How to Create a Windows 11 USB Boot Drive on macOS

✏️ Introduction

Have you been contemplating an adventure into the realm of Windows 11 but using your trusty Mac to create a boot drive is a total pain? If so, this guide will walk you through the process of creating a bootable Windows 11 USB drive on macOS.

Here’s the lineup of prerequisites to kick off our venture:

1. A USB drive with a minimum of 8 GB storage capacity (though 16 GB is advised).
2. A Windows 11 ISO file, easily downloadable from Microsoft’s official website.
3. A Mac running macOS.

With these items at hand, let’s proceed with the step-by-step instructions.

🧹 Formatting the USB Drive

First off, link your USB drive to your Mac. Then, boot up the Disk Utility application (search for it in Spotlight or locate it in the Utilities folder within Applications).

From the left sidebar, click on your USB drive, hit “Erase,” and select either “MS-DOS (FAT)” or “ExFAT” for format, along with a GUID Partition Map scheme. Finally, press “Erase” once again.

🍺 Setting Up Homebrew

Homebrew is a versatile package manager that’ll enable us to install the required tools for the bootable drive creation. To install Homebrew, fire up Terminal and input the following command:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Comply with the instructions shown on the screen to wrap up the installation.

🖼️ Installing Wimlib

Wimlib is a crucial tool for handling Windows Imaging (WIM) files. With Homebrew, installing it is a breeze. Just run the following command in Terminal:

brew install wimlib

📂 Mounting the Windows 11 ISO

Locate your downloaded Windows 11 ISO file, and double-click to mount it on your Mac. Make sure to note down the folder path where it’s mounted for later use. You can find this path by using Finder to right-click on the mounted volume, then choosing “Get Info.”

📤 Transferring Windows Files to the USB Drive

This is the point where we transfer the Windows files onto our USB drive. Launch Terminal and execute the following command. Ensure to substitute “path/to/mounted/iso” with the actual path noted earlier, and “path/to/usb” with the path to your USB drive (findable in Disk Utility).

rsync -avh --progress --exclude=sources/install.wim /path/to/mounted/iso/ /path/to/usb

🪓 Splitting and Copying the install.wim File

Windows 11 ISOs might contain an install.wim file exceeding 4 GB. This file cannot be directly copied to a FAT32-formatted USB drive, hence we need to split it using the wimlib-imagex tool.

Enter the following command in Terminal, substituting the paths where necessary:

wimlib-imagex split /path/to/mounted/iso/sources/install.wim /path/to/usb/sources/install.swm 4000

💾 Ejecting the USB Drive

For safely ejecting the USB drive, navigate to Finder and hit the eject icon alongside your USB drive. Now, your drive is ready to be used as a bootable Windows 11 installer.

🏁 Wrapping Up

And voilà! You have successfully created a bootable Windows 11 USB drive on macOS. This drive can now be used to install Windows 11 on any compatible machine. Just make sure to adjust the boot order in the target PC’s BIOS or UEFI settings to boot from the USB drive.

📨 Questions, Issues, and Suggestions?

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