Flint Bootable USB Writer
Features

Everything Flint does

One tool for the full drive-workflow: flash an image, verify it landed, wipe or clone drives — all with read-back checks, exact reporting and a headless CLI for automation.

Flashing

Drag and drop an ISO or DD image into the window, or browse for it. Flint computes a SHA-256 hash of the image up front — that hash is the reference used to verify the drive afterwards. A sidecar file (image.iso.sha256) next to the image is also read and validated before flashing.

Writes go directly to the physical disk (not through a mounted volume), so hybrid ISO images, hidden partitions and boot structures survive intact.

Verification

After writing, Flint re-reads the entire drive and compares its SHA-256 hash with the image hash. Anything that doesn't match is reported with exact mismatch offsets, so a bad flash is a reported event, not a mystery.

  • Full-drive SHA-256 read-back with mismatch offsets.
  • Bad-block scan that retries unreadable sectors and reports their locations.
  • Verification can be skipped for image formats that can't be compared sector-for-sector (reported, never silent).

Drive wipes

Wipe a drive to a recognized standard. Whatever you choose, Flint finishes every wipe by reading the drive back and confirming the final pattern — a wipe that isn't verified is reported as failed.

MethodWhat happensBest for
zeroEvery byte overwritten with zerosFast full erase; USB/SD reuse in most cases
nistSingle random pass (NIST SP 800-88)Clearance where a random pass satisfies policy
dodThree passes: zeros, ones, random (DoD 5220.22-M)Legacy three-pass policies for sensitive data

Expert mode

For images that need non-default write settings, expert mode exposes the full imager options:

  • Partition scheme — MBR, GPT or auto.
  • Target system — BIOS/legacy, UEFI or both.
  • Filesystem — FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT or none.
  • Write mode — raw/dd-style, ISO hybrid or Windows To Go.
  • Persistence — reserved persistent storage for Linux live images (e.g. Ubuntu/Debian live sessions). Keep your changes across reboots.
  • Windows To Go — create a Windows image for booting a full Windows environment from USB.

Backup & clone

Two drive-copying jobs round out the workflow:

  • Backup — image an existing drive to a file on disk, with read-back verification of the backup.
  • Clone — copy one drive onto another drive, verified afterwards so a fleet rollout can be trusted.

History & reports

Every flash, wipe, backup and clone is recorded in flash history with timestamps, drive details, duration, average speed and verification outcome. Reports can be viewed, exported or imported.

  • Per-operation flash reports with all the details.
  • Export/import history as JSON for record keeping.
  • One-click Export diagnostics: bundles app version, drive list, history and logs into a single text file — paste it straight into a bug report.

Flash queue

Build a list of images on the Flash screen and flash them one after another to the same drive. Each entry is marked pending → flashing → done, and the queue stops on the first failure — a bad image can never silently poison the rest of a batch.

Verified updates

About once a week Flint checks the GitHub release feed in the background. New releases offer a one-click download of flint.exe that is verified against the published SHA-256 checksum before it's kept — a failed checksum discards the file. Manual checks run from the ⋮ menu.

Themes & accessibility

Three themes — dark (default), light and high-contrast — switch live from Settings and persist between sessions. Everything that matters is keyboard-accessible, and destructive actions never rely on a single click.

Headless CLI

Everything the GUI can do, the CLI can do — for imaging labs and IT workflows. Multi-image queue included.

PowerShell — real CLI syntax 
flint list                          # find serials first (no privileges)
DRIVE 1 USB Stick serial='4C530001270509112345' size=16GB letters=E path=\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3
flint flash  --image C:\images\ubuntu.iso --drive E: --confirm 4C530001270509112345
flint verify --drive E: --sha256 0a4b8c… --image C:\images\ubuntu.iso
flint verify --drive E:            # no digest: bad-block scan
flint wipe   --drive E: --confirm 4C530001270509112345 --method nist
flint backup --drive E: --out C:\images\backup.img
flint clone  --from E: --to F: --confirm 4C530001270509112346
flint queue  --file queue.txt --drive E: --confirm 4C530001270509112345
flint flash-all --image C:\images\ubuntu.iso --confirm ARM   # fleet mode
The --confirm value must equal the drive's full serial — run flint list to print every drive's serial. If flint is not on your PATH, call the full path (& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Flint\bin\flint.exe" …). Use flint list --json for NDJSON, and flint completions for tab-completion in PowerShell. Every command prints a machine-readable RESULT line and a documented exit code (0 ok, 1 fail, 2 cancelled, 3 usage, 4 elevation denied). See the CLI reference in the manual for full semantics.

Safety mechanics

Some habits that keep drives safe by default:

  • Typed confirmation — destructive actions require typing the drive's identity, not just clicking OK.
  • Physical-disk paths only — destructive ops refuse volume handles (like E:) and only accept whole-physical-disk paths.
  • Recheck before write — the target drive is re-detected immediately before flashing so a swapped USB stick can't be hit by accident.
  • Wipe verification — a failed read-back fails the wipe operation.