Image Writer For Windows is a portable open source program to write disk image files with the file extension .img to removable media. Removable devices compatible with the software are for instance USB sticks and drives or SD cards.
The application has been initially designed to copy Ubuntu images to USB drives. The capabilities of the software go beyond that however.
The program displays a simple interface on startup. It begins by selecting a suitable .img file from the local computer system. Users need to make sure that the format is correct, and that the size of the disk image does not exceed the available size of the usb device.
It should be noted that all existing files on the storage device will be overwritten in the process, so backup if you need to access the data on the stick at a later time.
Select the driver letter of the removable drive after selecting the .img file on the local hard drive. A click on the Write button writes the img file to the removable drive. If the img is bootable, it will create a bootable USB drive. That’s handy for Linux distributions and tools that come with booting options.
Img is not a format that is as widely known as iso for instance. Most Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, are now offering their disk images as ISO files instead. And for those purposes, an ISO to USB software like UNetbootin serves the purpose just fine.
Still, I happen to come upon an .img file occasionally and a tool like Win32 Disk Imager comes in handy in those situations.
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Thanks for the tip, but I actually never failed just changing file extension from img to .iso if necessary. ISO and IMG are mainly the same format, just some stupid old name fight from back then.
Did not know that, thanks for the tip.
It works with ISO images just fine, but you need to either change the extension to IMG or use *.iso at the file open dialog.
how to load a Virtualbox machine using a USB stick prepared with this software ?
Hello Martin,
Good article. Thanks. I tried the win32diskimager to back up a bootable Linux SD (2GB) and to my BIG surprise when I tried to write it to another SD (2GB) it said “NOT SUFFICIENT DISK SPACE”. It blew me away. What do you think happened?
Thanks,
-Rafael