It NEEDS to be said in the first step that if you skip the step of formatting the drive then you must backup all the files on the USB stick. The text But this step can be skipped if you intend to use the USB stick with only generic PC hardware. is VERY misleading and this whole tutorial assumes:
- Nothing is on the drive
- The user knows that Etcher will completely erase the drive anyway and the files will not be recoverable.
- The user backs up their files before this entire process.
Reading the tutorial, I thought Etcher created a bootable USB alongside my other files. Their documentation does not say this anywhere. I skipped the first step and I used the USB (my only USB) to create a bootable ISO for my PC using my Mac only to find that the files that were on it (the backups from over a decade of backups) are all gone and not recoverable. Extremely frustrating as this is, I hope this comment saves some souls and better instructions can be made.