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Bebias Author

Level 1

17 points

How can I burn an ISO to USB without using the command line?

This might be the last straw that makes me switch away from OSX!

El Capitan removed the ability to burn ISO to disk in the Disk Utility app (and don't get me started on that new Disk Utility, if Steve was still alive, whoever was responsible for that piece of crap would have been fired on the spot, and probably punched in the head a few times too!)

Now we're supposed to right click on the ISO in the finder and choose "Burn disk image ...". But the "Burn Disk" window that pops only has the option to burn to the Superdrive. I see no way to change it to burn to a USB drive (which is visible in the new horrible and disgustingly bad Disk Utility).

Posted on Feb 9, 2016 7:36 PM

Top-ranking reply

Frank Nospam

Level 2

164 points

Posted on Feb 17, 2017 12:29 PM

This is a terrible terrible answer.

The most common use case for an ISO is a bootable image (linux or bsd), which requires a bit-for-bit copy of the internal file system. Just mounting the ISO and copying the files onto an HFS-formatted USB stick will not work.

View in context

25 replies

Aug 25, 2016 12:13 PM in response to Drew Reece

I was able to use the command line approach per your old post to write the image. It is a Windows install disk. Unfortunately the PC doesn't seem to want to boot off of the USB stick I created this way. I suppose Microsoft copy protection measures may be in play? The motivation is simply to restore a PC whose hard drive failed. Why not use the disk directly? Well, the PC has an optical drive that can't recognize the DVD, while ironically, the Mac sees it fine. So I thought maybe I could use the Mac to make something the PC could read.

Oct 27, 2016 6:42 PM in response to Bebias

I've had this same problem here's my fix without having to use TERMINAL. I'm a PC guy and bought a MAC for school and downloaded some WINDOWS .exe. files on my MAC and couldn't copy to my USB drive because Apple removed the file system for copy. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO!!!

Upload the .iso to Dropbox then download it to the USB drive destination. Takes awhile and I'm in mid download now but it seems like it's going to work. Terminal wouldn't recognize the disc etc. Sooooo much work to just copy a file to a USB drive.

Apr 7, 2017 11:30 AM in response to Drew Reece

Etcher is beautiful! Thanks for pointing this one out.

In my case, I'm on a Mac and am trying to create a bootable Windows USB to repair a friend's laptop (all jokes welcome!). When I tried doing this in Etcher, it actually directed me to use Rufus, which worked great for me, but it's a Windows app, so you need to have Bootcamp/Parallels, or an actual Windows machine at hand.

Thanks for the link. I spent a lot of time finding a solution and Etcher pointed me in the right direction!

Courcoul

Level 6

18,588 points

Jul 20, 2017 9:28 AM in response to Bebias

Since we're being pedantic AND nerdy AND need to get this done AND already have a Windows Install image on .ISO, just download VirtualBox, set up a Windows VM with it and the .iso, then use that to download and use Microsoft's own ISO to USB tool and be done with it. Or Rufus. Or ISOtoUSB. Whatever...

Jan 7, 2018 11:04 AM in response to Barney-15E

True, I don't have an optical drive (though I am planning on buying one and hope I can burn to DVD using it). However, this conversation never made it clear as to what the "USB drive" actually was. Did the OP mean an external DVD drive or did he mean a USB stick? Based on the answers, it could have been either. My original assumption was that he was talking about a stick, though I see where I could have gone wrong. Just another question without enough information to provide a satisfactory answer.