WinDiskWriter For Mac

If you want to create a bootable Windows USB on a Windows machine, there are plenty of utilities available. On macOS, for obvious reasons, the selection is smaller. However, for those using both platforms, such a tool is sometimes necessary.

WinDiskWriter is an open-source app meant to help you create bootable Windows USBs from macOS. It features a lightweight design, supports numerous OS versions, and allows you to remove Windows 11 installation requirements, namely TPM, Secure Boot, and minimum RAM.

If you’ve never created a bootable Windows USB before, the process will seem very straightforward. Assuming you already have the installation ISO file, just point the app to it, select your USB drive, and start writing.

Since the FAT32 file system is limited to file sizes of up to 4GB, WinDiskWriter will split the install.wim file automatically, to allow it to be copied. Support is planned for splitting .esd system images as well, which are used less commonly.

Windows 11 rendered a lot of systems obsolete on launch, but its requirements can be bypassed. When creating a bootable USB, you have the option to remove TPM, RAM, and Secure Boot requirements, allowing you to install Windows on officially unsupported systems.

Another planned feature will get rid of the online account requirement during installation, making it easier to use a local account instead. Hopefully, this will be implemented soon.

If you’re dealing with old firmwares that don’t support EFI booting, you can install a Legacy BIOS boot sector to allow older machines to use the drive as well. The app also adds EFI support to Windows 7 and Vista.

WinDiskWriter is an excellent bootable drive creation tool. If you don’t have a usable Windows PC or prefer to work on your Mac, it will allow you to create bootable drives effortlessly, and it has quite a lot of capabilities on offer, though not as many as something like Rufus. Thankfully, many other features are in the works, so keep an eye out.