- Before you begin
Before you begin
We can easily create mac bootable disks on Windows using Win32 image writer and openSuse image writer. We can use MacDisk software to create mac partitions.
To install Windows 10 Education Edition from IUware, or if you have a Windows 8.x or 7 installation disk but do not have an optical (CD/DVD) drive on your computer, you can create a bootable flash drive for the installation.
On a Windows computer, you can use either a tool from Microsoft, or the Rufus software; using the Microsoft tool is generally simpler, while Rufus has some additional features.
What you'll need
To complete the process, you'll need:
- A Windows or macOS computer connected to the internet.On a Windows computer, you must have administrator privileges.
- A flash drive with at least 8 GB of space for Windows 10 and 8.1, or at least 4 GB of space for Windows 7The process described below will delete any data currently on your flash drive. Make sure to back up your flash drive's data to another storage location before proceeding.
- A valid product key that came with your Windows software. For Windows 10, this will be available on IUware. For Windows 8.x or 7, this will be with the disc you purchased.
Insert your flash drive before beginning.
Create a bootable installation flash drive forWindows 10 Education Edition
This process will delete anything saved on your flash drive. Save anything you want to keep before following these steps.
- Go to Windows 10 Education on IUware, and select either the 32-bit or the 64-bit version. Review and accept the terms, and then click Get product key. Copy the product key to use later.
- Download and run the Academic Media Creation Tool. Accept the license terms, select Create installation (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) for another PC, and click Next.
- On the 'Select language, architecture, and edition' prompt, leave the default selections.
- To have the Microsoft tool create your bootable flash drive, make sure your flash drive is plugged in, select USB flash drive, and click Next.If you plan to use Rufus instead, select ISO file and click Next. This will save the
.iso
file to your computer; then, to use Rufus and your.iso
file to create a bootable installation flash drive, follow the directions below.
Create a bootable installation flash drive forWindows 8.1
See Recommended Windows operating systems at IU.
Download Windows 8.1
- Go to Download Windows 8.1 Disc Image (ISO File).
- From the Select edition drop-down menu, select Windows 8.1, and click Confirm.
- Select the desired language and click Confirm.
- Select the 32-bit Download or the 64-bit Download (recommended, unless the machine you're installing on doesn't support it), and download the disk image.
You can now use the
.iso
file to create a Windows 8.1 bootable installation flash drive using either a Windows tool or Rufus.Create a bootable drive using the Windows USB/DVD Download tool
This process will delete anything saved on your flash drive. Save anything you want to keep before following these steps.
This method formats the flash drive using the NTFS file system, which is incompatible with UEFI (secure boot). You will have to disable secure boot, if enabled, in order to boot from a USB drive made using this tool.
To create a bootable installation flash drive using the Windows tool:
- Download and install the Windows USB/DVD Download tool. The final four letters of each file (before
.exe
) represent the language and region of the installer. Download the one for your desired language/location. - Open the Windows USB/DVD Download tool. The tool refers to itself as an older version tool, but works for Windows 8.1 media creation.
- When prompted, browse to your
.iso
file, select it, and click Next. - When asked to select the media type for your backup, make sure your flash drive is plugged in, and then choose USB device.You may be prompted to insert the USB device even if the flash drive is already inserted. Ignore this, and choose the USB device you'll be writing to.
- Click Begin Copying. If prompted, confirm that you wish to erase the flash disk.
- The
.iso
files will start copying to the flash drive; the process can take several minutes. When it's finished, close the wizard and eject and remove the flash drive.
Create a bootable drive using Rufus
To use Rufus to create a bootable drive that is compatible with UEFI, follow the instructions below.
Create a bootable installation flash drive for Windows 7
At IU, you have two options for creating a bootable installation flash drive for Windows 7:
- The Support Center will create a bootable installation flash drive for you at the IU Bloomington Support Center walk-in location; bring a blank flash drive with at least 4 GB of storage.
- If you are unable to visit a walk-in location or would prefer towork with the
.iso
file yourself, download the Windows 7.iso
from Microsoft's Download Windows 7 Disc Images (ISO Files) page.
You can now use the
.iso
file to create a Windows 7 bootable installation flash drive using either a Windows tool or Rufus.Create a bootable drive using the Windows USB/DVD Download tool
This process will delete anything saved on your flash drive. Save anything you want to keep before following these steps.
This method formats the flash drive using the NTFS file system, which is incompatible with UEFI (secure boot) You will have to disable secure boot, if enabled, in order to boot from a USB drive made using this tool.
To create a bootable installation flash drive using the Windows tool:
- Download and install the Windows USB/DVD Download tool. The final four letters of each file (before
.exe
) represent the language and region of the installer. Download the one for your desired language/location. - Open the Windows USB/DVD Download tool.
- When prompted, browse to your
.iso
file, select it, and click Next. - When asked to select the media type for your backup, make sure your flash drive is plugged in, and then choose USB device.You may be prompted to insert the USB device even if the flash drive is already inserted. Ignore this, and choose the USB device you'll be writing to.
- Click Begin Copying. If prompted, confirm that you wish to erase the flash disk.
- The
.iso
files will start copying to the flash drive; the process can take several minutes. When it's finished, close the wizard and eject and remove the flash drive.
Create a bootable drive using Rufus
To use Rufus to create a bootable drive that is compatible with UEFI, follow the instructions below.
Use Rufus to write an .iso
file
- Download Rufus. Rufus is a standalone program and does not require installation.
- Open the Rufus program from where you downloaded it to run it.
- From the Device drop-down menu, select your USB drive, if it isn't automatically selected.
- Under 'Boot selection', select Disk or ISO image (Please select), if it isn't already chosen, and then click SELECT to choose the
.iso
file you downloaded. - Leave 'Image option' set to Standard Windows installation.
- Leave 'Partition scheme' set to GPT.
- For 'Target system', select UEFI (non CSM).
- Under 'Format Options', to ensure the flash drive is compatible with UEFI, select FAT32 for 'File System'.
- To create the flash drive with the 'Press any key to boot from USB' prompt at startup, under the 'Advanced format' options, select Create extended label and icon files.
- When you are finished selecting options, click Start. When prompted, confirm that you want to erase the flash disk.
- The
.iso
files will start copying to the flash drive; the process can take several minutes. When Rufus is done, close the program and eject and remove the flash drive.
Create a bootable installation flash drive on a macOS computer
In macOS, the option to create a Windows flash drive appears only when the computer does not have an optical drive. If your Mac has an optical drive, the option will be either missing or grayed out.
- From the Finder, open the Applications folder, and then Utilities.
- Open the Boot Camp Assistant, and then click Continue. The next screen should give you a list of options.
- UITS recommends making the USB drive installer first. You don't need to install Windows or download the support software at this time, as it will be easier to do both later. To proceed:
- Verify that the USB drive you will be writing to is plugged in.
- Uncheck the Install Windows 7 or later version and Download the latest Windows support software from Apple options.
- Check Create a Windows 7 or later install disk and click Continue.
- Your USB drive should be listed in the 'Destination disk' area. Use choose to browse to your
.iso
file; after selecting it, click Continue. - If prompted, confirm your action and/or provide an administrator password. The process of writing the
.iso
file to the USB drive can take 20 minutes or longer.
Other resources
Website | Article |
---|---|
Windows 10 Forums | How to create a bootable USB flash drive to install Windows 10 |
Windows Eight Forums | How to create a bootable UEFI USB flash drive for installing Windows 8.x |
How-To Geek | How to create bootable USB drives and SD cards for every operating system |
In this tutorial we look at a few ways of creating a bootable Windows 10 USB flash drive from an ISO image. Creation of a bootable USB from an Ubuntu Linux 15.10 Desktop ISO is also discussed for comparison. These techniques can be used to create bootable flash drives for many other operating systems.
If you want to install an operating system (OS) on your computer, you can download an ISO image with that OS. A Windows 10 ISO is available from Microsoft at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO. If your computer has a DVD drive and DVD burning software, you can just burn the ISO to a DVD and use that to boot your computer. However, many of today’s computers don’t have a DVD drive, but do have a USB one. Creating a bootable USB flash drive is not as straightforward as burning a DVD. We look at three of the possible approaches for doing this on a computer running Mac OS X.
Disclaimer: use the information found in this tutorial at your own risk. Please be careful! It is very easy to ruin your Mac’s operating system if you make a mistake, especially when using the command line!
Method 1: Create Bootable Windows 10 USB With Disk Utility
This may be the easiest way of creating a bootable windows 10 USB from an ISO image in Mac OS X. Unlike the other two methods, this one does not require administrative privileges. Unfortunately, this will not work for Ubuntu: the ISO for Ubuntu 15 Desktop contains a Linux-specific file system that cannot be read by Mac OS X without installing additional software.
Here are the steps:
Here are the steps:
- After inserting the USB flash drive, open the Disk Utility found in the Utilities folder under Applications. In this example I use a 32 GB SanDisk Cruzer and create a 5 GB partition on it, called WIN10_TEST:
Here I use a 2-partition layout, since the ISO is a little over 4 GB, and the rest of the space could be used for something else. I kept it unformatted for now. You can partition the disk as a single partition if desired. - Click on the Options… button and, in the dialog that opens, select the Master Boot Record partition scheme and click OK. Then click Apply, as shown on the picture, and wait for the USB to be formatted.Set up USB with MBR partition scheme
- Mount the Windows 10 ISO by selecting File -> Open Disk Image… in the Disk Utility. Please make a note of the volume name by which the mounted ISO image is seen in the Finder. It will probably be a long sequence of letters, numbers, underscores, and dashes.
- For the purposes of this tutorial we will assume that the USB volume is named WIN10_TEST, and the ISO is mounted as volume ISO_WIN10.
Using the Finder, copy all files and folders from ISO_WIN10 to WIN10_TEST.
If you encounter an error, you can use the following command in the Terminal to copy the ISO contents to the USB drive:
cp -R /Volumes/ISO_WIN10/ /Volumes/WIN10_TEST
Please don’t forget the slash (/) after ISO_WIN10!!!
Before running the above command, you may want to make sure that the directories exist. If the first one doesn’t, then the ISO may have been incorrectly mounted. If the second one is missing, then maybe the USB drive was named something else or needs to be taken out and re-inserted. After running the command please make sure that the content of ISO_WIN10 is now also found in WIN10_TEST.
See this post about an error that can occur while copying the ISO contents to a USB flash drive: http://www.dcappdev.com/home-computing/mac-os-x-cannot-copy-windows-10-iso/
Congratulations! You now have a bootable Windows 10 USB that you can use as installation media for a PC. Not sure if you can use it for installation on your Mac, though.
BTW, if you tried this with the Ubuntu 15 Desktop ISO, an attempt to mount the ISO using the Disk Utility would have resulted in the following error message:
As mentioned earlier, this is because that ISO contains a file system that can’t be read by Mac OS X.
Method 2: Create Bootable Windows 10 USB Using UNetbootin Software
This method can also be used to create an Ubuntu bootable USB. Here we use a piece of software called UNetbootin, which is available for multiple platforms, including Mac OS X.
The steps are:
- Download UNetbootin from its official site, http://unetbootin.github.io/
- Make sure you allow your computer to run apps downloaded from anywhere. This can be done in System Preferences under Security & Privacy. You may want to revert to a more restrictive setting after making your bootable USB.
- Run the UNetbootin app as described on its website mentioned above.
Overall, the tool is fairly intuitive. It’s primarily intended for creating installation USB media for various Linux distributions, but it also has an option to select an ISO file on your computer and make a bootable USB from it. As it turns out, it works just fine with more than Linux, it can be used to create Windows installation media as well.
Method 3. Use the dd Command. Works only with Ubuntu ISO
If you are comfortable using Mac OS X command line (a.k.a. Terminal), you can do the following. You will need to be logged in as the root user for this to work. If you are logged in as a regular user with admin privileges, you can become root by executing
You will be prompted for your password.
This method works only with a Ubuntu ISO, at least with the Ubuntu 15.10 Desktop ISO tested here. That’s because the Ubuntu ISO is a hybrid ISO, which can be used to burn a bootable DVD or can be copied, bit by bit, to a USB flash drive to make that drive bootable. You can read more about this type of image, for example, at http://www.tuxgarage.com/2011/06/ubuntu-switched-to-hybrid-disc-images.html.
So, here are the steps:
sudo -i
You will be prompted for your password.
This method works only with a Ubuntu ISO, at least with the Ubuntu 15.10 Desktop ISO tested here. That’s because the Ubuntu ISO is a hybrid ISO, which can be used to burn a bootable DVD or can be copied, bit by bit, to a USB flash drive to make that drive bootable. You can read more about this type of image, for example, at http://www.tuxgarage.com/2011/06/ubuntu-switched-to-hybrid-disc-images.html.
So, here are the steps:
- Run
diskutil list
before inserting a USB flash drive and take note of the listing. - Insert a USB drive
- Run
diskutil list
again and make a note of the disk number corresponding to the USB stick. E.g., if /dev/disk2 shows up, which was not there during the first run, then /dev/disk2 is the USB drive. It is very important to know the correct disk number!!! - Unmound the USB by running
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN
where N is the disk number corresponding to the USB. - Run the following:
dd if=/path/to/the/iso of=/dev/rdiskN bs=4m
Please substitute the path to the Ubuntu ISO and the USB disk number in the above command. Please note the r before disk (it’s rdiskN, not diskN). You don’t have to use bs=4m, but that makes the process much, much faster, as it reads and writes in 4 MB chunks You could also try other numbers; I successfully used 1m.
As a side note, a bootable Windows 10 USB created using method 1 or 2 will only be usable for a UEFI boot. It won’t work for legacy boot. For this reason we did not care to make the partition bootable in method 1.
Enjoy!