Adafruit's Raspberry Pi Lesson 1.

Preparing an SD Card for your

Raspberry Pi
Created by Simon Monk

Last updated on 2015-04-23 07:20:13 PM EDT

 Guide Contents

Guide Contents 2
Overview 3
You Will Need 5
Downloading an Image 7
Choose your Operating System 7
Choose your Distribution 7
Extract the Image File 7
Making an SD Card – Using a Windows Vista / 7 9
Making an SD Card – Using a Mac 11
Test & Configure 15
BONUS! Make a Backup Image! 17
Back it up! 17
What You'll Need 17
Get the Script File 17
Run the Script 18
Problems? 21

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 Overview
When you buy a Raspberry Pi, it may or may not be sold with an SD card. The SD card is important
because this is where the Raspberry Pi keeps its operating system and is also where you will store
your documents and programs.

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 Even if your Pi came with an SD card with an operating system on, it is a good idea to update it to
the latest version, as improvements and bug fixes are going in all the time. Since putting the
operating system onto an SD card wipes everything else off the card, it is worth considering using a
USB flash drive for your documents, so that when you install a new version of the operating system,
you don't have the complication of copying them off somewhere safe before reformatting the SD
card.

If your Pi did not come with an SD card then the minimum size you should get is 4GB, but buy a
bigger SD card if you think you will need the space. (If you're planning to store media files or work
with other SD card images on your Pi, you probably need a bigger card.)

This lesson shows you how to create an SD card for your Raspberry Pi.

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 You Will Need
To prepare an SD card for your computer, you will need:

A 'regular' computer with a built-in SD card reader, or an add-on USB SD card reader. The
instructions here are for Windows and Mac. You can pick up a tiny microSD card reader/writer that
is nice and fast and works with all USB ports (http://adafru.it/939) at the Adafruit shop.

An SD card at least 4GB in capacity. You can pick one up that is tested and guaranteed to work with
the Raspberry Pi (http://adafru.it/102) at the Adafruit shop. (If buying elsewhere, remember that for
the Pi 2, you'll need microSD.)

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 Downloading an Image
The operating system that will be installed onto the SD card must be downloaded from the Internet.
This will usually be a zip file that then extracts to a file of type .img an image file. Whatever image
file you download, the actual installation process is the same.

Choose your Operating System

There are a bewildering number of operating systems that you can install on your Raspberry Pi. If
you are a beginner, you'll probably want to stick with one of the Linux distributions.

Choose your Distribution

Having decided you want to install Linux, that is not the end of the story. You now have to decide
which distribution or 'distro' of Linux you want to install. Being an Open Source operating system,
anyone can take one of the existing distributions an add things to it or configure it in a certain way
before packaging it up as another distribution option for anyone to use. This is how the most
common Raspberry Pi distribution, 'Raspbian', came into existence. The existing 'Debian'
distribution was configured and kitted out with useful things like IDLE (a python-programming
language development editor) and Scratch (a learn-to-program gaming system) to make it suitable
for the Pi.

All of the Adafruit tutorials (and nearly every other tutorial online) will work with Raspbian, and nearly
every Pi out there runs it.

Raspbian Download
http://adafru.it/dpb

Additionally, Adafruit offers a growing set of tools for working with Raspbian installations, including
the Adafruit Raspberry Pi Finder (http://adafru.it/eZY), a GUI for configuring your Pi over the
network, and Occidentalis (http://adafru.it/aTc), a collection of utilities for hardware support and
hacking.

Previous versions of Occidentalis were built as standalone images, but we've since turned it into a
set of packages (http://adafru.it/f18) for Raspbian.

(Incidentally, the name Occidentalis comes from the Latin name for the raspberry, Rubus
Occidentalis.)

Extract the Image File

Whatever distribution you're installing, you'll probably have a zip file that looks something like one of

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 these:

...open the .zip and extract the .img to your desktop.

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 Making an SD Card – Using a Windows Vista / 7
There is a very useful utility that we can use to write a SD card available for Windows 7 and Vista. It
is not unfortunately available for Windows XP.

Step 1.

Download Fedora ARM Installer from:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_ARM_Installer#Windows_Vista_.26_7 (http://adafru.it/aTd)

Step 2.

This will download a zip file that you must extract. The result will be a folder called 'faii-1.0.2-3-x32'.
If you keep this outside of the Program Files area then you will be able to run it without changing its
privileges. You can just leave it on your Desktop.

Step 3.

Eject any external storage devices such as USB flash drives and backup hard disks. This makes it
easier to identify the SD card. Then insert the SD card into the slot on your computer or into the
reader.

Step 4.

Right click to run the file fedora-arm-installer.exe as an administrator. This will launch the following
application.

Step 5.

Select the image file and device.

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 To do this, click the Browse button and navigate to the .img file for the distribution that you want to
install and the select the device from the drop-down.

Check that you have the right device, as it will be reformatted, and then click Install.

It will take a few minutes to install, but once the SD card is ready, you will see the following.

That's all there is to it. Your SD card is ready for use in your Raspberry Pi.

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 Making an SD Card – Using a Mac
Ray Vijoen has created a useful script that makes it really easy to make an SD card using a Mac. It
is a shell script that takes all the necessary steps to create the SD card, including formatting it. You
still have to run it from the command line.

Step 1.

Download Raspberry-PI-SD-Installer-OS-X from https://github.com/RayViljoen/Raspberry-PI-SD-

Installer-OS-X (http://adafru.it/aTe)

Look for the 'zip' button at the top and download it as a single zip file.

Step 2.

Extract the zip file. It will expand into a folder called 'Raspberry-PI-SD-Installer-OS-X-master'.

Step 3.

Use Finder to move the img file that you downloaded earlier into the Raspberry-PI-SD-Installer-OS-
X-master folder.

You can see here that I have multiple images in the folder. That is fine, you can have as many
images as you like in the folder.

Step4.

Open the Terminal app – you will find this in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder on your
Mac.

Then type the command 'cd' followed by the path of your Raspberry-PI-SD-Installer-OS-X-master
folder.

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 Step 5.

Eject any external drives that you have connected to your computer. This just makes it easier to
identify the correct drive that corresponds to your SD card.

Insert the SD card that you want to use. Note that all data on this card will be erased.

Step 6.

Run the Pi Installer by typing the following command into the Terminal:

sudo ./install Occidentalis_v02.img

Where Occidentalis_v02.img is the name of the img file for the distribution that you want to install.

You will be prompted for your Mac password and then should see this:

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 Step 7.

Enter the number next to the SD card drive. Make sure you get this right, because whichever drive
you select will be erased.

It is then just a matter of waiting until all the image file is installed. This will take a few minutes. You
can check on the progress by pressing ctrl-T

When everything is complete, you should see this:

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 Thats all there is to it, the SD card is now ready to use with your Raspberry Pi.

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 Test & Configure

If you plan to use multiple SD cards, it is not a bad idea to label the card, or for microSD cards label
the little plastic case they usually come in.

Testing the card is easy - insert it into your Pi, then connect a keyboard to the USB port and a
NTSC/PAL TV to the composite port or an HDMI monitor to the HDMI Port. Then power it by
connecting a Micro USB cable to the Pi and powering it via a computer or a USB wall charger.

For Raspbian, you should see something like the following, an Adafruit/Raspberry logo in the top
left, and a ton of text filling up the screen:

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 In the next tutorial, you will find out how to configure your Raspberry Pi the first time you boot it up.

Click Here for the Next Lesson

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 BONUS! Make a Backup Image!
It took a while to get your SD card set up, didn't it? Bet you don't want to have to do that again, do
you?

Well,

Back it up!
Forum user, Mac user, and Adafruit Customer phil.drummond took it upon himself to find the best
way to back up his system image.

And he found a fast and easy way - a script which quickly creates a clone of your running Raspberry
Pi system, ON THE PI ITSELF!

Note: This script only works with occidentalis 0.2 and older versions of Raspbian

The script comes to us by way of Pastebin user BILLW (http://adafru.it/cCG).

Click to get BILLW's Cloning Script

http://adafru.it/cCH

What You'll Need

USB SD Card Reader
Blank SD Card
Booted and Running Raspberry Pi

Get the Script File

First, get a copy of the script file onto your Pi. You can do that in any one of several ways:

First, download the file to your computer

Then...

Use ssh or vnc to transfer the file from the computer to the Pi

...Or...

Pop the blank SD into your USB Card Reader

Plug the Card Reader into your computer
Copy the file to the blank SD

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 Move the Card Reader to the Pi
Copy the file from the SD to the Pi

...Or...

Use the Pi's Web Browser to navigate to this page and download the script file directly

Run the Script

1. Put the blank SD card into your USB Card Reader, and plug it into one of the PI's USB ports.
2. Open a Terminal window on the Pi
3. Navigate to the folder where you stored the script file. (If you stored the file on the Pi's
Desktop, simply type 'cd Desktop')

When you run the script, you will have to specify the name of your SD card. Raspbian and
occidentalis assign the names 'sda', sdb', etc. to SD cards found on USB. If you only have one USB
card reader attached, the name of your new SD card will be 'sda'.

If you're not sure that sda is the right card, you can run this command to list the cards connected to
your Pi.

sudo fdisk -l

The SD card slot with your running Pi system will show up as /dev/mmcblk0. Your blank card will be
listed as /dev/sda1 (or possibly /dev/sdb1, if you have more than one USB card readers attached to
the Pi).

Note that you don't enter the '1' - if your card is listed as '/dev/sda1', then you would still enter 'sda'

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 when you run the script ('sda' is the name of the card, 'sda1' is the name of the first partition on the
card).

Ok, so now you should be ready to run the commands

chmod +x rpi-clone.sh
sudo ./rpi_clone sda -f

As noted earlier, the first parameter passed to the script is is the name of the target SD card, in this
case 'sda'. The -f tells the script to entirely re-format the card.

The script will ask you if you're sure you want to initialize the destination card. Type 'y', and hit the
return key.

If you see an error message instead, check below for solutions!

Next, the script will ask you if you want to give your new backup a label. It's not necessary to do this
- just hit the return key.

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 Finally, the script will ask you if you're sure you really want to do this, before it begins creating the
backup. Type 'y', and hit the return key.

Now it's time to wait - the process will take a little while.

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 When the process is complete, the script will ask if it should unmount the card with your new system
clone/ Reply with 'y', and you're done!

Now you can shutdown the Pi, swap the clone into the Pi's SD Card Slot, and restart - Bingo! a fully-
operational clone of your Raspberry Pi system!

Problems?
If you see an error message like this:

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 ...it means that your SD card is mounted in the file system. You have to unmount it before you can
proceed. In the picture, I'm writing over an earlier clone of my system, which has two partitions:
/dev/sda2 and /dev/sda1. You might only have one partition.

In any case, issue the umount command for each mounted partition on your destination SD card:

sudo umount /dev/sda1

Now try to run the script again!

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