Win32 Disk Imager is an open source graphical user interface for a fairly simple function – writing an .img file on a removable device, such as an SD card or a USB memory stick. This extremely simple utility offers no other functionality, making it suitable for all types of users, regardless of their knowledge of raw disk image files.
Despite what its developers say on their Sourceforge page, there is no way of creating new IMG files using Win32 Disk Imager. The program assumes that you have already created such a raw image with a third-party tool, and that you want to transfer its contents to a given removable device. Thus, when you open its one-window, tiny GUI, there is no other option but to load an .img or .IMG image file. There are different buttons for “Write” and “Read”, though, but they don’t go active until you have selected an IMG file. The former says that it reads data from “Device” to “Image file”, though overwriting the already selected image. The latter does what the program has been designed to do – extracts the contents of an IMG file and writes it to the removable device of your choice. Both actions will always trigger a warning message, which will surely deter all those users that are not too sure about what they are actually doing.
As a bonus, the program allows you to generate an MD5 Hash to validate the integrity of the IMG file. All in all, those (developers, mainly) who used to work with raw disk image files on a daily basis, will find this small, straightforward, and free GUI a nice tool to have.
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