Save the SD card

[topodom]

Hi evreyone,

Usually i am doing a copy of my SD card with Win32 Disk Imager.
It si quite simple :
- i save a .img file
- the when i want a second SD card (in case) or to burn my current SD card beacause a bad power cut for example, i just write the .img file.
It s working very well, but as i have a 16Go SD, it' long to process and i spend space on my server.

So instead of sepnding 16Go (the files of the distrib is only around 1Go) i tried to simply copy the files of my current SD to a second one.
But it's not working, RPI launch a new install of OP from scratch with those files.

What is your process ?

[pinguino]

There is no other way. Only the cloning of the disk image keeps an exact copy of the status of the entire system. I know it's slow.... that's why I try to use SD cards that are as fast as possible. They improve the performance of OPlotter in general and are faster to copy.

[topodom]

Ok.

I thought of an option to do an image of the SD but i did not have time to test.
I wanted to :
- add a second data partition
- unmount this partition
- then do the image

but it seems, the tools to do an image are doing an exact copy of the SD in this case, it's a stillborn project

[jim321]

if you want a smaller img you can use gparted to shrink the disk volume then make img from win32
i have done it. i have a 32 gig that makes an img of 29gb and have shrunk it to fit 16 gb .

[MatsA]

I think the script described at the enclosed link does it in a nice way. You can have different sizes of SD cards, schedule it, don't need a GUI and it doesn't copy "empty" data. Enjoy !  https://pysselilivet.blogspot.com/2017/11/rpi-clone-raspberry-boot-disk.html 

[topodom]

thanks to both of you.

I ll try to test the two solutions.