Raspberry Pi Forums

I just got a raspberry pi 3 and a sandisk ultra 8 gb micro sd card. I launched Noobs and ran raspbrian. then I moved the files I had on the micro sd card onto my computer and moved the open elec system on the pi which launched normally, then when I moved the files back to the micro sd card, and I launch it it only boots up 'Open elec'. I have tried formatting the card and copying raspbrian back but it still launches open elec. however, I do not want to re-image the card for I have installed lots of files on the card.

what could I do?

Since you imaged the card with OpenElec (an operating system), you need to reimage the card with Raspbian (another operating system) in order to get Raspbian back.

Since you copied the files onto the SD card, why don't you copy them back onto the computer, into a folder for easy access when you copy them back again?

In future, you could try using a flash drive for transporting files around, since they'll be accessible outside of the operating system.

Installing Pi operating systems on SD cards is always destructive.
NOOBS "recovery mode" is therefore the worst misnomer ever.

Not to forget that with NOOBS you have to select
all OS you ever want to multiboot on first boot - or
use "recovery mode" to nuke everything and install all
previous OS again and the new one itself.


ghans