Clone or backup FULL SD Card

[dchapma1]

All,

I have 2 Model B+ Pis
-
I have been trying to clone the SD card from Pi 1 so I can get my second Pi up and running exactly as my first one.

I used Win32DiskImager as suggested on several Pi forums. I imaged my Pi # 1 SD card, then laid that image onto Card #2. But when I booted Pi # 2 it had errors and would not boot.

I tried this several times to no avail.

Is there a good way to clone the SD card, including all the partitions ? I want to do this for error recovery purposes too.

Thanks Much.

Don

[DougieLawson]

Use a Raspberry Pi with a USB SDCard reader. You can copy the card you're booted from that way.
sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sdb bs=30M &

Use a Raspberry Pi with two USB SDCard readers and copy can copy one inactive card to another that way.
sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=30M &

If you want to reformat SDCards to blank (as if they are factory fresh), use a camera or an Android tablet.

[Lob0426]

Format the card with SDFormatter with the size option. Then use Win32DiskImager to read the first card then write the second card.

I have never had a problem "cloning" a card this way.

Try a different card as the second may be messed up.

[dchapma1]

Strange. I must have done something wrong.

I ended up using my MAC in the terminal mode using dd

Thanks for the fast replies!

Don

[ikke4]

is this also possible when the original sd-card is 32Gb (only 6GB in use) and the new card is 16Gb..

[DirkS]

is this also possible when the original sd-card is 32Gb (only 6GB in use) and the new card is 16Gb..

No, the image will be the size of the original SD card
It is possible to shrink it after creating the image with scripts / programs like Image Shrinker (see http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... p?p=656640)

[ikke4]

thanks, i'll look into it...

[DougieLawson]

is this also possible when the original sd-card is 32Gb (only 6GB in use) and the new card is 16Gb..

That only works if you skip the even numbered bytes the problem with that is the odd bytes don't work on their own.

[ikke4]

thanks,

i did what you suggested and throwed away all the "zero's"! it really works great, not only do i have a very small partition, booting speed has increased with a factor 2..

thank you