installing Raspbian .img onto SD?

[pcopa]

Is there another way to get the Raspbian image onto an SD other than using Win32Image Writer app.
The issue is that ImageWriter is only available through SourceForge and Sourceforge is packing malware in the installer.

[nickthefish]

it's adware not malware. win32diskmanager can be installed without too much concern.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ ... -bundling/

[rpdom]

You could download a Linux Live bootable CD. That will turn your PC into a temporary Linux box (without affecting anything you've already got installed) and you can then use the dd command to do the install.

[pcopa]

it's adware not malware.

Regarding SourceForge i'm a burnt kid. The last time I downloaded something from SourceForge and switched off the virus protection to load it, it took me 3 days and a clean install to get rid of it. It's very aggressive.

[pcopa]

You could download a Linux Live bootable CD..

Thanks rpdom, sounds like the best solution. I need to get more into Linux anyway.

[flubbard]

A good place to start is with unetbootin.exe, it will create bootable usb from the image file.

[fruitoftheloom]

A good place to start is with unetbootin.exe, it will create bootable usb from the image file.

What use is a bootable USB Drive which has had an.IMG file copied to it, the RPi can not boot from USB

[flubbard]

Sorry for the confusion. Unetbootin.exe is a good place to start to get your Live Linux distribution onto the USB. You would boot your computer using the jump drive, and from there have Linux as a live / non persistent instance running on your desktop / laptop.

From within that Linux instance, you would use the dd command line utility to copy the image file (Raspbian or whichever image you are planning on using for the Pi) to the sd card.

Linux is a good place to start with creating your SD card from the image. If you don't already have an install of Linux, using a LiveCD, or LiveUSB is a great place to start as it doesn't make changes to your system. I have found that Unetbootin.exe is a good place to start in generating that LiveUSB.

Note...you would not use Raspbian or other Pi image for the LiveUSB image. I would recommend using something like Puppy Linux or DSL, which are small, but well rounded Live distributions.

Hope this clarifies things.

- Barry

[fruitoftheloom]

Sorry for the confusion. Unetbootin.exe is a good place to start to get your Live Linux distribution onto the USB. You would boot your computer using the jump drive, and from there have Linux as a live / non persistent instance running on your desktop / laptop.

From within that Linux instance, you would use the dd command line utility to copy the image file (Raspbian or whichever image you are planning on using for the Pi) to the sd card.

Linux is a good place to start with creating your SD card from the image. If you don't already have an install of Linux, using a LiveCD, or LiveUSB is a great place to start as it doesn't make changes to your system. I have found that Unetbootin.exe is a good place to start in generating that LiveUSB.

Note...you would not use Raspbian or other Pi image for the LiveUSB image. I would recommend using something like Puppy Linux or DSL, which are small, but well rounded Live distributions.

Hope this clarifies things.

- Barry

The confusion is you stated .iMG

Linux use .ISO

[flubbard]

Sorry, I think of both as "image" files. As they contain a byte by byte picture of the disk, which would have a filesystem and structure encoded within it, as opposed to a logical copy of the files themselves.

Linux can use either, although if an .img file is compressed, it may need to be uncompressed first. I normally think of the .iso files being used for DVD and CD's.

I have not experienced problems using dd to write image files form raspberrypi.org using dd in Linux in the past, but I may need to be a little more careful about how I use the terms interchangeably

- Barry

[QuietZone]

Sorry, I think of both as "image" files. As they contain a byte by byte picture of the disk, which would have a filesystem and structure encoded within it, as opposed to a logical copy of the files themselves.

I suppose that since both cats & dogs are kept as pets, it doesn't really mattter if you call a cat a dog (or vice versa).

[flubbard]

The key here is that both .img and .iso file formats are image files. .iso files are used when referring to optical drives.

Now, as to the original comment, unetbootin will allow you to use a .iso file (one typically used for optical drives) and install it on a USB drive, creating the boot partition and code so that you can boot a typical CD/DVD .iso image from a USB disk instead.

The .img image files were originally used for floppy disk, but are now being used for the sd cards as well.

I think the original confusion came form my comment referring to an image. There are more than one type of image files, and .img is just one implementation of an image. The cool thing is that Linux is able to use many types of image files!

As a bit more information: When dealing with any image file, you need to be concerned with what the image was taken of. If it is of a CD, you can write that to a CD. If it is of a DVD, you can use it to create a DVD. You cannot write a CD image to a DVD, nor can you write an .iso created of a music CD and place it on a DVD, and expect it to play in a CD player. Both the hardware and software of the target need to match the original source.

If it is of a SD card or floppy disk, you can use it for that purpose. If you write an image created from a DVD to an SD card, you will have problems, as the physical media structure is going to be different, as will the expectations of the hardware as to where boot sectors and other mechanisms should reside.

You need to be concerned with the size of your target media compared to the source. You cannot write an 2GB sd card image to a 1GB card, there will not be sufficient room to write the entire image. You will notice when dealing with the Pi, that if you write a 2GB image to an 8GB card, you will have only a 2GB effective card, unless you use the included tools to expand the file system. This is simply because the image contains a picture of the entire SD card, including the partition table. Although it works to place the 2GB image on a 8GB card (both are behaving as SD cards and have similar structure), the partition table will ignore the existence of the remaining space because it wasn't there on the original card that was imaged.

- Barry