New projects intended for large cards. Keep it small initially

[Bodestone]

It may have been said before but possibly in different terms so it didn't show up in a search.

I back up my image before mucking about with the connectivity settings for obvious reasons.

When planning a project that you intend to eventually need a large microsd card (more than 16GB -- or even 8) start with just the 8 GB card to get things configured.

An example would be a retropi project where you did not whant the bulk of USB storage and would want it eventually installed to a 128GB card. If you start with that card size then backups and restores over a card reader are going to take an hour or so, if not more.

I keep forgetting this.

Get the project up and running on the smallest card size so you can back up the image as many times as you want when fiddling with options that might brick it.

[Heater]

I'm all for the "keep it small" idea.

However my take on it is a bit different:

1) There is no point to backing up an entire operating system image. If you need that OS again just download and install it again from wherever it came from. Keeping copies of most of that is huge, wasteful and pointless.

2) What you do need to do backup is any configuration files you have changed. That is very small and quick to do.

3) Of course you might have software you are creating. That of course should be backed up as usual.

[W. H. Heydt]

3) Of course you might have software you are creating. That of course should be backed up as usual.

And the easy way to do that (if you don't go overboard) is to backup the /hose/pi (or other user ID) directory. That *should* contain "master copies" of all your scripts, source code, and make files.

That's my primary backup strategy for my convention registration system. It contains everything from the previous machine as well, so backing up 15 years of records is about 250MB, which a pretty small in terms of modern storage capacities.

[mikerr]

You can backup a large 128gb card onto a small 8GB card using the "SD copier" included in raspbian - assuming the card is raspbian based.

[jahboater]

1) There is no point to backing up an entire operating system image. If you need that OS again just download and install it again from wherever it came from. Keeping copies of most of that is huge, wasteful and pointless.

+1
Actually +100!

I only backup my programs, config files etc - which are quite small.
It is pointless backing up gigabytes of stuff that is trivially easy to replace.

[pcmanbob]

If the particular project involves installing and setting up extra programs or packages I often back up the entire SD card once the project is finalized, I then just use a Linux desktop PC to shrink the image file to as small as possible but still allowing space for the system to boot then if I need to reimage my SD card due to some problem I can just expand the system on the first reboot.

This method has saved me several times when a project was corrupted by a sudden power failure.