Table of Contents

Prepare Flash Drive from MacOS

The USB Flash drive must be partitioned and formatted. Start with the following steps on MacOS.

  1. Insert the USB Flash drive into the computer
  2. Open a terminal window and run the following command. Note the disk name of the USB Flash drive, it should be something like “/dev/disk#“

    It helps to only have the one USB Flash drive plugged into the computer when running this command 

    diskutil list
  3. Run the following command to format the flash drive so that it can be partitioned

    Replace the '<NAME>' with the volume name from above and the '<disk>' with the disk name noted above. 

    diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ <NAME> <disk>
  4. Launch the Disk Utility app
    1. Select the search icon
    2. Type in “Disk Utility”
    3. Double click the Disk Utility result

      Find Disk Utility

  5. Select the USB Flash drive in the list on the right

    Select drive

  6. Select the Partition icon at the top

    Partition drive

  7. Type in the Name that you want to use

    MacOS partition name

  8. Select the “Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)” option for the Format

    MacOS partition format

  9. Select the + button underneath the pie chart on the left

    Add new partition

  10. Type in the Name that you want to use

    Windows partition name

  11. Select the “MS-DOS (FAT)” option for the Format

    Windows partition format

  12. Select the Apply button

    Apply partition configurations

  13. Select the Partition button

    If the operation fails, repeat the steps above and it should succeed the second time through

    Create partitions

  14. Eject both of the newly created drives and remove the USB Flash drive from the computer

    Eject USB Flash drive

Prepare Flash Drive from Windows

Next perform the following steps on Windows.

  1. Insert the USB Flash drive into the computer

    If Windows tells you that you need to format a disk, click the Cancel button

  2. Launch the Disk Management tool
    1. Open the Start Menu
    2. Type in “Create and format hard disk”
    3. Click the “Create and format hard disk partitions” Control Panel result

      Find Disk Management

  3. Select the USB Flash drive in the list at the top

    Select drive

  4. Right click on the USB Flash drive and select “Format…“

    Select format

  5. Type in a name for the partition if you want to change it

    Select file system

  6. Select the “NTFS” option for the File System

    Select file system

  7. Click the “OK” button

    Start format

  8. Click the “OK” button when it asks to continue

    Confirm format

  9. When it's finished close the Disk Management window

Install Applications

Finally follow the steps below to install the applications on each partition

  1. Follow the steps in Add Windows Applications to add the neccessary applications to the newly formatted drive
  2. Eject the USB Flash drive from the Windows computer and insert it into the MacOS computer
  3. Follow the steps in Add MacOS Applications to add the neccessary applications to the MacOS partition
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. - 2 Corinthians 5:17"