Here is a simple guide to create bootable windows 10 USB drive in Ubuntu operating system. In this article, I have described every small details with screenshots. Highlights includes choosing between GPT/MBR partitioning, enabling exFat file system in Ubuntu as you can not copy more than 4GB file in FAT system etc. This topic will clear all your doubts and if you sucked in any step please add comment, I will try my best to resolve.
- Download Windows 10/11 latest ISO from Microsoft official website.
2. Insert your USB stick(Min 8 GB but 16 GB is commanded) to computer and format it. To do this open Disks application.
3. Select your drive from left panel and click on 3 dots on the top right.
4. Click Format disk. It will show you a dialogue with 2 options Erase and Partitioning. Select “Don’t overwrite existing data(Quick)” for Erase and “Compatible with modern systems and hard disks > 2TB (GPT)” for partitioning. GPT have many advantages over MBR. Now a days most BIOS comes with UEFI boot which is GPT supported. If you have a legacy system you can choose MBR.
5. Wait for the format to complete and next click on plus(+) icon under Volumes level.
6. Click Next on Create Partition first screen. Actually the first screen allows you to select partition size.
7. On the Format Volume screen enter Volume Name and for the Type choose Other and click Next.
8. You must have a thought like why we choose other instead of FAT. Its because, now a days windows 10/11 comes with files more than 4 GB and FAT filesysytem won’t work as it doesn’t allow a single file of size greater than 4 GB. So, you should use the ExFAT format. This newer format allows files bigger than 4 GB. The screen is Custom Format screen. Choose exFAT from options.
If the option is disabled you will be required install exfat utilities with following commands:
For Ubuntu 21.04 or 22.04 sudo apt install exfatprogs For Ubuntu 20.04 and lower versions sudo apt-get install exfat-utils exfat-fuse
9. Create the Disk and mount it. Now go to your downloaded ISO file location and open it with Disk Image Mounter.
10. Copy everything from ISO disk image to newly created USB drive. Wait for few minutes to complete copy and your bootable USB is ready to boot. It will look like below,
Thanks for reading! If you have any doubt regarding this feel free to add in the comment.