Below is the procedure for creating a bootable USB flash drive with Windows 11. The same process should also work with any HDD/SSD connected to your system.
¶Download Windows 11 image
https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11
sha256sum Win11_English_x64v1.iso 4bc6c7e7c61af4b5d1b086c5d279947357cff45c2f82021bb58628c2503eb64e Win11_English_x64v1.iso
¶Plug your USB flash drive
Linux detected /dev/sda as the USB stick, in your case it will most likely take a different name.
¶Format your USB flash drive
Work as root account and make sure to replace /dev/sda with your USB flash drive! Use lsblk and dmesg | tail -50 commands to locate your USB flash drive.
sudo wipefs -a /dev/sda sudo parted /dev/sda (parted) mklabel gpt (parted) mkpart BOOT fat32 0% 1GiB (parted) mkpart INSTALL ntfs 1GiB 10GiB (parted) quit
Check the drive layout now:
In my case I’ve used 100% instead of 10GiB when created the “INSTALL” ntfs partition - mkpart INSTALL ntfs 1GiB 100%. But you can use anything that should be larger than 6 GiB to fit the data from Windows ISO image.
sudo parted /dev/sda unit B print Model: SanDisk Extreme (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 62742792192B Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1048576B 1073741823B 1072693248B BOOT msftdata 2 1073741824B 62742593535B 61668851712B INSTALL msftdata
¶Mount Windows ISO somewhere
I mounted it to /mnt/iso directory:
sudo mkdir /mnt/iso sudo mount /home/<your user>/Downloads/Win11_English_x64v1.iso /mnt/iso/
¶Format 1st partition of your USB flash drive as FAT32
sudo mkfs.vfat -n BOOT /dev/sda1 sudo mkdir /mnt/vfat sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/vfat/
¶Copy everything from Windows ISO image except for the sources directory there
sudo rsync -r --progress --exclude sources --delete-before /mnt/iso/ /mnt/vfat/
¶Copy only boot.wim file from the sources directory, while keeping the same path layout
sudo mkdir /mnt/vfat/sources sudo cp /mnt/iso/sources/boot.wim /mnt/vfat/sources/
¶Format 2nd partition of your USB flash drive as NTFS
sudo mkfs.ntfs --quick -L INSTALL /dev/sda2 sudo mkdir /mnt/ntfs sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/ntfs
¶Copy everything from Windows ISO image there
sudo rsync -r --progress --delete-before /mnt/iso/ /mnt/ntfs/
¶Unmount the USB flash drive and Windows ISO image
sudo umount /mnt/ntfs sudo umount /mnt/vfat sudo umount /mnt/iso sudo sync
¶Power off your USB flash drive
sudo udisksctl power-off -b /dev/sda