This one catches a lot of people! What’s happening is actually pretty simple, see…
Linux ISOs are usually so-called “hybrid” images, meaning the ISO is also a valid disk image. That’s why you can
ddthem straight onto a USB stick and they just work.Windows ISOs are another story, they are not hybrid the way we want them, as they got old-school DVD layouts. Yes, they have both ISO9660 and UDF file system structures also called “hybrid”, but that’s just another type of the hybrid FS adding even more confusion. At the end of the day, if you simply
ddthem, the resulting USB stick will usually boot, but the installer won’t find any drives because the boot media is missing the proper partition table, boot code, and filesystem layout Windows expects from the “real” bootable disk image.
There’s another caveat, and it’s the fact that install.wim file inside newer Windows ISOs is often larger than 4GB in size. FAT32 can’t handle that, so you end up needing NTFS or a split WIM file. Tools like Rufus and WoeUSB handle this automatically, but a straight dd obviously does not…
How to do it right? Good question!
Linux
WoeUSB
https://github.com/WoeUSB/WoeUSB-ng
sudo woeusb --target-filesystem NTFS --device Win10.iso /dev/sdX
Ventoy
https://www.ventoy.net
You install Ventoy on the USB stick once, then just copy/paste ISOs to it, and no more re-flashing every time you want a different version. I’d personally go with Ventoy, but it’s just lazy me.
Windows
Rufus is kinda “de facto” standard here. You pick your ISO, you select that USB stick, click “Start”, and it does all the voodoo behind the screen. Rufus handles all the quirks automatically, no questions asked.
Bottom line is, dd works great for Linux ISOs, but not for Windows ones. Use WoeUSB, Ventoy, or Rufus, depending on what OS you run, and you’ll have an installer that boots cleanly and sees your disks, which is exactly what you want!
Videos
This is for all my fellow Linux users who removed windows but now are struggling because there is no way to create a Win11 Bootable USB .
https://nixaid.com/bootable-usb-windows-linux/
The Only way that worked after trying woeusb , 4 usb writes , dd command , Fedora writer , unpacking and copying the iso and ventoy.
Have Fun
This one catches a lot of people! What’s happening is actually pretty simple, see…
Linux ISOs are usually so-called “hybrid” images, meaning the ISO is also a valid disk image. That’s why you can
ddthem straight onto a USB stick and they just work.Windows ISOs are another story, they are not hybrid the way we want them, as they got old-school DVD layouts. Yes, they have both ISO9660 and UDF file system structures also called “hybrid”, but that’s just another type of the hybrid FS adding even more confusion. At the end of the day, if you simply
ddthem, the resulting USB stick will usually boot, but the installer won’t find any drives because the boot media is missing the proper partition table, boot code, and filesystem layout Windows expects from the “real” bootable disk image.
There’s another caveat, and it’s the fact that install.wim file inside newer Windows ISOs is often larger than 4GB in size. FAT32 can’t handle that, so you end up needing NTFS or a split WIM file. Tools like Rufus and WoeUSB handle this automatically, but a straight dd obviously does not…
How to do it right? Good question!
Linux
WoeUSB
https://github.com/WoeUSB/WoeUSB-ng
sudo woeusb --target-filesystem NTFS --device Win10.iso /dev/sdX
Ventoy
https://www.ventoy.net
You install Ventoy on the USB stick once, then just copy/paste ISOs to it, and no more re-flashing every time you want a different version. I’d personally go with Ventoy, but it’s just lazy me.
Windows
Rufus is kinda “de facto” standard here. You pick your ISO, you select that USB stick, click “Start”, and it does all the voodoo behind the screen. Rufus handles all the quirks automatically, no questions asked.
Bottom line is, dd works great for Linux ISOs, but not for Windows ones. Use WoeUSB, Ventoy, or Rufus, depending on what OS you run, and you’ll have an installer that boots cleanly and sees your disks, which is exactly what you want!
Here the right way to make Windows installer USB flash drive on Linux:
- Using GParted or any other tool make the following on USB flash drive:
1.1. Create GPT partition table.
1.1 Create the first partition ~1Gb with fat32 file system with label "BOOT".
1.2 The second with NTFS file system with label "INSTALL".
Mount Windows ISO file.
Copy the content except "sources" directory from Windows ISO to "BOOT" partition. The size of the content has to fit to the partition.
Create "sources" directory on "BOOT" partition and copy boot.wim file to the "sources" directory.
Copy all content from Windows ISO to "INSTALL" partition.
That's all.