How to Create a Bootable Windows 10 USB in Linux

Last updated October 29, 2020 By Abhishek Prakash 417 Comments

Brief: This tutorial shows you how to create a bootable Windows 10 USB in Linux with and without a GUI tool called WoeUSB.

I have talked a lot about creating bootable USB of Linux in Windows. How about the other way round? How about creating a bootable Windows 10 USB in Linux?

If you are uninstalling Linux from dual boot or if you want to reinstall Windows completely or you simply want to have a Windows installation disk ready, you’ll need a bootable Windows 10 USB or DVD.

In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to create a Windows 10 bootable USB in Linux. I am using Ubuntu for this tutorial but the steps should be valid for other Linux distributions as well.

If you want to use WoeUSB graphical tool for creating Windows bootable USB, you can jump to that section directly. Personally, I don’t recommend WoeUSB.

Creating a Bootable Windows 10 USB in Linux

Prerequisite: Get Microsoft Windows 10 ISO and a USB of at least 8 GB in size

You can download Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft’s website. You have to specify the Windows 10 version, language and then you should see the link to download Windows 10.

Note that the Windows 10 ISO download link is valid for 24 hours only. So use a download manager in Linux to download the

5.6 GB file and finish it within 24 hours only.

Since the ISO and its content are more than 4 GB in size, I recommend a USB of at least 8 GB in size.

I have also made a video of this tutorial so that you can see the steps in action.

Step 2: Properly format the USB for creating bootable Windows USB

Insert your USB. You have to format it so make sure that you don’t have important data on the USB key.

In Ubuntu, press Super key (Windows key) and search for ‘Disks’. You have to use this tool to format the USB key.

In the Disks tool, make sure to select your USB drive and hit format.

It will ask to choose a partitioning scheme. It could be either MBR or GPT. Select one of them and hit Format.

It will show you a warning that you data will be erased.

Format the USB

The formatting of USB is not over yet. Now, you need to create a partition on the newly formatted USB.

Select the entire USB disk as the partition size.

Give a name to your USB and hit Create button.

Once done, your USB should be automatically mounted. It is now ready for creating bootable Windows 10 USB disk.

Files larger than 4 GB?

Newer Windows 10 ISO might have files larger than 4GB. In that case, FAT filesystem won’t work as it doesn’t allow a single file of size greater than 4 GB.

You should then format the USB in ExFAT format. This newer format allows files bigger than 4 GB.

Step 3: Copy the content of the ISO to USB

Now it’s time to copy the content of the Windows 10 ISO to the newly formatted USB.

You may ask, Abhishek, there is only one file and that is the ISO file itself. What are you talking about?

ISO is basically an archive format and you can see it’s content like any zip file in Linux. But to do that, you need to use ‘Disk Image Mounter’ tool that is installed by default in Ubuntu.

Go to your Windows 10 ISO, select it and right click on it. Now select ‘Open with other application’.

In the applications list, select Disk Image Mounter:

The ISO will be mounted. You may not see it in the left sidebar but if you click on the Other Locations, you should see it. Click on it to enter this mounted ISO folder.

You’ll see its content. All you need to do is to select all the files (Ctrl+A), copy it (Ctrl+C) and paste it in the USB drive (Ctrl+V).

Wait for the copying process to finish as it may take some time in copying 4-5 GB of data. Once it’s done, you have a bootable Windows 10 USB in your hand. Take out the USB and use it to any system you want, restart the system and change the boot settings to boot from the USB.

Alternate Method: Creating Windows 10 bootable USB in Linux using WoeUSB

You can also use a Graphical tool called WoeUSB for creating a bootable Windows USB in Linux. However, this tool might not work perfectly all the time. This is why I prefer the first method of mounting the Windows 10 ISO and copying its content to the USB.

If you are interesting in using WoeUSB, you can click on the next section to expand it and follow the steps.

You can also watch a video of creating Windows 10 bootable USB. Do subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Linux videos:

Let’s see how to create a bootable Windows 10 USB in Ubuntu and other Linux distribution.

Step 1: Install WoeUSB application

WoeUSB is a free and open source application for creating Windows 10 bootable USB. It is actually a fork of WinUSB tool that has been discontinued now.

Ubuntu and other Ubuntu-based Linux distributions such as Linux Mint, elementary OS etc have a PPA available. You can use the command below to install WoeUSB:

For other Linux distributions, you can check out the source code from the GitHub repository:

Step 2: Format USB drive

Now, plug in your USB key. You’ll have to format it first. I presume you know how to format a USB key in your Linux distribution.

Ubuntu users can simply right click on the USB and click format.

The important part here is that you should format it in NTFS:

Note: If you use Fat 32 file system for formatting, you may encounter the error below later on:

Step 3: Using WoeUSB to create bootable Windows 10

We have everything ready for us now. Start WoeUSB program.

Browse to the downloaded Windows 10 ISO file and select the USB drive on which you want to install it. Just click on Install to begin the process.

Note that it may take up to 15 minutes in creating the Windows 10 USB. Don’t get fooled by the ‘done’ on the screen.

That’s it. You should see a success message.

Step 4: Using Windows 10 bootable USB

Once the bootable USB is ready, restart your system. At boot time, press F2 or F10 or F12 repeatedly to go to the boot settings. In here, select to boot from USB.

You’ll see that Windows 10 is being booted and it gives you the option to install or repair your system. You know what to do now from here.

I hope you find this tutorial useful for creating bootable USB of Windows 10 in Linux . If you have questions or suggestions, please feel free leave a comment.

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Загрузочная флешка Windows в Linux

Бывают случаи, когда вам нужно записать Windows на флешку в Linux, например, когда вы хотите поставить эту систему второй для использования специализированных программ, или вам нужно переустановить операционку своим знакомым. Или же есть пользователи Linux, которые решили вернуться на Windows, но единственную флешку уже перезаписали под Linux LiveUSB.

Загрузочная флешка Windows в Linux создается достаточно просто. Я предлагаю несколько способов решения этой проблемы. Все их я перечислил ниже.

Загрузочная флешка Windows в Linux

Загрузочную флешку можно создать с помощью терминала или специальных графических утилит. Настоятельно рекомендую отформатировать флешку в Fat32 (или Exfat) перед использованием любого из предложенных методов. Форматирование можно выполнить через Gparted, сfdisk+mkfs или через usb stick formatter (форматирование USB флеш накопителя).

Способ 1. Утилита USB Image Write

Для создания флешки можно воспользоваться утилитой Запись образа на USB. В некоторых дистрибутивах она уже предустановленна (Ubuntu, Mint и др.):

Выбрать образ в графе Write image образ и в поле to выбрать флешку. Далее нажимаем Write.

Способ 2. Утилита WoeUSB

Пожалуй, это самый простой способ создания. Установка в Ubuntu выполняется с помощью таких команд:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

sudo apt update

sudo apt install woeusb

Откройте утилиту в меню приложений:

Интерфейс простой. Нажмите на кнопку Обзор со значком папки и выберите образ. Target device это флешка, на которую будет идти запись, если у вас их несколько выберите нужную. Ещё есть поле File system, где нужно выбрать какую файловую систему будете использовать. Рекомендую FAT. Затем нажмите Install и дождитесь окончания.

При появлении ошибки с кодом 256 Source media is currently mounted, размонтируйте образ ISO с Windows, если вы его смонтировали. При ошибке Target device is currently busy, извлеките флешку, затем снова подключите её. Если не сработало, попробуйте отформатировать её.

Способ 3. Терминал и Gparted

Положите образ в домашнюю папку и переименуйте его в windows.iso во избежание проблем с пробелами. Затем перейдите в терминале в домашнюю папку

Запустите терминал через главное меню или с помощью сочетания клавиш Ctrl + Alt + T затем используйте команду dd для записи образа на флешку:

dd if=/windows.iso of=/dev/sdX

Замените X на букву вашей флешки! Узнать её можно через Gparted. В правом верхнем углу есть кнопка переключения дисков:

Тот диск который соответствует размеру вашей флешки и есть ваша флешка. В моем случае флешка на 32 гб это /dev/sdb. Значит команда будет иметь вид:

dd if=/windows.iso of=/dev/sdb

Дождитесь окончания записи и извлеките флешку.

Выводы

Как видите, создание загрузочной флешки Windows в Linux не представляет сложности. Это были все способы, которые я знаю. Если они вам помогли, напишите об этом. Если вы знаете еще способы, обязательно напишите о них в комментариях!

Install Windows 7 from Ubuntu on USB Drive

I don’t have cd burner, so I want to install W7 on my 2nd computer via an USB-Drive. I just copied the files from the iso but it won’t boot. So I installed ms-sys and did a ms-sys -7 /dev/sdb but it just says «Boot error».

How can I install it the right way? Tried many different tutorials by now but none worked.

7 Answers 7

Get your USB flash drive of 4GB or more, and an ISO-image of the Windows 7-DVD.

First you’ll wanna format the drive. This can be done with gParted. To format NTFS you’ll also need ntfs-3g.

Now open gParted and format the drive to NTFS.

Open Unetbootin, select DiskImage and browse for your Windows 7 ISO-image.

Check «Show all drives» and select your USB drive. If you’re not sure which drive it is, open gParted again and check.

Plug the USB drive into any machine and boot from it. It will start the Windows 7-installer.

Use the tool WinUSB for ubuntu. Packages are available from the WinUSB website

You can easily make this using winusb package:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:colingille/freshlight

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install winusb

You can make a bootable USB without downloading any software. On a linux PC —

Right click on the iso file and select open with and then click on disk image writer.

Now select your usb drive and click on start restoring.

Wait for 2-3 minutes.

Your USB is bootable now and you can boot now.

I read everything, literally, everything about this particular issue (Install windows 7 from bootable USB on Ubuntu) well and here it starts:

• Gparted installed ok
• Unetbootin 494 wouldn’t start (that’s it, not starting (did EVERYTHING correctly, changed it’s properties too))
• Newer version does not recognize ntfs .

So I tried another option, to open windows 7 ISO with Image Mounter (Archive Mounter in my case) and it would not work. It just does nothing with double click, triple click, right click+open.

Here I am, left with overheating computer and it is really overheating badly.

I will now start trying to burn that same .iso on DVD, and if that does not work I will do everything possible in my life to prevent anyone I know to install ubuntu ever again.

WINUSB also did not work, it seemed to work at first, but after booting from USB all it did was going 10 seconds over and over again before starting, but never started.

Unetbootin 494 from the provided link is a corrupted package. DO NOT INSTALL IT!

Instead, go into your software center and install unetbootin from there. This is a valid package.

DO NOT format USB stick to NTFS! It will not work with netbootin, and it will not boot.

It’s also worth noting that you can NOT boot from USB 3.0. It MUST be 2.0.

Format the USB stick to FAT32, and it will work fine with unetbootin. Unetbootin will automatically make the USB stick bootable at the end of the process.

I’ve done this dozens of times, and I speak from experience. Follow my instructions and you should be able to install windows 7 from USB, AND it will be magnitudes faster than any DVD drive.

Ubuntu is NOT why your machine is overheating. After 10+ years working on all types of systems, the #1 thing most computer owners overlook, even some experienced users, is PROPER MAINTENANCE!

Depending on the environment the machine is in, you should dismantle the entire machine for a full cleaning at least twice a year.

Looking into the vent with a flashlight will tell you nothing. The heatsink and fan clog from the INSIDE! You have to dismantle the CPU/graphic heatsink/fan assembly and clean it out with a PLASTIC brush, such as a toothbrush.

Linux OS’s use FAR less power and resources than windows, and will run a system faster, cooler, and more efficiently. A system that overheats with Ubuntu indicates a clogged or malfunctioning cooling system.

You’d be surprised at the damage a little dust can do to a system, ESPECIALLY if you live in a dusty place, or have pets.

Just like anything else, your car, your house, even your own body, your computers REQUIRE proper maintenance to prevent damage and keep the system performing at it’s best!

If your lungs were full of dirt, you wouldn’t be able to breath either!