- Raspberry Pi Zero Clone
- Git Clone Raspberry Pi
- Best Raspberry Pi Image
- Best Raspberry Pi Clone Software
New Raspberry Pi 4 Video Here:has some Pi4 kits in stock: I had an old Raspberry.
To clone Raspberry Pi SD card is to make an exactly copy of your SD card. But how to clone Raspberry Pi SD card? Here we highly recommend you a cloning software AOMEI Backupper, which can help you clone you SD card to another place with a simple steps. Discover the best Raspberry Pi 400 projects and guides! Learn coding and computing with the latest all-in-one computer. Read it now HackSpace issue 38. This issue we pay homage to some of the makers who are creating their own bit of movie fandom, whether that’s props, costumes, or a great-big Ecto-1. Other Raspberry Pi clone boards out there like the Banana Pi and the HummingBoard don’t use the same BCM2835 found in the Raspi and the new Odroid. The new board also has the same 26 pin GPIO. Of course the best thing to do is not to use any USB extender cable, and just plug the SD card copier direct to the PC/Rpi USB socket. SD card copier - The latest update to Raspbian - Simon Long 2016may13. One query which comes up a lot on the forums is about the best way to back up your Pi.
Raspberry Pi Zero Clone
How to Clone/Backup Raspberry Pi SD Card on Windows, Linux, and MacOS
Jessica WardIt’s an important thing to take a backup of your all-important data whether it is on your PC or stored on an external storage device. Today, I will guide you on how to clone a Raspberry Pi SD card on Windows, Linux and Mac OS.
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How to Backup Raspberry Pi SD Card on Windows
Back up or clone Raspberry Pi SD card means you will create a duplicate copy of the contents stored on the card and use if the original memory card corrupts. Check the steps below to copy the data from one SD card to another with the help of Windows OS.
Step-1: Insert the SD card in your PC. You can use the USB port or a built-in card reader of your system if it is available
Step-2: Download the latest version of software Win32DiskImager from the official resource and install it
Step-3: Open the app when the installation is done
Step-4: At the right corner, you will see an option of choosing the device. Click on it and select the drive in which you inserted the SD card
Step-5: Choose the folder location where you want to save the image file of the data
Step-6: Name the file as per your choice but remember to add the .img extension. For example, raspberry_clone.img
Step-7: Now select ‘Read’ button
Step-8: Wait when the data is being copied to the specified location. Don’t shut down your PC
Step-9: When you get the message of ‘Read Successful,’ attach the card back into your Pi to use it
Step-10: Now, it’s time to insert the SD card into your PC on which you want to make the copy of your original SD memory card
Step-11: Open the Win32DiskImager software and choose the image location that you have made
Step-12: Select the drive of your inserted SD card and choose ‘Write’ button
Step-13: Wait until the process is finished. It can take a while to duplicate the data
Step-14: Remove the memory card and keep it at safe place for future use
How to Clone a Raspberry Pi SD Card on Linux
If you are a fan of Linux and want to clone your Pi SD card using some command lines, then follow the process below:
1) Open the command terminal and enter ‘sudo fdisk –l.’
2) Look for your memory card name indicating with a little less memory space than originally mentioned by the manufacturer (that’s obvious). It may look like /dev/sda followed by the storage size of your SD card
3) Now, enter the command below in the terminal. It will start cloning the data off your memory card to the specified folder name with .img extension
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=~/raspberry_clone.img
4) You will see a message displayed on the terminal windows with the total records of in/out and the size of data copied in the file
5) Now, remove the original SD card and insert the card on which you want to create the backup. Make sure that the partitions are unmounted on the memory card
6) Enter the command below to write the copied data to the SD card which is to be cloned
sudo dd if=~/raspberry_clone.img of=/dev/sda2
Make sure to follow the right path. Otherwise, you may lose all your content from the system, and the SD may be corrupted. A message will be displayed after the writing process is done.
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Clone Raspberry Pi SD Card on Mac OS
At last, I will describe how you can duplicate the content of a Pi SD card on your Mac system. It is the similar process that we have seen for the Linux OS but has some different command names. So, let’s check the methods below:
Method-1: Using Command Terminal
- Insert the SD memory card in your Mac OS system
- Go to terminal, write ‘diskutil last’ and then press Enter
- Check your device name. You can easily recognize the SD card by its size and name mentioned
- Now, enter the below command where we replace the file extension from the Linux OS. Here we will use .dmg extension for Mac
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sudo dd if=/dev/disk of=~/raspberry_clone.dmg
- Sit back for a while until the process completes. Unmount the memory card after the terminal window displays the message of reading finished
- Unmount the SD card and insert the card which you want to make a clone for your Raspberry Pi data. Again, make sure for the unmount partition on the memory device
- Go to the terminal and write the below command
sudo dd if=~/raspberry_clone.dmg of=/dev/disk
- Wait till the writing process is finished and then remove the card from the system
Method-2: Using Disk Utility
Disk Utility is an inbuilt app for the Mac Operating Systems. It helps to make many significant changes and perform actions to ease your tasks. One of them is backing up Raspberry SD card by duplicating its data.
- Insert the SD card in your Mac system
- Open ‘Disk Utility’ app and choose the partition you want to clone
- Go to file menu, select ‘New Image,’ and then click on ‘Image from “boot”’
- Now, from the format menu, choose DVD/CD master
An iso file will be created in the form of cdr. That’s it. The backup is done for your Raspberry Pi SD card. With the help of some external Mac supported applications like Etcher app, you can restore the data of the SD card.
Conclusion
So, here I have described methods to clone the Raspberry Pi SD card on Windows, Linux, and Mac Operating Systems. If you have any doubt or query, then use the comment section below to ask. Also, if you know any other better and reliable method to do the process, then you can freely share your thoughts here.
Backup is always good!
Case: Can I Clone a Raspberry Pi SD Card?
“Can anyone help? I have my Raspberry Pi model 3 image on a 16 GB micro SD card. I tried to clone the card to another card but I find that the new card is a few MB smaller!”
Raspberry Pi is a series of credit-card sized and single-board computers that plugs into a computer monitor or TV. It enables users to do basically everything you can expect on a desktop computer. Meanwhile, it has been widely used in many areas for its low cost and high portability.
The Raspberry Pi SD card inserted to the board works as hard drive. If it gets corrupted by power outage, overclocking, or some other reasons, you have no choice but to start from scratch, which is quite frustrating.
In this case, you may want to clone the Raspberry Pi SD card to another card for better performance, or keep the copy as a backup. But how can you do that? Is there an effective SD card copier?
Advantages of Cloning Raspberry Pi SD Card
- Data protection:
If you’ve been using Raspberry Pi for a while, you probably know it’s a finicky little device. Especially when you use Raspberry Pi as a media center or retro gaming station, the SD card would be crashed and corrupted easily. Thus you may lost everything on it. To avoid this tragedy, you could clone the Raspberry Pi SD card to protect the data.
- SD card upgrade:
If the Raspberry Pi SD card has insufficient space or poor performance, you can upgrade it to larger one or newer one. In this case, cloning your Raspberry Pi SD card to another is a good way to avoid data loss.
Best Free SD Clone Clone Software for Raspberry Pi
To clone or backup Raspberry Pi SD Card, the simplest and safest way is to use an effective cloning tool like AOMEI Backupper Standard.
◆ AOMEI Backupper integrates complete features including the Disk Clone. When it comes to Raspberry Pi SD card cloning, you can connect it as an external hard drive.
◆ This software runs in an intelligent clone mode by default. It only clones used sectors so that you can even clone SD card to a smaller disk (as in the case at the beginning). If you have a larger disk or SD card as the destination, you can also choose the sector-by-sector mode to make an exact copy of all the sectors, no matter used or not.
◆ The cloning process is rather simple. All the operations can be done within several steps.
◆ AOMEI Backupper Standard is completely FREE, and enough to complete the disk cloning. If you want to enjoy some advanced features like editing partition size of destination disk, cloning dynamic disk, cloning GPT to MBR or vice versa, you can also upgrade to Professional or higher editions.
How to Clone Raspberry Pi SD Card with AOMEI Backupper?
With all these information, you can get started to clone Raspberry Pi SD card.
Preparations:
● Shut down your Raspberry Pi and remove the SD card.
● Install AOMEI Backupper on a Windows computer.
● Use SD Card Reader to connect the Raspberry Pi SD card to the computer.
● If you want to clone the SD card to another, connect the destination card as well. If your computer already has a SD card slot, you just need to prepare one Reader.
● Shut down your Raspberry Pi and remove the SD card.
● Install AOMEI Backupper on a Windows computer.
● Use SD Card Reader to connect the Raspberry Pi SD card to the computer.
● If you want to clone the SD card to another, connect the destination card as well. If your computer already has a SD card slot, you just need to prepare one Reader.
Clone SD card to another with AOMEI Backupper:
1. Launch the software, go to Clone tab and click Disk Clone. It will copy everything on the SD card.
2. Select the Raspberry Pi SD card as the source disk, click Next.
3. Choose the destination disk. In this case it’s another SD card you just connected. Click Next to continue.
4. Customize the cloning as you need, then click Start Clone and wait for the process to complete.
◆ SSD Alignment: for a destination SSD, this option will accelerate the reading and writing speed therefore improve the performance.
◆ Sector by Sector Clone: to create an intact copy of all the sectors, you can tick this option. Otherwise it will only clone used sectors.
◆ Edit Partition: in advanced editions, you can use this feature to adjust the destination disk’s partition size and drive letter.
◆ Sector by Sector Clone: to create an intact copy of all the sectors, you can tick this option. Otherwise it will only clone used sectors.
◆ Edit Partition: in advanced editions, you can use this feature to adjust the destination disk’s partition size and drive letter.
When the cloning is over, you can remove the SD cards, and insert the cloned card to the Raspberry Pi.
Tips:
- The destination disk or SD card will be overwritten so please backup important data on it at first.
- If you fail to connect two SD cards at the same time, you can back up the SD card to computer first, and then restore the image file to the new card instead.
Verdict
To clone Raspberry Pi SD card to another, an effective cloning tool like AOMEI Backupper could be a big help. If works on all Windows OS and enables you clone internal or external disks. Not only disk, you can even it use to clone Windows operating system, therefore to migrate only OS to another SSD or HDD. And in daily use, it also works as an all-around data protection solution to backup and restore.