Creating Windows bootable USB in MacOS

[blackchestnut]

Step 1

Download iso from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/

Step 2

Insert USB stick an run diskutil list

$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk1⁩         250.7 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +250.7 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD - Data⁩     124.0 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩                 314.7 MB   disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩                1.1 GB     disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩                      4.3 GB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD⁩            15.8 GB    disk1s5
   6:              APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 15.8 GB    disk1s5s1

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *31.0 GB    disk2
   1:             Windows_FAT_32 ⁨KINGSTON⁩                31.0 GB    disk2s1

Chances are, your USB stick has a PC standard FAT16/FAT32 filesytem, and will be mounted automatically. Let’s check:

$ df -h | grep disk2

/dev/disk2s1     29Gi  2.0Mi   29Gi     1%       0          0  100%   /Volumes/KINGSTON

Step 3

This single command will erase the USB stick, make it bootable by adding a Master Boot Record (MBR) and create a Windows-friendly filesystem (FAT) on it:

$ diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS "WIN81" MBR disk2

Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for partitions to activate
Formatting disk2s1 as MS-DOS (FAT) with name WIN81
512 bytes per physical sector
/dev/rdisk2s1: 60523616 sectors in 1891363 FAT32 clusters (16384 bytes/cluster)
bps=512 spc=32 res=32 nft=2 mid=0xf8 spt=32 hds=255 hid=2048 drv=0x80 bsec=60553216 bspf=14777 rdcl=2 infs=1 bkbs=6
Mounting disk
Finished erase on disk2

Step 4

Mount the iso image

$ hdiutil mount ~/Downloads/Win8.1_Russian_x64.iso

/dev/disk3          	                               	/Volumes/IR5_CCSA_X64FRE_RU-RU_DV9

Step 5

Copy Windows files onto USB stick

$ cd /Volumes/IR5_CCSA_X64FRE_RU-RU_DV9
$ sudo cp -r . /Volumes/WIN81/

password:

The copy will take good 10-15 min.

There should be no errors returned.

Done

Boot USB stick on your PC.