Create A Windows Boot Disk With Unetbootin



Many times you want to install Windows 10 on a Mac computer with the intention of running your favorite windows games, applications which don’t have a version for Mac OS, or solve some Windows issue especially for boot-related issues. Regardless of the causes, you need to first create a Windows 10 bootable USB from ISO on Mac OS. As a Mac users, you might know that Apple provides an custom-tailored solution called Bootcamp to help create a Windows bootable USB. But in fact, creating Windows bootable USB on Mac isn’t as straightforward as you think, in the creating process, naturally there will be a variety of problems.

We've also received lots of emails from readers asking why Bootcamp wouldn’t allow me to use Windows 10, despite the fact that my laptop is compatible. BootCamp doesn't always work well, especially in creating Windows 10 bootable USB installation media, the most common errors you will encounter: 'failed to load BOOTMGR' or 'not Enough Space'. Another reason is Apple has already stripped the ability to make Windows 10 bootable USB in last release of Mac OS, and it is a problem because that require uses other tools. It’s believed that each software has its own pros and cons, Boot Camp is no exception. But it’s still a outstanding tool which is developed by Apple, so, this article will give priority to Boot Camp and also shows 4 intuitive approach to help you make a Windows 10 bootable USB on mac with or without Boot Cam Assistant.

Create Bootable Usb With Unetbootin

Method #1: Create A Bootable Windows 10/8/7 USB on Mac with Bootcamp

As a dual-boot booting tool, Boot Camp Assistant is highly regarded in the field of creating Windows 7/8/10 bootable USB since it was released, it provides the ability to download drivers, re-partition, and add new partition on your Mac. But sometimes you will find bootcamp tool doesn't allow any customization of the process. Before using it, you need to know that your USB installation media will be formatted as FAT32 file system, which can’t store files larger than 4 GB. Let’s see how it works.

Step 1. First of all, make sure you’ve download a Windows 10, or Win7, 8 ISO image file on your Mac computer. Then you need to move ISO file to your USB drive by using Boot Cam.

The Drive option wants you to select what disk drive you want to install it to. I am obviously selecting C: because I have no other physical drives or partitions. When it’s all set, click OK. It’s then left to UNetbootin to dual boot Linux and Windows on your machine. UNetbootin starts to extract the necessary files from the ISO image file. Method 3: Use UNetbootin on Mac UNetbootin is free to use and allows you to make a bootable USB drive for Windows 10 using your Mac. Again, like the first method, you will need a USB drive (with a capacity of 16GB as a minimum recommendation) and you will also need to download the.iso file and keep it in a memorable location.

Step 2. Now, insert your USB dive with at least 8GB to your Mac computer, make sure you’ve created a copy for your important file because your USB will be formatted.

Step 3. Launch the Boot Cam Assistant from Utilities, then check the two options: Create a Windows installation disk and Install Windows 7 or later version. Click Continue to proceed.

Step 4. when you go to this step, Boot Cam Assistant will detect and locate your ISO image file, click choose button to find and import the right one, and click continue. It may take some times to format your USB, please wait.

Step 5. When the process is complete, you will see that your USB drive will be renamed as WINNSTALL, this is your windows 10 bootable USB tool! Click Quit to close the app and then Eject the USB drive.

That's it! You’ve successfully made a bootable USB drive with Windows 10 OS, and you can use it to configure new Windows 10 PCs from scratch.

Method #2: Create A Bootable Windows 10 USB On Mac with WonderISO

Making a bootable USB is not as easy as copying ISO file to your USB drive,it requires professional ISO writing tool to burn it to USB drive instead of copying. For Mac users, There may have many chance to encounter some unknown errors when using Bootcamp to create a Windows 10 USB disk on Mac, like Bootcamp failed to load bootmgr, not recognizing iso or usb not enough space,etc. So you desperately need to find a way to create bootable USB without Bootcamp.

Fortunately, PassCue for ISO is a wonderful tool which can burn, create, edit and extract ISO files from any files, folders and operating system files. It has been adopted on a large scale by various users and widely recommended. It provides 5 key functions for your ISO operations including: Burn ISO, Extract ISO, Edit ISO, Create ISO and copy disc, it works very effectively in both Windows and Mac OS.

Step 1. Get the software downloaded from above button and install it on your Mac with proper step instructions. Launch the tool with admin privileges to enable every kind of possible authorities. Once the tool screen turns up, you should see there are five functions including Burn, Extract, Cretae, Edit and Copy Disc. To make a Windows 10 bootable USB, then you need to choose the first option “Burn” and next.

Step 2. As you can see, you’re allowed to create a Windows 10 bootable disk with USB drive or DVD/CD, here, just insert your USB drive to your Mac, then import ISO file by clicking browse button. Select your file format from the 'System File' section as FAT, FAT 32, NTFS.

Step 3. In the partition style, it provide two mode to choose based on your ISO file: MBR or UEFI. If MBR won’t boot, then change UEFI mode to create again. When all settings are complete, click Burn button to begin, it will take 5 - 10 minutes to complete the burning process.

Step 4. When the burning is complete, you can open your USB drive and see there are many boot files inside it. Take out of your USB drive and try to install Windows OS on your other computers.

As you can see, this method is so easy and safe! Never damages your ISO file. If you don’t find the method satisfactory and have plans to try out a different approach, you are most welcome to do so.

Part 3 : Create A Windows 10 Bootable USB on Mac without Bootcamp

As we mentioned above, creating a bootable USB Windows 7/8/10 on mac OS isn’t as simple as you might think. You will need Terminal tool on Mac to perform some command. Before we start make sure you have an effective ISO file and have USB flash drive with not less than 4GB capacity. Here are the steps to be performed on a Mac to create a Windows 10 USB Bootable Installation Drive on mac.


Step 1. Connect your USB drive to your Mac.

Step 2. Open a Terminal (under Utilities)

Step 3. Now you need to Run diskutil list and confirm the device node assigned to your USB flash media disk2.

Step 4. Type the following command.

hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/windows-10-iso.img ~/path/to/windows-10-iso.iso

Step 5. Replace /path/to/downloaded.iso with the path to where the image file is located; for example, ./windows10.iso). This command will convert the ISO file to IMG format.

Step 6. Type the following command to check the location of your USB drive:

diskutil list

Step 7. Next, you need to type the command to Unmount the USB drive, then replace /dev/diskX with the location of your USB drive.

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX

Step 8. Finally, run the following command to create Windows 10/8/7 bootable USB on Mac.

sudo dd if=/path/to/windows-10-iso.img of=/dev/rdiskX bs=1m

Step 9 . Then try to replace /path/to/windows-10-iso with the real filepath of the ISO file and /dev/diskX with the location of the USB drive. This command will take some time, and once it’s complete, you can eject the USB drive by this command: diskutil eject /dev/diskX

Once the process is complete, you can see the data will be copied and your USB will be bootable.

Part 4 : Create Bootable USB Windows 10 on Mac with UNetbootin

UNetbootin is free software and the latest release of new features in UNetbootin focuses on cross-platform technology that allows you create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without a CD. It can run on Mac, Windows and Linux. Now, I will show a detailed tutorial.

Unetbootin

Step 1. Like other method 1, you can also need to check the path name of the USB drive. After you insert your USB to your Mac, open the Disk utility on Mac OS X, select the USB drive from the left panel and click Info button. Write down the USB name info for the next usage.

Step 2. Now, you need to download UNetbootin tool then install it on your Mac, launch it. And copy the app to the /Application folder. Select the Diskimage button and import your ISO image file.

Step 3. In the panel, select the USB drive in the Type option, and select your USB drive on UNetbootin. Click on the OK button and wait to the process end!

In my opintion, It’s easy to use and doesn’t damages your system. But there still some users reported that UNetbootin is not working. Good luck to you!

Related Articles

Summary :

What is UEFI boot mode? How to create a UEFI bootable USB? How do I boot from USB in UEFI mode? If you are also troubled by these questions, this post of MiniTool is what you need. It will provide you with detailed steps and clear screenshots.

Quick Navigation :

About UEFI Boot

Why do so many people want to create a UEFI boot USB? In order to create a UEFI bootable USB successfully, it is necessary to figure out the following 2 questions first.

What Is UEFI

UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is known as a motherboard firmware interface for computers. It serves as a “middleman” between your computer’s firmware and the operating system. With UEFI boot mode, your computer can initialize the hardware components and boot the OS stored on the hard disk.

In recent years, UEFI boot mode seems to be the successor to the BIOS. More and more users tend to boot their computer in UEFI mode. This is because the UEFI mode breaks many limitations of BIOS mode, including the restrictions on the size of hard drive, booting process, number of partitions, and security.

In a word, UEFI boasts more advanced features compared with BIOS. Here we summarize them as follows:

Tip: If you want to know more details about UEFI vs BIOS, you can read this post “UEFI vs. BIOS – What’s the Differences and Which One Is Better”.
  • UEFI allows users to handle a storage device that is larger than 2TB, while the old legacy BIOS cannot handle so large d
  • With UEFI boot mode, you can create more than 4 primary partitions on a GPT disk.
  • UEFI supports secure startup. It is capable of checking the validity of the operating system to prevent malware from tampering the startup process.
  • UEFI firmware supports various optimization and enhancement, which can help your system boot more quickly than it could before.
  • UEFI supports both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, which helps the computer use more RAM to handle a more complicated process than BIOS.
  • Under the UEFI mode, the computer supports networking function that can help remote troubleshooting and UEFI configuration.
  • UEFI has much more setup menus and simpler graphical user interface than legacy BIOS.

What Support UEFI Boot Mode

UEFI has lots of advantages over BIOS, but not all computers and devices are supported. In order to boot from USB in UEFI mode successfully, the hardware on your hard disk must support UEFI. One of the most important things is to make sure that your system disk is GPT form. If not, you have to convert MBR to GPT disk first.

If your hardware doesn’t support the UEFI firmware, you need to purchase a new one that supports and includes UEFI.

Now, you may have an overall understanding of UEFI boot mode. Let’s see how to create a Windows 10 UEFI boot stick. Please keep reading the following part carefully.

How to Create a UEFI Bootable USB

How to create a UEFI boot USB? Before starting the following steps, you need to prepare a USB flash drive with 8GB space at least.

Method 1. Use Windows Media Creation Tool

Windows Media Creation Tool is one of the most common ways to create a bootable USB drive. Similarly, you can use it to create a UEFI boot USB.

Tip: This method is suitable for those computers that are using UEFI firmware. To create a UEFI boot USB, you can perform a clean installation or in-place upgrade of the OS.

Now, let’s see how to create a Windows 10 UEFI USB via Windows Media Creation Tool.

Step 1. Make sure the USB flash drive is connected to your computer.

Step 2. Click here to download the Windows Media Creation Tool from Microsoft's official website and save it on your computer.

Step 3. Run this program as an administrator and click on Accept to agree with the license terms.

Step 4. In the pop-up window, click the second option Create installation media USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) for another PC and click on the Next button.

Step 5. Then check the box Use the recommended options for this PC and click on Next to go on, which will automatically select the language, edition, and architecture that match with your computer.

Tip: You can also select the Language, Windows Edition, and Architecture that you want to create for the Windows 10 UEFI USB.

Step 6. Select the USB flash drive option and click on Next to go on.

Step 7. Then select the USB flash drive from the Removable drives list and click on Next to go on. If you don’t find the USB drive, click on the Refresh drive list option.

Create A Windows Boot Disk With Unetbootin

Step 8. Now, this tool will download the latest Windows 10 installation files that you select above on your device. Once the download is completed, click on Next to start creating the Windows 10 bootable USB.

Step 9. Once you see the screen Your USB flash drive is ready, click on the Finish button.

Now, the Windows 10 UEFI boot stick has been created. You can use it to boot your computer and install Windows 10.

In addition to using the tool of Microsoft, here are another 2 effective utilities that can help you create a UEFI boot USB.

Method 2. Use Rufus

Rufus is an open-source program that can create a UEFI bootable USB by using an existing ISO file. Connect your USB flash drive to the computer and then follow the steps below:

Step 1. Click here to download Rufus and install the program on your PC.

Step 2. Launch this program to open its main interface, and then select the USB flash drive from the Device menu.

Step 3. Click on the Select button under the Boot selection tab, and then select the Windows 10 ISO file from its folder path.

Step 4. Select the Standard Windows installation option from the Image option drop-down menu.

Step 5. Select the GPT option from the Partition scheme drop-down menu.

Create A Windows Boot Disk With Unetbootin

Step 6. Select the UEFI (non-CSM) option from the Target system drop-down menu

Step 7. Then you can click on Show advanced drive properties section and keep the default settings.

Step 8. Enter a name for the USB drive in the Volume label field, and then you can select a File system and cluster size from the drop-down menu.

Step 9. After the Format Options are confirmed, click on the Start button.

Step 10. Click on the OK button to confirm this process and click the Close button.

After finishing the above steps, this tool will create a UEFI bootable USB drive automatically.

Method 3. Use MiniTool Partition Wizard

MiniTool Partition Wizard is another effective tool that can help you create a UEFI boot stick. It is a reliable partition manager that boasts many powerful features such as resize partition, convert FAT to NTFS without data loss, convert MBR to GPT disk, migrate OS to SSD, etc.

As mentioned above, the UEFI mode requires a GPT disk. If your USB is the MBR partition table, you need to convert it to GPT first. MiniTool Partition Wizard can help you convert MBR to GPT without data loss. It is very simple to operate. Here’s how:

Step 1. Connect the USB flash drive to your computer and launch this program to get its main interface.

Step 2. Select the USB drive and click on Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk feature from the left pane.

Step 3. Click on Apply to execute the pending operation.

After your USB flash drive is converted to GPT, you can move your Windows 10 to this drive. To do so, continue the following steps.

Step 1. In the main interface, select the Migrate OS to SSD/HD Wizard feature from the left pane.

Step 2. Select Option B to copy the system required partitions only and click on Next to go on.

Step 3. Select the USB drive and click on Next. Then you will see a warning message saying that all the data on the target disk will be destroyed. Click on Yes to confirm this operation.

Note: Please back up all important data on the USB drive in advance.

Step 4. Select a copy option based on your needs and click on Next to continue.

Usb

Step 5. Click on the Finish button. At last, click on Apply to execute the pending operations.

After that, Windows 10 will be migrated to the USB drive. You can set the USB as the first boot order and use it to boot your computer.

Now, another question comes into being. How do I boot from USB in UEFI mode? Please keep reading the following part.

How Do I Boot From USB in UEFI Mode

In this part, we mainly focus on how to boot from USB in UEFI mode. You need to enable the UEFI mode first and then use the UEFI boot USB to start your computer.

Step 1. Power on your computer, and then press the F2 keys or other function keys (F1, F3, F10, or F12) and the ESC or Delete keys to open the Setup utility window.

Create Windows Boot Disk Cmd

Step 2. Navigate to the Boot tab by pressing the right arrow key.

Create Usb Boot Disk Windows

Step 3. Select the UEFI/BIOS Boot Mode, and press Enter.

Step 4. In the pop-up window, select the UEFI Boot Mode by pressing the up and down arrow keys, and then press Enter.

Step 5. Press the F10 key and Enter to save the change and exit the window. Here the key depends on your specific computer manufacturer. After that, you can try using the bootable USB to start your computer in UEFI mode.

Wrapping Up

How to create a UEFI bootable USB on Windows 10? Now, I believe that you already have known the answer. Bear in mind that you need to make sure the drive is GPT partition table so that you can use it to boot your computer in UEFI mode successfully.

If you have any questions about this software, you can send us an e-mail via [email protected]. We also appreciate any ideas about this topic in the comment area.

UEFI Boot USB FAQ

UEFI boot mode is a type of boot mode that can run on the top of PC’s advanced firmware. Compared with the old legacy BIOS, UEFI has many distinct advantages such as faster booting process, more primary partition, and more secure startup.

To enable the UEFI boot mode, you need to access the BIOS Setup utility and then operate further. Here’s how:

  1. Press F10 and ESC (or Delete) keys when booting your computer to open the BIOS Setup utility.
  2. Go to the Boot tab and select the UEFI/BIOS Boot Mode by using the arrow keys, and press Enter.
  3. Select the UEFI Boot Mode by pressing the up and down arrow keys and press Enter.
  4. Press F10 keys to save the changes.

Create A Windows Boot Disk

Since the EFI partition is a system and protective part on your hard drive, you can’t delete it in Disk Management. You need to convert it to a basic data partition using Diskpart and delete it. Alternatively, you can use professional software to delete EFI partition.

You need to prepare a Windows 10 bootable USB and follow the steps:

Create A Windows 10 Boot Disk Usb

  1. Connect the USB drive to your computer.
  2. Press the appropriate key to enter the BIOS menu.
  3. Select the USB drive as the first boot order and save the change.
  4. Restart your computer.