In this blog I will talk about some of the best free software for creating a bootable USB drive which you can use as a startup disk on a PC with no operating system installed. The list of software below is not exhaustive, but they are 3 of the best and most popular options out there. The first software that we recommend is Rufus – it's an open source free program that's available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems. To create a bootable USB drive from it, all you need to do is download and extract its executable file on your desktop or anywhere else where you want to save it on your computer. If you want to save it on your Windows desktop, there's a shortcut for it right on the executable's window; if you want to save it in another folder, just click on File > Save in the top menu. After doing so, double-click on the file to run it. Once you have executed Rufus, click on "Look for bootable disk…" in the top menu and choose the USB drive letter in the pop-up box that appears. You can also change some other options here if you wish to do so, but they are not necessary if all you want to do is create a bootable USB drive from disk image files. The next step is choosing where your disk image files are located. This is done by clicking on the button that says "…" next to the drop-down menu that appears. In the pop-up box, click on "Select image file…" and navigate to your disk image files folder. For example, I have some disk image files of Windows 8 on my computer so I navigated to those files and clicked on one of them. You can also create a new disk image file by clicking on "…" and selecting "Create a new blank disk image", but it will actually create a zip file which you will have to extract first before using it as a startup disk – this is because creating a blank USB drive from an empty zip file doesn't work. Once you have selected the disk image files you want to use, click on "OK" and press the button that says "Start". Basically, what this does is start copying your disk image files on the USB drive so by default it starts copying them to the USB drive's free space. The rest of the process is done automatically so all you need to do is wait till Rufus finishes creating a bootable USB drive out of your disk image files. The second software that I'm going to talk about is WinUSB Maker by Yalu. It's also available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems so you can use it no matter what computer you're using. It allows you to create a bootable USB drive by creating a custom bootloader which loads the disk image files that you choose. The good thing about this software is that it allows you to create bootable USB drives out of disk image files without having to extract them first. This isn't possible using Rufus, for example, unless the zip file contains an empty directory or folder. 8eeb4e9f32 18
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