Part 1: Copy Windows 8 Installation Files to Hard Drive It also works with Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows 7. This method requires you to create a bootable hard drive from Windows 8 ISO image, so you can then install Windows 8 without formatting. But, what to do if you don’t have a USB drive in hand, or your optical drive doesn’t work properly? Here we’ll show you how to install Windows 8 directly from a hard drive, without using a CD or USB drive. It should have files and folders but especially a setup.exe and an autorun.inf file.It’s super easy to install Windows 8 from a USB drive or a CD/DVD. Now, re-plug the USB drive and check its contents.Once it's complete, it will output records in/out and bytes transferred.Be patient! (You can press Ctrl+T to see the bytes transferred so far.) The process will start but there will be no output for a while.Just drag/drop it on terminal after if= and it will print the full path. /path/to/win-iso-file is the full path of the ISO image.Sudo dd if=/path/to/win-iso-file of=/dev/disk2 bs=1m It should print something like this: Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful. Then type command: diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2.Open Terminal and run command: diskutil listįrom the output, find out the name of the USB drive.

(This is the one used for Windows partitions.)

Select Master Boot Record for the Scheme.

(If your drive is above 32GB, you might need to select ExFAT instead.)

CAUTION: Make sure you select the correct drive! Then click erase.

Plug it in and format/erase it using Disk Utility (under Applications/Utilities).

Your USB flash drive should have at least 8GB.

This is how you do it - without BootCamp:

Win 8 installation media