Win64 Disk Imager -

Under the "Device" section, use the dropdown menu to select your USB drive letter.

In testing with a 32GB SD card and a 4GB Raspberry Pi image: win64 disk imager

| Action | Time | |--------|------| | Write 4GB image to USB 3.0 card reader | ~5–6 minutes | | Read/backup 8GB SD card to .img | ~8–10 minutes | | CPU usage | Low (1–5%) | | RAM usage | ~20–30 MB | Under the "Device" section, use the dropdown menu

It writes sequentially, so performance is limited by your drive and USB port speed. It does not do asynchronous writes or caching tricks – safer but slower. The most common use case: You downloaded Raspberry

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The most common use case: You downloaded Raspberry Pi OS (Raspbian) or Ubuntu Server, and you need to flash it to a microSD card.