create bootable usb drive for windows 10

The process may take several minutes depending on the speed of your USB thumb drive. Click OK on the confirmation screen to begin creating your bootable USB drive. The Format Options can usually be left as is, hit Start when you are ready. Once selected, just hit Open.įor image option, partition scheme and target system, I suggest using the defaults which are 'Standard Windows Installation', GPT Partition Scheme and UEFI target system. If you need to download a Windows 10 ISO file, check out this article. Next, click Select and navigate to your ISO file you want to use. To be safe, I typically use a 16GB thumb drive by Transcend.īy default, Rufus will only display removable USB drives but make sure the correct device is selected under Drive Properties. Make sure that your USB thumb drive is larger than the ISO file downloaded. Once installed, plug in your USB thumb drive and then start up Rufus. Alternatively you can download directly from the Github repository here. To get started, head over to and download Rufus 3.12 or later. This is very helpful when performing a clean install of the Windows 10 20H2 October update ISO.

But recently I switched to using a new tool called Rufus that is both reliable at successfully creating bootable media and automating many steps to quickly get the job done so you can perform a clean install.

I've written about a few methods over the years to create a bootable USB flash drive from a Windows 10 ISO file.

Create bootable usb drive for windows 10