list.

On modern PCs you may also need to handle Secure Boot. Most official Windows and major Linux ISOs are signed and boot fine, but for some tools you may need to temporarily disable Secure Boot in the firmware settings. Re-enable it afterward for security.

If the USB drive does not appear in the boot menu, the most common causes are a poorly written drive, the wrong partition scheme (GPT versus MBR), or Secure Boot blocking an unsigned image. Re-create the drive with Rufus and match the partition scheme to your system: GPT for modern UEFI machines, MBR for older BIOS systems.

If the computer boots straight into its normal OS, the boot order is wrong. Use the one-time boot menu key rather than relying on saved settings, and make sure fast startup or fast boot is not skipping the USB device.

Double-check that you select the correct drive in your imaging tool. These tools list every connected disk, and choosing your main hard drive instead of the USB stick would wipe your data. Unplug other external drives first to avoid mistakes.

Only ever flash ISOs from official sources. A modified Windows or Linux image from a random forum could carry malware that runs before your operating system even loads, which is among the hardest infections to remove. The few official links below are the right starting points.