
If the USB drive is not formatted correctly, the burning process may not work, and the resultant USB drive may not boot correctly.

The computer wouldn’t be able to boot from it because the necessary boot loader and file system wouldn’t be properly set up. Simply copying the ISO file onto the USB drive would just leave you with a USB drive that contains a single ISO file. When we " burn" an ISO file to a USB drive, what we’re really doing is extracting the content from the ISO file and writing it onto the USB drive in a way that makes the USB drive bootable. It’s a complete, byte-for-byte copy of the content of a disk. This is a common point of confusion because the term " burning" is often associated with the process of writing data onto a CD or DVD, which behaves a bit differently than a USB drive.Īn ISO file is a disk image. When we talk about " burning" an ISO to a USB, we’re not simply referring to copying the ISO file directly onto the USB drive. This might sound like a daunting task, especially if you’re new to the concept of bootable drives and ISO files. How to Verify if My USB Drive is Bootable After Burning an ISO on Mac?īurning an ISO file of Windows 10 to USB on Mac involves creating a bootable USB drive that contains the Windows 10 operating system.


