Step 2: Create Image backup of USB flash drive on Mac. Click on 'Create Image' button to create the disk image of USB flash drive and save the disk image to the destination drive. AweClone for Mac is very easy-to-use. It can securely clone USB flash drive on Mac. If you want to copy USB flash drive on Mac or create a backup of an USB flash. Flash drive free download - Mac Free USB Flash Drive Recovery, Mac Free USB Flash Drive Data Recovery, Adobe Flash Player, and many more programs.

To troubleshoot an issue with Windows 10 (especially boot-related issues), it can be handy to boot into Windows 10 not installed on a Boot Camp partition. It is relatively straightforward to create a bootable USB Flash drive to boot to the Windows 10 installer and open up a DOS prompt for troubleshooting.

What is needed

  1. USB Flash drive (8 GB or larger recommended)
  2. Windows 10 Installer ISO for Windows 10

Preparation

All the preparation is done in macOS on the Mac that is having an issue booting Windows. It is important to use this Mac since it will be used to identify the correct Windows drivers.

How

USB Flash Drive

The USB Flash drive must be formatted as exFAT.

  1. Insert an 8GB or larger flash drive into a USB port on the Mac
  2. In Disk Utility, format the Flash drive as exFAT. Quit Disk Utility after this operation completes.

Boot Camp Driver

Open Boot Camp Assistant in the Utilities folder and download the current Windows Support Software from the “Action” dropdown in the menu bar. Save the Windows Support Software to your desktop or other location. Do not save directly to the USB Flash Drive.

Windows Install Media

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Download the current install media from the Microsoft website. Windows will not be installed, but the install media will give access to the command line tools in Windows. Select the version of Windows that is closest to the version of Windows installed on the Mac (Windows 8, Windows 10). It does not matter what edition of Windows is used, since Windows is not going to be installed.

Create Recovery USB Flash Drive

To create the USB Flash drive, follow these steps:

  1. Mount the Windows ISO downloaded from Microsoft. To mount the ISO, double-click on the ISO in Finder.
  2. Drag all the files and folders from the mounted ISO to the USB flash drive.
  3. Drag the contents of the Windows Support Software to the USB flash drive.
  4. If there is not an AutoUnattend.xml at the top level of the drive (as shown below), download AutoUnattend.xml, unzip it, and add it to the drive. AutoUnattend.xml provides the location of the $WinPEDriver$ folder to load the drivers during boot.
  5. The 2018 MacBook Air (and potentially Macs after that) cannot load the IntelMEI driver and give a “Windows Setup could not install one or more boot-critical drivers. To install Windows, make sure that the drivers are valid, and restart the installation” message. On the USB flash drive, open the $WinPEDriver$ and remove the IntelMEI folder.

Once the flash drive has been created, it should look like this:

The $WinPEDriver$ folder is important because it contains the drivers for Windows to boot successfully from the USB flash drive and the hardware on that Mac.

Boot from the USB Flash drive

To inject the drivers, the Mac must be booted from the USB flash drive.

  1. Insert the USB flash drive into an available USB port on the Mac
  2. Reboot while holding the Option key.
  3. Select EFI volume in the startup selector.

If Windows does not boot from the USB flash drive after showing the Windows logo, you may have to run the following command to tell the firmware to boot the Windows installer from the USB flash drive. This has been observed on the late-2014 Mac Mini but may affect other models as well. To set the variable:

  1. Disable SIP by booting to the recovery partition.
  2. Boot back to macOS and open Terminal. Run the following command and enter the admin password when prompted:

sudo nvram InstallWindowsUEFI=1

Insert the USB flash drive if it is not inserted, reboot, and select the EFI volume from the startup selector.

Note: the InstallWindowsUEFI variable is cleared at each reboot, so you will need to set it again if you do not select the USB Flash Drive.

Command Prompt and Mapped Drives

When Windows 10 starts up, it will prompt for installation of Windows 10. To open a DOS window, press fn-Shift-F10 (or just shift-F10) or click Repair Computer->Troubleshoot->Command Prompt (if available).

Once in the command prompt, there are usually 3 drive letters available: X, C, and D.

  • X: This is Windows that you are booted into in memory. The files from the boot.wim on the flash drive are copied to memory and then booted to
  • C: Boot Camp partition
  • D: The USB Flash drive

Download Windows 10 To Usb Flash Drive On Mac

Running Utilities

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Within the Windows command prompt, you can run utilities on the Boot Camp partition.

Video

If you want to clone USB flash drive on Mac, you can just copy all files on the USB flash drive and paste the files to a safe location. It seems simple. But, it also takes time when there are thousands of files on the USB flash drive. You also can choose another way to clone USB flash drive on Mac – using disk cloning software.

Best disk cloning software for cloning USB flash drive on Mac

AweClone for Mac offers fast and secure way to clone USB flash drive on Mac. It can clone USB flash drive to another USB flash drive/external hard drive/HDD/SSD under Mac OS. It even can help you clone damaged or unmounted USB flash drive on Mac. So, it is a good way to get the files from the inaccessible USB flash drive under Mac OS.

Just free download AweClone for Mac and install it on your Mac computer.

1. Clone USB flash drive on Mac

After installing AweClone for Mac on your computer, you can run it to clone USB flash drive under Mac OS. You can clone the USB flash drive to any type of hard drive or storage device. Then follow the steps below to clone USB flash drive under Mac OS.

Step 1: Choose the source drive and destination drive.

Connect the USB flash drive with your Mac. Then choose the USB flash drive as the source drive and choose the destination drive where the USB flash drive will be cloned.

Step 2: Copy the USB flash drive on Mac.

Download Mac Os On To Flash Drive

Click on 'Copy Now' button to clone the USB flash drive to the destination drive under Mac OS. It is very fast and quickly to clone USB flash drive on Mac.

2. Create disk image of USB flash drive on Mac

AweClone for Mac also can help you create a compressed disk image of USB flash drive on Mac. It is the disk-saving solution to clone USB flash drive on Mac.

Step 1: Choose mode 'Create Image Backup'.

Using Flash Drive On Mac

Choose this option – Create Image Backup. Then choose the USB flash drive as the source drive and choose the destination drive.

Step 2: Create Image backup of USB flash drive on Mac.

How To Download To Flash Drive On Mac

Click on 'Create Image' button to create the disk image of USB flash drive and save the disk image to the destination drive.

AweClone for Mac is very easy-to-use. It can securely clone USB flash drive on Mac. If you want to copy USB flash drive on Mac or create a backup of an USB flash drive under Mac OS, AweClone for Mac is a good tool.

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