Create a Windows Installer USB Stick on macOS
Introduction
In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a bootable Windows Installer USB Stick on macOS. You can use this USB Stick to install Windows on your computer.
Download Windows ISO file
You need to download a Windows ISO file to create a bootable Windows Installer USB Stick. You can download the Windows ISO file from the official website:
Format USB Stick
1. Find the USB Stick
Before formatting the USB Stick, you need to find the path of the USB Stick. You can do this by running the following command in the terminal:
diskutil list
Let's say the USB Stick is /dev/disk2. If your USB Stick is /dev/disk2, you can proceed to the next step. If it's different, replace /dev/disk2 with the path of your USB Stick.
2. Unmount the USB Stick
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
This command will unmount the USB Stick so that you can format it.
3. Format the USB Stick
diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS "WIN10" MBR /dev/disk2
This command will format the USB Stick with the name WIN10 and the MBR partition scheme. If you want to format the USB Stick with a different name, replace WIN10 with the name you want.
MBR stands for Master Boot Record. It's a special area at the very beginning of a hard drive that contains information about the disk's partitions and a small program called the boot loader. The boot loader is responsible for starting the operating system.
Write Windows ISO to USB Stick
1. Unmount the USB Stick
Your USB Stick might be mounted after formatting. You need to unmount it before writing the Windows ISO file to it.
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
2. Write the Windows ISO file to the USB Stick
sudo dd if=/path/to/windows.iso of=/dev/disk2 bs=1m
This command will write the Windows ISO file to the USB Stick. Replace /path/to/windows.iso with the path to the Windows ISO file you downloaded.
if stands for input file, and of stands for output file. bs stands for block size. The block size is the number of bytes that dd reads or writes at a time. In this case, we are using 1m as the block size, which means 1 MB.
Eject the USB Stick
After writing the Windows ISO file to the USB Stick, you can eject it by running the following command:
diskutil eject /dev/disk2
Conclusion
Now you have a bootable Windows Installer USB Stick that you can use to install Windows on your computer. You can insert the USB Stick into your computer and boot from it to start the Windows installation process. Make sure to change the boot order in your BIOS settings to boot from the USB Stick.