Format Flash Drive Mac Terminal



You system may have been suffering from a Malware attack or you may have to reset your system since you have forgotten the admin account's password. Are you looking for the best way to burn ISO to USB for Mac? The process to burn ISO to USB Mac is not a simple task at all.

In that case, the best way to create a Windows 10 bootable USB for Mac is to manually format a flash drive and copy the relevant files into it using the Mac’s Terminal. There’s a storage-related factor at play, so the entire process can end up being somewhat complicated. What You Need to Create a Bootable Windows 10 USB on Mac. They're probably formatted NTFS, which Mac OS X can read but not write. You can just reformat the drive as FAT32 (MS-DOS format in Disk Utility) and it will work just fine with both your Mac and Windows systems. First make sure there is nothing valuable on the USB. Go to Disk Utility, which is in Applications/ Utilities. Click on the USB.

Since ISO is not a native Mac file type, you would have to work around a few methods or even make use of a third party tool in order to perform this operation.This article will talk about a few ways in which you can get this done for free. Some methods are pretty easy while some may seem a bit more complicated and may not deliver the required results.

Way 1: Burn ISO to USB Mac Using Terminal

Format

You can make use of the default command line interface on your Mac system to perform the task of burning ISO to USB. Follow the outlined steps given below to burn ISO to USB Mac.

Step 1: On your Mac system, insert a USB flash drive.

Mac

Step 2: Launch Terminal by selecting Applications > Utilities > Terminal.

Step 3: Here, enter 'diskutil list' and hit the Enter key.

Step 4: All the drives will be listed out so that it becomes easier for you to locate the correct identifier for the USB flash drive. Make a note of it and unmount the drive by keying in 'sudo unmount/dev/driveidentifier which you noted down.

Step 5: If prompted, enter the Admin password and enter the following command and hit the Enter key:
dd if=/path/toimage.iso of=/dev/driveidentifier

The above command will burn the ISO to USB to the drive specified by you. However, this method may seem complicated to some users. You can move ahead to the next solution if you find it complicated.

Using Flash Drive On Mac

Way 2: Write ISO to USB Mac Using UNetbootin

You can make use of this utility for burning ISO to USB on Mac only when you have access to Linux distributions like Ubuntu. Once you have made sure that the utility is installed on your Mac, follow the steps below to burn ISO or DMG to USB.

Step 1: From the 'Distribution' section at the top of the software, choose the required Linux distribution. You can even provide the ISO file by clicking on the Diskimage radio button and then using the ellipsis icon to choose the ISO file.

Step 2: Specify the target drive and click on 'OK' and the bootable drive would be created.

This method is possible only if you have a Linux distribution like Ubuntu.

Way 3: Cretae ISO to USB on Mac Using Virtualbox

If none of the above suggested methods work, this method would surely help you in burning ISO to USB for free. Refer the steps mentioned below to do so.

Step 1: Install the Virtualbox client on your Mac system.

Step 2: Make a guest OS on Windows and load this Windows ISO to the system.

Format Flash Drive Using Terminal Mac

Step 3: Leave the other settings in the default state if you are not aware of how you can change them.

Step 4: Follow the on screen instructions carefully and then boot your system in Windows OS.

Step 5: Download the ISO burning tool once system is booted in Windows and insert the USB flash drive. Now you can burn the ISO image to USB.

Although this method is pretty effective, it takes a long time and some amount of technical expertise is required in order to get satisfactory results.

Extra Tips: How to Burn ISO to USB on Windows

If you just want to burn ISO to USB on Windows 10/8.1/8/7 system, then PassFab for ISO is your best option. This is a prfoessional program which enabled you to burn bootable ISO to USB on any Windows-based computer. You can either download Windows System ISO or Import Local ISO from it. You can even burn CD or DVD if there's no USB in your hand.

Conclusion

Through this article you can get to know different ways in which you can burn ISO or DMG to bootable USB. While some methods are easy, some are way too complicated. If you are looking for a tool to carry out this process for free, you can do that but most of the methods involved in such solutions would be pretty complicated for a novice user and also they end up consuming a lot of your time as well. Instead, you can choose PassFab for ISO tool to carry out the process of burning ISO to USB on Windows. This method is highly recommended as it is very simple and can be completed quickly without any hassles.

  • Support Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, etc.
  • Support USB of various brands, such as SanDisk, Kingston, etc.
  • Support burning ISO to USB flash drive, CD or DVD-ROM
  • Support GPT and MBR partition types
If you're moving it between Mac and Windows, you want to format your flash drive with the FAT32 filesystem. It shouldn't matter whether you format it on your Mac or on a Windows machine.
To do it on the Mac, plug in the flash drive, and open Disk Utility (in your /Applications/Utilities folder). The drive should appear in the list on the left of the DU window.
Select the drive, then click the Erase tab. On that tab, select MS-DOS (FAT) as the volume format, choose a disk name if you want to, then click Erase, and wait.
That said, if your drive just 'didn't work any more' after a while, it may be faulty and it's possible that re-formatting it won't help. (All flash drives do have a finite number of read/write cycles before they don't work reliably any more, too, although it's unlikely you've reached that limit through normal usage.)

Aug 23, 2008 1:22 PM