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The Mac OS X drive can be used to install OS X on other Macs or upgrade them to the latest version without any long downloads. From a Windows ISO for Mac. RELATED: How to Install Windows on a Mac With Boot Camp. If you plan on installing Windows on a Mac via Boot Camp, don’t bother creating a bootable USB drive in the usual way. Use your Mac. Step by step guide to creating a bootable USB thumb drive from on ISO file or image on Mac OSX using just Disk Utility and Terminal apps. It is technically possible to create the bootable thumb drive using Disk Utility but for this I will show you how to Plug in your USB drive and wait for it to mount.
You need an external USB drive to install Windows on older Mac computers. To find out whether you have a Mac that requires an external USB drive, see the “Learn more” section in the Apple Support article Install Windows 10 on your Mac with Boot Camp Assistant. If your Mac is a newer model that doesn’t require a USB drive, follow the instructions in Install Windows on your newer Mac using Boot Camp instead.
What you need
- The keyboard and mouse or trackpad that came with your Mac. (If they aren’t available, use a USB keyboard and mouse.)
- A blank 16 GB or larger external USB 2 flash drive, formatted as MS-DOS (FAT).To format an external USB drive as MS-DOS (FAT), use Disk Utility, located in /Applications/Utilities. In Disk Utility, choose View > All Devices, select the USB drive in the sidebar, then click Erase in the toolbar. In the dialog, enter a name for the drive, choose MS-DOS (FAT) from the Format pop-up menu, choose Master Boot Record from the Scheme pop-up menu, then click Erase.
- A full-installation, 64-bit version of Windows 10 on a disk image (ISO file) or other installation media.You can download a Windows 10 Disc Image (ISO File) from Microsoft.
- Sufficient free storage space on your startup drive. For information about the amount of free space needed, see the Apple Support Article Install Windows 10 on your Mac with Boot Camp Assistant.
Before you begin
Before you install Windows, make sure you back up important files.
You can use Time Machine or any other method to back up your files. For information about backing up files, see Back up your files with Time Machine and Ways to back up or protect your files.
Perform the installation
Do the following steps in order.
Step 1: Check for software updates
Before you install Windows, install all macOS updates.
- On your Mac, log in as an administrator, quit all open apps, then log out any other users.
- Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Software Update, then install all available updates.If your Mac restarts after installing an update, open Software Update again to install any additional updates.
Step 2: Prepare your Mac for Windows
Boot Camp Assistant prepares your Mac by creating a new partition for Windows named BOOTCAMP and downloading the Boot Camp support software.
Important: If you’re using a portable Mac, connect it to a power source before continuing.
- Connect an external USB drive or insert a flash drive into the USB port on your Mac; keep it connected or inserted while you install Windows and the Windows support software.
- On your Mac, open Boot Camp Assistant , located in /Applications/Utilities.
- At the introduction screen, click Continue.The system is checked for total available disk space. Older Time Machine snapshots and cached iCloud files are removed to make space for Boot Camp. This process may take a long time to complete (you can click the Stop button to skip this process).
- At the Select Tasks step, select all the tasks, then click Continue.
- At the Create Bootable USB Drive for Windows Installation step, choose the Windows ISO image and the USB drive, then click Continue.The Windows files are copied to the USB drive. This process may take a long time to complete (you can click the Stop button to interrupt this process).
- At the Create a Partition for Windows step, specify a partition size by dragging the divider between the macOS and Windows partitions. If you have multiple internal hard drives, you can select a different hard drive from the one running macOS and create a single partition on that drive to use solely for Windows.
- Click Install.
When this step is complete, the Windows installer starts.
Step 3: Install Windows
- In the Windows installer, follow the onscreen instructions.
- When you’re asked where to install Windows, select the BOOTCAMP partition (you may need to scroll through the list of partitions to see it), then click Next.WARNING: Do not create or delete a partition, or select any other partition. Doing so may delete the entire contents of your macOS partition.
- Continue following the onscreen instructions to finish installing Windows.After you install the Windows software, your Mac automatically restarts using Windows.
- Follow the onscreen instructions to set up Windows.
Step 4: Install Boot Camp on Windows
After installing Windows, Boot Camp drivers that support your Mac hardware start installing.
Note: If the support software doesn’t install automatically, you need to install it manually. For instructions, see the Apple Support article If the Boot Camp installer doesn't open after using Boot Camp Assistant.
- In the Boot Camp installer in Windows, follow the onscreen instructions.Important: Do not click the Cancel button in any of the installer dialogs.If a message appears that says the software you’re installing has not passed Windows Logo testing, click Continue Anyway.You don’t need to respond to installer dialogs that appear only briefly during installation, but if a dialog asks you to install device software, click Install.If nothing appears to be happening, there may be a hidden window that you must respond to. Look behind open windows.
- When the installation is complete, click Finish, then click Yes to restart your Mac.
- After your Mac restarts, follow the instructions for any other installers that appear.
See alsoGet started with Boot Camp on MacTroubleshoot Boot Camp Assistant problems on MacApple Support website: Boot Camp Support
RECOMMENDED: Click here to fix Windows errors and improve PC performance
There are a couple of reasons why you would want to create Windows 8.1 bootable USB flash drive on your Mac. Maybe you’ve decided to install Windows 8.1 on Mac without Boot Camp; or maybe your PC is unbootable and you want to prepare a bootable USB using the ISO file that you have on your external hard drive; or you want to easily create bootable Windows 8.1 USB without installing new tools.
If you are using a recent version of Mac OS X, preparing Windows 8.1 USB is fairly simple and can be done without having to install additional software on your Mac. The only thing is that you need to have a Windows 8.1 ISO image file in order to prepare bootable Windows 8.1 USB on your Mac.
Follow the given below instructions to create Windows 8.1 bootable USB on Mac:
Step 1: Connect your USB flash drive to Mac and backup your files as all data will be formatted during the process.
Step 2: Next, transfer Windows 8.1 ISO file to your Mac. If you already have a copy of the ISO file on your Mac, you can safely skip this step. If you don’t have the ISO on Mac, you can follow our how to transfer files between Windows and Mac guide to quickly transfer the ISO file. And if the PC unbootable, you can follow our how to backup data from a unbootable PC (the easy way) guide to copy ISO file to the USB drive first and then copy the same to your Mac.
Step 3: Launch Boot Camp Assistant software. To do that, click on Launchpad icon, click Other, and then click Boot Camp Assistant icon to open Boot Camp Assistant software.
Step 4: Once Boot Camp Assistant is launched, click on the Continue button.
Step 5: Uncheck the option titled Install Windows 7 or later version (we use this option while installing Windows on Mac using Boot Camp), and also uncheck Download the latest Windows support software from Apple option if you’re preparing this bootable Windows 8.1 drive to install Windows 8.1 on a PC.
Make sure that the option titled Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk option is checked before clicking on the Continue button.
NOTE: As mentioned earlier, keep the option Download the latest Windows support software from Apple checked if you’re going to use this bootable USB on your Mac (this Mac) and not on a PC. As the support software is designed specifically for each Mac, it might not function properly if you try to run the downloaded support software on a Mac other than the model that you’re using to prepare the bootable USB.
And if you plan to install Windows 8.1 on this Mac, keep that option checked to automatically download all support software on to the USB so that you can easily install all drivers after installing Windows 8.1 on your Mac.
Step 6: In the following screen, click the Choose button to browse to the Windows 8.1 ISO image file. Select the ISO image file and then click Continue button to proceed further.
Click Continue button again when you see “The drive will be erased” warning to begin formatting the drive and then copying Windows files. If you have selected the option Download the latest Windows support software from Apple option, Boot Camp Assistant will also download required drivers from Apple servers. So if you have selected that option, make sure that your Mac is connected to the web.
Step 7: Once Boot Camp Assistant completes its business, you’ll see “The selected drive has been formatted and the Windows installation image has been copied” message. And if you have selected Download support software from Apple option in Step 5, you’ll see “Install this Windows support software after installing Windows” message. Click Quit button. That’s it!
You can now connect it to a PC or your Mac and begin installing Windows 8.1 operating system.