How to Create an Ubuntu Bootable USB on Windows (2026)

I’m sitting here with a 32 GB SanDisk Ultra USB stick that’s flashed Ubuntu more times than I can count. Three of those were this past weekend, because I was helping a friend dual boot Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on a Lenovo IdeaPad with Windows 11 24H2 already installed and BitLocker active, and the first two … Read more

How to Format USB to FAT32 on Windows 10/11 (2026 Guide)

I bought a 64 GB SanDisk Ultra Fit a couple of weeks back to flash a BIOS update onto my old Gigabyte motherboard, and the second I plugged it into my Windows 11 24H2 desktop and right-clicked Format, the FAT32 option just wasn’t there. Only NTFS and exFAT showed up in the dropdown. The motherboard’s … Read more

Create a Bootable USB for Windows 10/11 (2026 Guide)

Win32 Disk Imager IMG to USB step 1

I’ve made probably 80 to 100 bootable Windows USBs in the last decade, across Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11, on everything from a 2009 Dell desktop to a 2024 ASUS ROG laptop. About a third of those were made with Win32 Disk Imager. The rest were made with Rufus or the Microsoft Media Creation … Read more

How to Install Raspberry Pi OS on SD Card (2026 Guide)

Win32 Disk Imager IMG to USB step 1

I installed Raspberry Pi OS on my first Pi (a Pi 2 Model B, 2015) using Win32 Disk Imager. That flash took about 10 minutes over USB 2.0, and I spent another 20 minutes trying to figure out why it wasn’t booting (I’d flashed the wrong .img, a laptop restore image instead of Raspbian). I’ve … Read more

How to Restore a Raspberry Pi SD Card from IMG (2026)

Select image file dialog raspibackup.img for SD card restore

The SD card in my Home Assistant Pi finally died two weeks ago. Not a slow death with warning errors, it just stopped booting on a Tuesday morning. Pulled the card, read errors from the reader, confirmed it was toast. 18 months of continuous writes finally used up the flash endurance. But I had a … Read more

How to Clone an SD Card to an IMG File on Windows (2026)

Win32 Disk Imager Select a disk image file picker for SD card backup

My Home Assistant Pi 4 has been running for 18 months. Zigbee2MQTT with 47 devices paired. Frigate NVR with four cameras. Node-RED flows I’ve tweaked at 2am in three different time zones. The SD card is a SanDisk Ultra 32 GB that’s probably done 400 GB of writes by now and is starting to throw … Read more

Install Windows 11 from ISO Without USB (2026 Method)

Mounted Windows 11 ISO shown as DVD Drive E in This PC File Explorer

My sister called me last month needing help. Her laptop’s USB ports were dead (all three, somehow, probably bad solder job on the port board), and she needed to reinstall Windows 11 because her OneDrive sync had corrupted and nothing else she tried fixed the boot loop. No bootable USB option. I talked her through … Read more