Options for Cloning the SD card?

[stevewilson333]

I can clone my cards through the CL on my Mac, but it takes so long. I'm using 256GB cards for a video project. Any way to clone quicker? There is nothing on them other then the base Raspian and settings, etc.

Thanks.

[ghans]

Have you no way of getting access to a Linux machine ?
Even a virtual one might work if you can passthrough
your card reader. The tools which i would use to speed this
up are essentially the easiest to get by just using Linux.

An alternative might be a live distro on a CD/DVD or pendrive.
This reduces the risk of damage to your Mac / Windows machine
to nearly zero.

ghans

[pluggy]

Build what you want on a 4GB card, clone that and then stretch the partition after cloning to fill the big card.

[mancity]

Build what you want on a 4GB card, clone that and then stretch the partition after cloning to fill the big card.

Im not stuck at this, as I found another way around, however, I made a 4GB install of Raspian, installed everything I wanted ad configured it how I wanted with Wifi etc etc and decided to use Roadkil's SD Image software on Windows to create an image, which worked fine.

The problem was though, that I wrote that image to a newly formatted 16GB MicroSD card and put it in the Pi and via sudo raspi-config, chose to expand the file system and received that message saying it couldn't be done, I was likely using NOOBS which was already expanded.

Therefore I was stuck with a 4GB image on a 16GB card

[ghans]

Linux software can be used to extend that partition (gparted) . Of course the card must not be used in a Pi while resizing.

ghans

[DougieLawson]

Get rid of NOOBS, use the plain Raspbian. (You'll gain 1.6GB of space in the process.)

[pluggy]

Life used to be so simple before this NOOBS thing came along under the pretext of it being easier to use.....

[stevewilson333]

Build what you want on a 4GB card, clone that and then stretch the partition after cloning to fill the big card.

Right. I wish I'd known that before I built everything on a 256GB card though. I suppose that is what I'll have to do. I added an autostart video program and I got the RTC working. I'll just recreate it I guess.

Thanks.

[stevewilson333]

Get rid of NOOBS, use the plain Raspbian. (You'll gain 1.6GB of space in the process.)

It was a plain Raspian that I added an autostart video program and I got the RTC working. I'll just recreate it I guess on a 4 GB and then use that to make the others and just expand them.