Cloning SD card for multiple Pi consoles

[Anonymous]

After tinkering with RetroPie for about a week (bear in mind, this was my first time ever dealing with Linux), I finally configured it to do everything I wanted in an all-in-one retro gaming console. My son-in-law saw it and wants me to create one for him, as well. In order to make a second console, can I simply clone the SD card and plug it into another Pi and it’s ready to play? Or will I have to configure a separate card for a separate system? Much thanks in advance!

[kitchuk]

Use a program called Win32 Disk Imager. You can insert your sd card into your PC and them read the sd card and create an output .img file. You can then wrote this image file to any other sd card. It’s what u do to make a backup of my setup.

[kitchuk]

Try this guide: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-clone-your-raspberry-pi-sd-card-for-super-easy-r-1261113524

[InsecureSpike]

if you have a mac, I very much suggest ApplePi-Baker, it’s awesome an every fast! here’s the link

http://www.tweaking4all.com/news/applepi-baker-v1-6-update/

[Anonymous]

Thank you.

[InsecureSpike]

which way worked for you, mate

[Anonymous]

I haven’t done it, yet, but I’m on a PC and going to try using the Win32 disk imager. I’ve read that it was possible to create a backup using this method in the event your SD card becomes corrupt, but I wasn’t sure if the SD card image was interchangeable between Pi consoles.

[morias]

It is definitely interchangeable. I have done it with dd on Linux.

[Anonymous]

@morias As this is my first ever Pi project, you’ll have to excuse my ignorance on the subject matter. What is “dd”?

[morias]

dd is a command line tool for unix to backup disks. It can be dangerous so be careful.

From memory I run the following:

df to see what disks are mounted.
umount /dev/sdb1 if my sd card is device sdb
sudo dd bs=4M if=/dev/sdb of=filename.img

To copy that to the new sd I unmount it and run:
sudo dd bs=4M if=filename.img of=/dev/sdb

You might want to google some other pages about backing up a sdcard using dd before doing it for the first time. Obviously you need another linux computer to do it as you can’t do it whilst it is mounted.

[Anonymous]

@morias Sounds daunting. I think I will stick with the Win32 disk imager program. lol

[Author]

Posts