How to quickly create a macOS bootable USB on Windows Here are the steps to create a macOS Sierra bootable USB media with GPT partition support on Windows 10 to rescue your Mac computer. Mauro Huculak @pureinfotech. (Make sure the usb is partitioned as mac bootable then use use the image recovery and put your mounted OS X iso into the source and your usb as the location.) restart your computer while holding down the option key.
We previously showed you how to create a Windows 10 USB installation media when performing a clean install of Windows 10, but there might be an instance where the only machine you have available is a Mac. We'll show you to create a bootable USB flash drive with the Windows 10 installer from a Mac. It's easier than you think, thanks to the built-in Boot Camp Assistant from Apple.
Download Windows 10 Disc Image
First, you need to download the Windows 10 ISO file. Go to the download page and select the proper edition of Windows 10 in the dropdown menu. If you don't know what K, KN, or Single Language edition stands for, just select Windows 10 in the list.
Create USB installer with Boot Camp Assistant
After downloading the ISO file, you'll need to use Boot Camp Assistant to move it to a bootable USB drive.
- Insert a USB flash drive to your Mac. Make sure it's at least 8GB, which is usually marked on the USB stick. You can also check by right-clicking the USB drive on your desktop and clicking Get Info. Check if the number next to Capacity is at least 8GB. All the files in the drive will be deleted, so make sure there are no important documents inside.
- Open Boot Camp Assistant. The easiest way to launch it is through Spotlight Search, which you can bring up by pressing Command and Spacebar. Press Enter to launch the app.
- Check the box for 'Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk' and deselect 'Install Windows 7 or later version.'
- Click Continue to proceed.
- Boot Camp Assistant will automatically locate the ISO file from your downloads folder, but make sure it is the right file. Click the 'Choose…' button and locate the ISO file. Make sure the destination disk is the USB thumb drive you've inserted.
- Click Continue. It can take about 20 minutes to format and set up the USB installer on the Mac.
- When Boot Camp Assistant is done, the USB drive will be renamed to WININSTALL. Click Quit to close the app and then Eject the USB drive.
That's it! You now have a bootable USB drive with the Windows 10 installer. You can use it to configure new Windows 10 PCs from scratch. We told you it was easy!
Have you tried creating a Windows 10 installer USB drive from a Mac before? Did you encounter any issues? Let us know your experience in the comments!
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The last release of Mac OS doesn't have the option to create a bootable USB from Bootcamp like previous versions, and it is a problem because that require uses other tools.
I am updating this post today Dec 12, 2018. The reason is that I was only using UNetbootin to create the bootable USB, I will leave guide as a second method since it still working, and I will explain to you how you can create the bootable Windows USB without extra software.
The first step for both methods requires to format your USB device to ExFAT.
Format USB to ExFAT
In order to boot from the USB, you need to format the USB to ExFAT, you can do it using Disk Utility (it comes with MacOS).
This step is the same for both methods. You need to show all the devices in Disk Utility' before to start the process.
Select your USB device in the list (not the partition), right click and then click on the Erase option:
In the next screen make sure you select these two options:
- Format: ExFAT
- Scheme: Master Boot Record
Click the
Erase
button.If for some reason it fails, probably is because MacOS still using the USB, just repeat the steps, but if you see a screen similar to above screen is because the operation is successful.
Format USB with the terminal
You also can format the USB from the terminal, but you have to take care to use the correct device because, if you use the wrong name you will lose everything.
With this command you can list the device on MacOS:
This is an example, my USB is the disk2:
This command is to format the USB, the last parameter is the the USB:
Copy Windows files to USB - Method 1
This process is very easy doesn't require to install other software, and they are just a few steps:
Open Windows ISO
Just double click on the ISO image, MacOS mount the image automatically.
Copy files
Now you only need to copy the files and paste them to the USB.
Command + A
Select all files.Command + C
Copy files.- Go to your USB
Command + V
paste the files.
This process could fail if you are using a USB with FAT32 because the file
install.win
is over 4GB, if this is the case try to open the terminal and copy paste the files from there (no always works. Try to follow the instructions to format the USB in ExFAT, NTFS works for some BIOS).This is the command to copy the files from the ISO to the USB:
And that is all, now you can try boot from the USB.
UNetbootin - Method 2
I will show you how you can use UNetbootin to create a bootable USB, it can be used no only for Mac but for Windows and Linux distributions too.
UNetbootin is free software and it is also available for Windows and Linux.
Check the path name of your USB Disk.
Always in Disk Utility, select the new partition that we created in the previous step, and click on the information button, it will give you the information about the new partition.
You also can use the terminal and the command
diskutil
to see the list of drives:Download UNetbootin:
- Download the
dmg
directly from the Website.
And copy theapp
to the/Application
folder. - I prefer to use homebrew to install applications, you can check this article for more information: Installing Applications on Mac with Homebrew:
Makes the USB booteable
Open UNetbootin and you only need select 3 options:
- Diskimage and ISO
- Now we need open the ISO Windows image that is on our computer.
- Select your USB device on UNetbootin.
- Click on the OK, button and wait to the process end it will take a time.
NOTES:
- I tested other tools like
dd
andEtcher
but they are not working because Windows requires extra steps, for the moment this is the only easy tool that I know that works if you are on Windows try Rufus. - Some users reported that UNetbootin is not working, if after to format the USB drive and change the block size is not working for you try another Drive with enough space.