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Rafael Corrêa Gomes
Rafael Corrêa Gomes

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at blog.rafaelcg.com

How to create a Windows 10 bootable pen drive from a macOS

Download the Windows 10

You can download the ISO file straight from Windows. That's right - everything we're going to do here is 100% legal and sanctioned by Microsoft.

If you want an English-language version of the latest update of Windows 10, you can download the ISO in this link.

If you have a relatively new computer, you probably want the 64-bit version. If you're not sure, go with the 32-bit version to be safe.

If you want a non-English-language version of Windows, or want to get an older update version, download this another ISO instead.

Mac Terminal

From your Mac terminal run this command below to see what's the disk number, for example /dev/disk2 or /dev/disk3. In my case, it's disk2.

Let's erase your pendrive running this command.

diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS "WIN10" GPT /dev/disk2
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For some hardwares you will need an MBR format, you might be able to have it running this command instead.

diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS "WIN10" MBR /dev/disk2
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Let's prepare your ISO and move the content to your pendrive running these commands.

hdiutil mount ~/Downloads/Win10_1903_V1_English_x64.iso
rsync -vha --exclude=sources/install.wim /Volumes/CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV9/* /Volumes/WIN10
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You will need to use Wimlib in your MacOS, so let's install it and run it.

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
brew install wimlib
mkdir /Volumes/WIN10/sources
wimlib-imagex split /Volumes/CCCOMA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV9/sources/install.wim /Volumes/WIN10/sources/install.swm 3800
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Ready!

Now you have a bootable pen drive ready to be used on your PC.

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