I find Rufus to be very reliable in creating a bootable USB with an ISO.
I like using "GPT partition scheme for UEFI" when creating a USB for only UEFI installations. There's no need for the other when it's only going to be for UEFI, but either is fine.
I always have to manually select GPT partition Scheme for UEFI. Is that normal? It is never selected automatically by Rufus. Some people say you shouldn't change anything as Rufus selects the best option for your system after you've selected the ISO image to be used. The Tutorial on TenForums says to select GPT partition scheme for UEFI though so that's what Ive done in the past. It is a 2 1/2 year old Dell laptop with UEFI and Secure Boot enabled. Also when I used Rufus last year I noticed that I didn't have to Disable Secure Boot during the installation..even though I saw that as a suggestion on TenForums
GPT is the current standard and has numerous advantages over MBR - there's no reason to use MBR anymore except for compatibility with old BIOS-based machines.
As discussed in the FAQ I linked, Windows Setup will partition your hard drive based on whether you booted the USB from MBR or GPT. So even if you have a UEFI system, if you boot Windows Setup from MBR then you would get an MBR hard drive and lose the advantages of GPT. That's why Rufus makes you explicitly choose the partition type when creating the USB drive.
Rufus is fine. It's doing the same operations as when you manually use diskpart and mount the ISO.
Edit: There's no need to disable Secure Boot if you create a drive with Rufus as long as you use FAT32. That's because most UEFIs don't support NTFS - in order to support NTFS Rufus adds a UEFI driver. However, that driver is not signed by Microsoft therefore Secure Boot will fail.
It's normal to have to select it in Rufus.
Some motherboards don't support booting from a USB with Secure Boot enabled, so that's why I recommend to temporarily disable Secure Boot when doing a clean install of Windows 10, and enable it afterwards. This way it can be more universally compatible, and no chance of Secure Boot interfering with booting from the USB or installing Windows.
When you say Windows Setup will partition your hard drive based on whether you booted the USB from MBR or GPT...do you mean whether the partition table on the USB was set to MBR or GPT when you booted that is what determines what your hard drive is partitioned in? Media Creation Tool and Diskpart use MBR to create the USB but as far as I'm aware Windows 10 partitions on my PC (c:drive) is GPT?
You say "So even if you have a UEFI system, if you boot Windows Setup from MBR then you would get an MBR hard drive and lose the advantages of GPT. That's why Rufus makes you explicitly choose the partition type when creating the USB drive." I'm not sure I understand that. Do you mean that where Rufus asks for Partition type it is asking you what your hard drive partitioning on your PC is. I thought it was asking you what partition scheme you wanted to be set up on the USB flash drive that it is about to create.
What are you actually selecting to happen when you choose GPT partition Scheme for UEFI in Rufus..what does Rufus presume and what action does Rufus perform when you make that selection?
What determines the way that Windows will be installed is whether the USB flash drive is booted in UEFI mode or legacy BIOS (CSM) mode. The MCT and the manual diskpart method of creating the USB flash drive will create one that can be booted in either UEFI or legacy BIOS mode, as long as the partition on the flash drive is FAT32 and marked as active.
It gets a bit confusing because I know that using Rufus partitions the actual USB itself in GPT whereas after using the Media Creation Tool or diskpart the actual USB is not GPT but it is shown as MBR. I guess I'm trying to get my head around why that is? That's why I thought when you select GPT for UEFI under the Rufus options that what you were actually asking Rufus to do was to partition the USB flash drive in GPT. But I also wondered why that was because I'm aware that all USB flash drives are in MBR format. That's one of the reasons I'm torn between whether I should be using Diskpart to create my bootable Windows 10 USB flash drives on my UEFI laptop or Rufus
Both methods will work so pick the one you are the most comfortable with. For me that's Rufus.
Rufus is at version 2.18 and there is no flickering here. Always choose MBR partition scheme for UEFI and it ends up with GPT.
In post #2, Philipyip explains the correct procedure. Plus selecting GPT when dual boot with Ubuntu affects Win10 resolution on startup.
You choose the partition scheme in Rufus. Not a fan of diskpart, we're always using Rufus for Win 10 or Ubuntu's.
Get Rufus from their website:
Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way
Yep, personal preference as long as you get all the choices selected properly in RUFUS and selected in the proper order. I prefer diskpart because to me the choices are fewer and I have the few commands memorized so it takes me less than one minute to get the flash drive ready to copy files to.
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