I prefer unetbootin. I have also used Multiboot and I like that one, too.
Have found mkusb to be a powerful utility, as well.
BalenaEtcher never suited me early on and it has been long enough that I cannot remember why I didn’t like it at the time.
I have never used Rufus that I recall offhand, but I have heard good reviews of it.
But does BalenaEtcher destroy USB sticks? That is a very good question and I think sorting the Evidence against Opinion may be more useful:
I have had some close-calls in which I thought a USB stick was killed. But after calming down and patiently doing some troubleshooting, was able to recover things. In one instance, this was due to the USB being corrupted by I/O error being unplugged while writing, with no etcher software involved at all.
Rul, maybe we can continue troubleshooting to help you to double-check the viability of your USB stick.