Clone Your Raspberry Pi SD Card: 3 Simple Methods

Cloning your Raspberry Pi SD card can be useful in many situations. Maybe you want to make a backup or migrate your whole system to a new SD card. This procedure may sound quite complex, but it is easy. In this article, I will give you a comprehensive guide on how to clone your Raspberry Pi SD card.

There are three main ways to clone the Raspberry Pi SD card.
– Using the SD Card Copier utility available on Raspberry Pi OS.
– Using the Win32DiskImager for Windows users.
– Using the DD command for macOS and Linux systems.

Although these tools are often pre-installed, they can be quite tricky to use. Disk cloning requires a great deal of care to avoid accidentally formatting drives or partitions. So in this article, I will show you how to use each of the tools listed above.

If you’re looking to quickly progress on Raspberry Pi, you can check out my e-book here. It’s a 30-day challenge where you learn one new thing every day until you become a Raspberry Pi expert. The first third of the book teaches you the basics, but the following chapters include projects you can try on your own.

Why do you need to clone your Raspberry Pi?

But before we get started, let’s have a quick look at some of the reasons why you might need to clone your Raspberry Pi SD card.

If you are reading this post, there is a high probability you have decided that you want to clone your Raspberry Pi SD card. But, is your reason right or could you have solved your problem by just creating a disk image of your Raspberry Pi SD card?

Well, below are some of the reasons why you might need to clone your SD card.

Easy System Transfer

Thinking of upgrading to a new Raspberry Pi model on another SD card? Cloning makes the process a breeze! You can simply clone your current SD card onto a new one and voila! Everything – from your OS to your files and configurations – is transferred over to the new SD card.

You want to make a backup

Have you ever had your Raspberry Pi crash or suddenly stop working? It’s quite frustrating, right? Well, by cloning your SD card, you create a backup of your entire Raspberry Pi setup. So, if something goes wrong, you can quickly insert the working SD card and get going.

Experimentation without Risk

I love tinkering with my Raspberry Pi and trying out new stuff. Cloning your SD card allows me to do just that without the fear of messing up my current setup.

If you are like me, you can create a clone, play around with different configurations, and test out new software, and if things don’t work out, no worries – just revert to your original setup with the clone.

Sharing Projects

Do you have an awesome Raspberry Pi project you want to share with a friend or colleague? Instead of explaining every step they need to take to set it up, just hand them a cloned SD card! They can pop it into their Raspberry Pi, and they’re good to go – no fuss, no muss.

Hardware requirements to clone your SD card

Below is some of the hardware you will need for this project.

• A reliable spare SD card: Since you want to clone the existing SD card, you will need an additional SD card which will be the destination for your clone. Also, this SD card should not be smaller than the SD card you are cloning. In my case, I always opt for a larger SD card. Alternatively, you can also opt for a USB drive. This is one USB drive I can recommend, and you can find the best SD cards for Raspberry Pi tested here.
  
• A USB reader/adapter: If you are using the Raspberry Pi OS to clone, you will need one SD card reader to connect your other SD card via the USB ports. However, if you are on a laptop, you might need two SD card readers for your two SD cards.
  
  You can find cheap USB to SD card adapters on Amazon if your computer doesn’t have one.

Clone SD card on the Raspberry Pi OS

If you already have your Raspberry Pi up and running, there is no need to look for a laptop to clone the SD card, follow the steps below:

• Insert the spare SD card into the Raspberry Pi.
  The Raspberry PI has only one SD card port, therefore you will need an adapter to connect the other SD card to one of the USB-A ports. You can also use a USB drive but remember, if you are to use it on a Raspberry Pi, you will need to enable “boot from USB” on the Pi.
  
• Open the SD card copier.
  SD Card Copier is a tool the Raspberry Pi team developed to clone the SD card to another bootable USB drive or SD card.
  
  On your Raspberry Pi desktop, click the “Menu” icon, select “Accessories” then “SD card copier.”
  
  

• Select your SD cards.
  You will see two options in the SD card copier window. The first is “Copy from device.” This should be your existing SD card that you want to clone. Most of the time, it will be automatically selected. The other option is “Copy to device.” This should be the spare SD card or USB drive that you want to use.
  

• Clone SD card.
  You will see the option “New Partition UUIDs.” Leave that unchecked and click “Start” to get started with the cloning process. You will see a warning prompt: “All the data in the destination SD card will be erased.” Click “Yes” to start.
  
  Once the cloning process is complete, you can now use the new SD card in another Raspberry Pi.

Clone SD card using the DD command (Linux and macOS)

Another option you can use to clone the SD card is the DD command available in most Linux distributions and macOS.

The DD (disk dump) command is used for copying and converting files and data on Unix-like operating systems. Essentially, DD reads data from a source and writes it to a destination, allowing you to create backups, clone disks, or manipulate data at a low level.

The DD command comes in handy in various situations.

• Maybe you have installed a different Linux distribution or OS on your Raspberry Pi (Kali Linux, Kodi, Windows 10 IoT Core, etc.) and it doesn’t come with the SD Card Copier app. In my case, I had set up Windows 10 IoT Core and needed to run the project on another Pi.
• You don’t have a Raspberry Pi board nearby, but you have the SD card with you and your laptop.

Clone Raspberry Pi SD card on Linux (Ubuntu)

Even though I am using Ubuntu for this tutorial, these steps will work for any other distribution including Debian, CentOS, Arch Linux, etc.

• Insert the two SD cards into your PC:
  Here you may need to use an SD card reader or adapter since most laptops don’t come with an SD card slot.
• Identify SD Card:
  From this step, you will need to get a little bit techy. Don’t worry if you aren’t well-versed with the Linux command line as I will keep everything plain and simple.
  
  Launch the Terminal from the applications menu and execute the command below:
  sudo lsblk
  
  The lbslk command lists all the devices connected to your PC, including the SD cards. Scroll to the bottom and you will see devices with the label /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc and so on depending on the number of external drives connected.
  
  In my case, /dev/sdb is the SD card we want to clone and /dev/sdc is my spare SD card.
• Unmount SD Cards:
  Before proceeding, unmount any partitions on both the source and target SD cards. You can do this using the umount command followed by the device names of the partitions. For example:
  sudo umount /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc1
  
  Replace /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb2 and /dev/sdc1 with the appropriate partition device names if necessary.
• Clone SD Card:
  Once the SD cards are unmounted, you can use the DD command to clone the entire contents of the source SD card to the target SD card.
  
  Execute the following command, replacing /dev/sdb /dev/sdc with the device names of the source and target SD cards.
  sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=4M status=progress
  
  Here is a brief explanation of the parameters I used in the command above:
  if= specifies the input file (source), which is the source SD card (/dev/sdb).
  of= specifies the output file (destination), the target SD card (/dev/sdc).
  bs= sets the block size to improve performance. In this example, it’s set to 4 MB.
  status=progress shows the progress of the dd command.
  
• Wait for Completion:
  Depending on the size of your source SD card, the cloning process may take some time. Be patient and wait for the DD command to complete.
• Eject SD Cards:
  Once the cloning process is finished, you can safely eject both the source and target SD cards from your Ubuntu machine.

You now have a clone of your Raspberry Pi SD card on the target SD card. You can insert the target SD card into another Raspberry Pi and boot from it as you would with the original SD card.

Clone Raspberry Pi SD card on macOS

If you are on a macOS, follow the steps below.

• Insert SD Cards:
  Insert both the source (original) SD card and the target (new) SD card into your Mac. Note the device names assigned to both SD cards. You can use the diskutil list command to identify the device names.
  Here, I have /dev/disk2 (16GB) as the source drive and /dev/disk3 (32GB) as my new SD card.
  
• Unmount SD Cards:
  Before proceeding, unmount any partitions on both the source and target SD cards. You can do this using the diskutil unmount Disk command followed by the device names of the disks. For example:
  diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3
  
  Replace /dev/disk2 and /dev/disk3 with the appropriate disk identifiers for your source and target SD cards.
• Clone SD Card:
  Once the SD cards are unmounted, you can use the dd command to clone the entire contents of the source SD card to the target SD card. Execute the following command, replacing /dev/diskx with the device names of the source and target SD cards.
  sudo dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/dev/disk3 bs=4m
  
  Here:
  if= specifies the input file (source), which is the source SD card (/dev/disk2).
  of= specifies the output file (destination), the target SD card (/dev/disk3).
  bs= sets the block size to improve performance. In this example, it’s set to 4 MB.
  
• Wait for Completion:
  Depending on the size of your source SD card, the cloning process may take some time. Be patient and wait for the dd command to complete.
• Eject SD Cards:
  Once the cloning process is finished, you can safely eject both the source and target SD cards from your Mac.

Clone SD card using Win32 Disk Imager (Windows)