How To Use Etcher: A Comprehensive Guide

Has a lot of features and options and has a lot of potential use, Etcher is the Bootable USB Creator Software you need if you are looking for those two features.

Etcher is a Windows application that allows users, to create not only a bootable USBs device but a multiboot USBs. A multiboot USB allows the user to run multiple different ISO files from a single bootable USB.

This spares users the trouble of having multiple USB devices such as flash drives or SDCards for each and every ISO they want a bootable copy of which can be a waste. This is because most ISOs only need around 4GB of space to work and with industry minimums moving away from 4GB or even 8GB flash drives and SD Cards, there is so much unutilized space.

Although there are plenty of features the installation of Etcher is no hassle, it is as easy as any other program, just download the executable file from their website, run the installer and follow the instructions shown on the screen. After that, you already have Etcher on your Windows device.

Once you open Etcher you might be intimidated by all the options that are presented to you upfront but do not worry all of us start from there at one point. There are plenty of guides and articles on this program’s website that specifically aim to guide new users on how to maximize Etcher’s capabilities including the multiboot feature! There is also a PDF that is included in your installation that will open if you click on help on Etcher that will surely help you navigate and use the program.

As for the compatibility of ISOs most if not all of your desired bootable ISOs should work with Etcher and should boot on a wide variety of personal computers. This is the result of the development team’s vision of making this program as widely compatible as possible for different ISOs and bootable on almost every PC.

Another great feature of Etcher is QEMU which is a testing environment for all of your bootable USBs. QEMU allows the user to emulate booting from their newly created Bootable USB drive to test out a variety of functions including the boot selector for Multiboot USB Drives. 

This next feature while next directly related to making, testing, or emulating bootable USB Drives is a feature you might have seen somewhere, especially if you like viewing exposing USB Flash drives scams. Etcher allows users to test the size of their USB flash drives as fake drives can even fool Windows and make it seem like its capacity is much bigger than what it actually is. 

This feature can also be crucial if the ISO needs a certain quantity of data but it just won’t work and you bought your USB drive from a shady website or are just unsure of where it came from. A fake storage capacity might be the culprit for all of your worries and headaches so test it out using this feature. 

To add icing on the cake, Etcher despite all of its features, reliability, and speed is still in development and there are frequent updates that address bugs, no matter how minor they are, and add new exciting features.