Create Windows 10 USB installation drive with Linux only
By udisk, I mean a 2.5 inch HDD placed in an External Hard Drive Enclosure
I'm quite familiar (not professional, daily use only) with Linux (Arch&Ubuntu) but newbie to Windows. Sometimes I accidentally kill my Windows installation with some silly yet unrecoverable operations, and I have to:
- Download Windows 10 iso image
- Borrow a PC w/ a working Windows installation from someone.
- Install Ultraiso on that computer.
- Create Windows 10 installation udisk w/ Ultraiso and iso image.
- Boot my computer w/ the udisk.
- Repair/Reinstall my Windows 10.
I'm tired of borrowing computers or preparing extra udisks. Is there any way to create a Windows installation udisk w/o Windows, w/ Linux only?
Unacceptable solution:
-
dd if=[XXX.iso] of=/dev/sdX
- There is no way it's ever gonna work -
Install Ultraiso on
Windows VM,create a virtual disk, flash iso to virtual disk w/ Ultraiso in VM, then binary dump virtual disk to my udisk
- Too much trouble
Possible solution:
- Manually set up ISOLINUX/GRUB2/etc. on udisk and extract iso (If so,a thorough tutorial is much appreciated)
The best way to do that currently is to use woeusb
woeusb --target-filesystem NTFS --device path/to/windows.iso /dev/sdX
There is also a GUI for those that prefer it.
I did some search, and found a perfect script: windows2usb.
Since woeusb doesn't support UEFI, this tool supports BIOS and UEFI(with rufus driver), FAT32 and NTFS.