Summary: In this guide, we discussed the top 5 balenaEtcher alternatives that you can use on your Windows, Mac, or Linux system to create bootable installer media. These Balena Etcher alternative tools can create Windows, macOS, or Linux OS bootable media much faster than the balenaEtcher.
Have you ever been in a situation where you have to make a bootable USB drive and you have no idea how to do it? Simply copying the files from the source to your external hard disk or USB sticks isn’t going to serve the purpose. To write the disk image files (such as an iso file) onto your drive is a crucial step. This can be attained through apps like balenaEtcher which can make your USB drive a bootable flash drive.
Though balenaEtcher is the most popular application in the field, some amazing alternatives serve as the best balenaEtcher alternatives for Windows, Mac, and Linux as well. In this post, we bring to your notice some of these gems of applications through which you can burn the image of your disk.
Rufus
Rufus is an application known by many users who need to create bootable flash drives for their chores. It is very easy to use and is designed to boot up USB devices quickly. Rufus can also be used to easily format your hard disks with just a few clicks, which will completely wipe your drive clean. Also, it is very fast in performance and consumes a lot less time in its operations as compared to its alternatives in the market.
Rufus can be downloaded from here.
YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator
YUMI, which is an abbreviation for Your Universal Multiboot Integrator, is yet another Etcher alternative that is widely used by users from all around the world. It is a successor to MultibootISOs. The most important feature of this software is that it permits the storing of multiple Linux OS or other applications at a time that can be chosen from at a later stage (via boot menu). YUMI Multiboot USB Creator provides a lot of conveniences that help in the creation of an all-in-one multipurpose USB PC Diagnostic Tool and a repairing solution.
YUMI Multiboot is completely free to use and you can download it from here
WinSetupFromUSB
Another alternative to balenaEtcher is WinSetupFromUSB which is completely free of cost. Just like YUMI, this application is also used to create a bootable flash drive quickly with ease. WinSetupFromUSB is sometimes used by its users to prepare Linux distributions such as CentOS and Fedora. Apart from this, it can also be used to create a multi-OS boot flash drive. What this means is that it can support multiple sets of Windows operating systems files such as XP, 7, 8, 10, and Windows Vista.
Download WinSetupDFromUSB from here.
LinuxLive USB Creator
LinuxLive is open-source software that is available for Windows. It is also known as LiLi (short form for LinuxLive) and is designed for beginners as well as experts. For beginners, LiLi lets them have a taste of Linux while keeping Windows clean and away from the field of modifications. While for those of you who are already experienced with the Linux interface, LiLi will let you test almost any Linux distributions directly from the Windows operating system.
Some of the features that come with Linux Live USB Creator are as follows:
- It is very easy to learn and use.
- It charges you nothing since it is completely free of cost.
- LiLi is available in multiple languages. One can change the language preferences by tweaking its settings.
- To try and use Linux, you need not reboot your computer.
- Supports a bunch of Linux distributions.
- Additional features such as SmartClean and SmartDownload are available inside the program.
One can download LiLi, or LinuxLive USB Creator, from its official website.
UNetbootin
Universal Netboot Installer, or UNetbootin in short, is one such application that lets you try different operating systems and very quickly create bootable USB hard drives. This application, being cross-platform, runs on multiple platforms such as Windows, Mac, and Linux. With UNetbootin’s built-in downloader, you can create Live USB drives for Linux ISO images and rescue disks.
You can download UNetbootin from this link.
Let us know which balenaEtcher alternative worked for you and which one you would recommend as the best balenaEtcher alternative.
