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Page last updated:
11/08/2014 |
Easy SD
Card Setup guides from elinux.org
The Raspberry Pi will not start without a properly formatted SD Card,
containing the bootloader and a suitable operating system. Many problems with
booting the Pi are a result of an improperly formatted or corrupted card. Make
sure that you insert the card before powering on the Pi, and that you shutdown
the Pi before unplugging the card. If you do have problems booting the Pi, see
the
trouble shooting page first.
You will also need to choose a distribution. Available distributions
are
shown here; you will need the RPi bootloader to launch your distribution, so
you need one for the Raspberry Pi and cannot download a PC based distribution
and use that. Note that you can have several SD Cards with a separate
distribution on each, then power off, swap cards and restart the Pi to use that
card.
Some Raspberry Pi kits will come with a ready-to-go card with the
distribution pre-installed, or these can be bought separately. There is more on
this below.
If you don't have a pre-installed card you will need to prepare your own.
Make sure you get a reasonable quality card rather than a cheap one. Check the
SD Card list
if you are not sure. Warning! When you write the Raspberry Pi image to your SD
card you will lose all data that was on the card. Official images are available
from
http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads.
Note: It is highly recommended that you start with the latest official
NOOBS installer: check the Raspberry Pi official website (http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads)
for the current version. This makes the process of installing an operating
system as easy as copying a few files in a zip archive to your SD card. This
contains the reccomended Raspbian distribution, as well as various other
distributions, all of which are available as individual images from the
downloads page, if you prefer not to use NOOBS.
Buying a preloaded SD card from a reputable supplier means that you can just
plug it in and power up your Raspberry Pi; it should then just work. If you
don't buy one of these, you will have to create your own using the instructions
below
You may need to perform an upgrade of the card once you have got the Pi
working, as a distribution (usually) is continuously updated and the card may
not contain those updates
Compare these for prices, delivery, distribution and card size/class:
-
ModMyPi Sell high quality Samsung SD cards pre-loaded with the latest
Raspian Wheezy OS.
Public Service Announcement on SD Cards. There have been reports of
problems with SD cards purchased from ebay and Amazon. Make sure the SD card
you're purchasing is up to date with the latest version of your chosen operating
System to avoid any issues.
To create your own SD Card for the Raspberry Pi you will need access to
another machine, or a friend with one. You will need to be careful, as you could
corrupt the disk on that machine if you do things wrong (although it is not hard
to do it right, and NOOBS makes it impossible to go wrong). If you are lucky,
you might find a local Raspberry Pi or Linux group who will offer to load your
card for you.
You will also need to choose and download a distribution (mentioned above),
or use NOOBS, which has all the . Check the
Distributions list to make sure that you are getting a distribution that
will work with the Pi. Note that the distribution must be written to the card
using the methods below; the standard file copy method will not work
Recently, the Raspberry Pi Foundation have released a really easy way to set
up your SD Card. It's called the New Out Of Box Software (or NOOBS for short)
and provides a really easy way to install Raspberry Pi distributions. Be warned,
however, that it is a 1GB download - if you have a limit on what you are allowed
to download, follow the instructions below, as the other images are around
500MB.
- Download NOOBS from the
raspberrypi.org downloads page
- Insert a (4GB+) SD Card into your computer
- If you want to save space on the SD Card, you can delete some of the
images inside the os folder in the NOOBS zip file that you don't want to
use.
- Format the disk
- Download and install the SD Association's Formatting tool from
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/eula_windows/
- Open the Application you have just installed
- Set "FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT" to ON in the Options menu.
- Make sure you have selected the Drive your SD Card is inserted in
- Click "Format"
- Download and install the SD Association's Formatting tools from
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/eula_mac/
- Select "Overwrite format"
- Make sure you have selected your SD Card, and not something else
- Click "Format"
- Use gparted (or the command-line version parted if you prefer), if
you don't have it, install it as you usually would.
- Format the entire disk as FAT32 (FAT16 will not work! Make sure you
select the correct disk!)
- Extract the file you downloaded in Step 1
- Copy the files you just extracted to your SD Card (see below on flashing
your SD card)
Not all monitors work with NOOBS straight away. If your monitor is one of
those that doesn't work, press the Number buttons 1-4 until you see what you
want.
- Default HDMI Mode
- HDMI Safe Mode - Use this if Default (1) doesn't work and you cannot see
anything
- Composite PAL Mode - Use this or 4. if you are using the yellow and
black outputs on the opposite side to the HDMI output
- Composite NTSC Mode
- Download the distribution from the
raspberrypi.org downloads page or from a mirror or torrent. Make sure
the distribution is for the Raspberry Pi, as others will not work. Usually
these are zipped (compressed) files ending in .zip or .gz (something like
"distribution-name.zip").
- Extract the image file from the downloaded .zip file, so you now have
"distribution-name.img".
- Insert the SD card into your SD card reader and check what drive letter
it was assigned. You can easily see the drive letter (for example G:) by
looking in the left column of Windows Explorer. You can use the SD Card slot
(if you have one) or a cheap Adapter in a USB slot.
- Download the
Win32DiskImager utility (it is also a zip file). You can run this from a
USB drive.
- Extract the executable from the zip file and run the Win32DiskImager
utility; you may need to run the utility as Administrator! Right-click on
the file, and select 'Run as Administrator'
- Select the image file you extracted above.
- Select the drive letter of the SD card in the device box. Be careful
to select the correct drive; if you get the wrong one you can destroy your
data on the computer's hard disk! If you are using an SD Card slot in
your computer (if you have one) and can't see the drive in the
Win32DiskImager window, try using a cheap Adapter in a USB slot.
- Click Write and wait for the write to complete.
- Exit the imager and eject the SD card.
- You are now ready to plug the card into your Raspberry Pi. See
RPi_Hardware_Basic_Setup for the other things you need.
In Windows, the SD card will appear only to have a fairly small size once
written - about 55 to 75 MB. This is because most of the card has a partition
that is formatted for the Linux operating system that the Raspberry Pi uses
which is not visible in Windows. If you don't see this small directory with
files such as kernel.img then the copy may not have worked correctly.
You may not be able to choose the device in Win32DiskImager on some notebooks
so this is a different way to achieve the same thing on a Windows machine.
- Download the distribution from the
| raspberrypi.org downloads page or from a mirror or torrent. Make sure
the distribution is for the Raspberry Pi, as others will not work. Usually
these are zipped (compressed) files ending in .zip or .gz (something like
"distribution-name.zip").
- Extract the image file from the downloaded .zip file, so you now have
"distribution-name.img".
- Insert the SD card into your SD card reader and check what drive letter
it was assigned. You can easily see the drive letter (for example G:) by
looking in the left column of Windows Explorer. You can use an SD Card slot
in your computer (if you have one) or a cheap Adapter in a USB slot.
- Download the flashnul software from
http://shounen.ru/soft/flashnul/index.html ; here is the English
Translated version with a link to instructions (also translated)
- Download the latest version. At the time of writing it was
flashnul-1rc1.
- Extract the application from the archive.
- Click Start button > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt, right
click on it and Run as Administrator.
- Run flashnul with argument "-p":
C:/flashnul/flashnul.exe -p
- Flashnul will tell you something like this (it should be different, as
it depends on the drives on your machine):
Available physical drives:
0 size = 250059350016 (232 Gb)
1 size = 1990197248 (1898 Mb)
Available logical disks:
C:\
D:\
E:\
F:\
Press ENTER to exit.
- Use the Load option of flashnul to put the image file on the SD Card.
Make sure that you use the correct drive letter for the SD Card as that
drive will be overwritten!
C:/flashnul/flashnul.exe E: -L C:/temp/distribution-name.img
Where C:/flashnul/flashnul.exe is the location of the flashnul program; E: is
the drive you want to overwrite, and C:/temp/distribution-name.img is the
location of the .img file.
- Flashnul will give you a device summary and a caution message. Check the
information to make sure you have selected the correct device, then type yes
and press enter.
- If you get an access denied error, make sure to close all explorer
windows or folders open for the device, then try re-plugging the SD card.
Download the installer program from
Fedora ARM Installer. This will download and install the Raspberry Pi Fedora
Remix images, but it will also install other images if they are already
downloaded and in uncompressed or .gz format. This also works with Linux.
Note: In OS X each disk may have two path references in /dev:
- /dev/disk# is a buffered device, which means any data being sent
undergoes extra processing.
- /dev/rdisk# is a raw path, which is much faster, and
perfectly OK when using the dd program.
On a Class 4 SD card the difference was around 20 times faster using the
rdisk path.
RPi-sd card builder The
RPi-sd card builder utility is a app which will walk you through the process
of installing to SD card. Note: This is a closed source app which requires your
root password.
ApplePi-Baker
ApplePi-Baker is a free utility that allows you to create a NOOBS SD, write
an IMG file to SD card, or backup an SD card to IMG, with only a few simple
clicks. This is also a closed source application and also requires your root
password to write to SD cards. The application is written in Lazarus Pascal and
supports Retina.
PiWriter
PiWriter is a simple wizard made using shell scripts, PlatyPus and
CocoaDialog. To prevent users from making mistakes the wizard auto-detect's the
SD card you plan to use and prevents you from selecting your system disk. Also
there is no need for a root password so even less damage can be done. The
nextgen PiWriter2 introduces a new 'drag and drop' approach and also includes a
backup feature. PiWriter 1.0.4 does not work on Mac OS X Mavericks.
Pi Filler
-
Pi Filler is a GUI wizard for copying a Raspberry Pi operating system
image file to an SD card without needing Terminal. It automatically
identfies your SD card (and asks for confirmation so the wrong disk doesn't
get written to), and shows estimated time remaining during the copy. After
it's done, if your Pi is not connected to a display, you can use
Pi Finder to connect to it from Terminal. Both utilities are written in
AppleScript and won't trigger Mountain Lion's "unidentified developer"
warnings (WTFPL license).
- Download the image from a mirror or torrent
- Extract the image by double clicking on the download file
- Connect the SD card reader with the SD card inside; note: must be
formatted in FAT32!
- From the Apple () menu, choose About This Mac, then click
on More info...; if you are using Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion then
click on System report.
- Click on USB (or Card Reader if using an in-built SD card
reader) then search for your SD card in the upper right section of the
window; click it, then search for BSD name in the lower right
section: must be something like diskn where n is a
number (for example, disk4). Note this number
- Unmount the partition so that you will be allowed to overwrite the disk
by opening Disk Utility and unmounting it (do not eject it, or you have to
reconnect it). Note: On Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion, "Verify Disk" (before
unmounting) will display the BSD name as "/dev/disk1s1" (or similar),
allowing you to skip the previous two steps.
- From the Terminal run:
- sudo dd if=path_of_your_image.img of=/dev/diskn bs=1m
- Remember to replace n with the number that you noted before!
- Wait a LONG time! (or see the note above about using /dev/rdisk#...)
To see the current status, send
SIGINFO
signal by pressing
Ctrl+T
.
- You're done! Insert it in the Raspberry Pi, and have fun
- If you are comfortable with the command line, you can image a card
without any additional software. Run:
- diskutil list
- identify the disk (not partition) of your SD card. e.g. disk4
(not disk4s1)
- diskutil unmountDisk /dev/<disk# from diskutil>
- e.g. diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4
- sudo dd bs=1m if=<your image file>.img of=/dev/<disk# from diskutil>
- e.g. sudo dd bs=1m if=2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.img
of=/dev/disk4
- (This will take a few minutes)
Note: Some users have
reported issues with using Mac OS X to create SD cards.
- These commands and actions need to be performed from an account that has
administrator privileges.
- Download the image from a mirror or torrent
- Verify if the the hash key is the same (optional), in the terminal run:
- shasum ~/Downloads/2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.zip
- Extract the image:
- unzip ~/Downloads/2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.zip
- (or: just double click the zip, it will extract automatically)
- From the terminal run df -h
- Connect the SD card reader with the SD card inside
- Run df -h again and look for the new device that wasn't listed
last time. Record the device name of the filesystem's partition, for
example, /dev/disk3s1
- Unmount the partition so that you will be allowed to overwrite the disk:
- sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk3s1
- (or: open Disk Utility and unmount the partition of the SD card
(do not eject it, or you have to reconnect it)
- Using the device name of the partition work out the raw device name for
the entire disk, by omitting the final "s1" and replacing "disk" with "rdisk"
(this is very important: you will lose all data on the hard
drive on your computer if you get the wrong device name). Make sure the
device name is the name of the whole SD card as described above, not just a
partition of it (for example, rdisk3, not rdisk3s1. Similarly you might have
another SD drive name/number like rdisk2 or rdisk4, etc. -- recheck by using
the df -h command both before & after you insert your SD card reader
into your Mac if you have any doubts!):
- For example, /dev/disk3s1 => /dev/rdisk3
- In the terminal write the image to the card with this command, using the
raw disk device name from above (read carefully the above step, to be
sure you use the correct rdisk# here!):
- sudo dd bs=1m
if=~/Downloads/2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian/2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.img
of=/dev/rdisk3
- if the above command report an error(dd: bs: illegal numeric value),
please change bs=1M to bs=1m
- (note that dd will not feedback any information until there is an
error or it is finished, information will show and disk will re-mount
when complete. However if you are curious as to the progresss - ctrl-T (SIGINFO,
the status argument of your tty) will display some en-route statistics).
- After the dd command finishes, eject the card:
- sudo diskutil eject /dev/rdisk3
- (or: open Disk Utility and eject the SD card)
- Insert it in the Raspberry Pi, and have fun
- (Mac) The
RasPiWrite utility is a python script which will walk you through the
process of installing to SD card, it works with any Raspberry Pi compatible
disk image, and can download one of the currently available distros if you
don't have one.
If you are using Ubuntu and hesitate to use the terminal, you can use the
ImageWriter tool (nice graphical user interface) to write the .img file to the
SD card.
- Download the zip file containing the image from a mirror or torrent
- Right click the zip file and select "Extract here"
- ATTENTION: As of this writing (15 June 2012), there is a bug
in the ImageWriter program that causes it to fail if the filename of the
image file or its path (i.e. all the names of any parent folders that
you extract the image file into) contain any space characters. Before
going any further, ensure that neither the file name of the image you're
using or the path contain any spaces (or other odd characters, for that
matter). A bug has been opened for this issue:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/usb-imagewriter/+bug/1013834 Once the
issue is fixed, edit this page to advise people to use an
updated/patched version of ImageWriter.
- Insert the SD card into your computer or connect the SD card reader with
the SD card inside
- Install the ImageWriter tool from the Ubuntu Software Center
- Launch the ImageWriter tool (it needs your administrative password)
- Select the image file (example 2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian.img) to be
written to the SD card (note: because you started ImageWriter as
administrator the starting point when selecting the image file is the
administrator's home folder so you need to change to your own home folder to
select the image file)
- Select the target device to write the image to (your device will be
something like "/dev/mmcblk0" or "/dev/sdc")
- Click the "Write to device" button
- Wait for the process to finish and then insert the SD card in the
Raspberry Pi
Please note that the use of the "dd" tool can overwrite any partition of your
machine. If you specify the wrong device in the instructions below you could
delete your primary Linux partition. Please be careful.
- Download the zip file containing the image from a mirror or torrent
- Verify if the the hash key of the zip file is the same as shown on the
downloads page (optional). Assuming that you put the zip file in your home
directory (~/), in the terminal run:
- sha1sum ~/2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.zip
- This will print out a long hex number which should match the "SHA-1"
line for the SD image you have downloaded
- Extract the image, with
- unzip ~/2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.zip
- Run df -h to see what devices are currently mounted
- If your computer has a slot for SD cards, insert the card. If not,
insert the card into an SD card reader, then connect the reader to your
computer.
- Run df -h again. The device that wasn't there last time is your
SD card. The left column gives the device name of your SD card. It will be
listed as something like "/dev/mmcblk0p1" or "/dev/sdd1". The last part
("p1" or "1" respectively) is the partition number, but you want to write to
the whole SD card, not just one partition, so you need to remove that part
from the name (getting for example "/dev/mmcblk0" or "/dev/sdd") as the
device for the whole SD card. Note that the SD card can show up more than
once in the output of df: in fact it will if you have previously written a
Raspberry Pi image to this SD card, because the Raspberry Pi SD images have
more than one partition.
- Now that you've noted what the device name is, you need to unmount it so
that files can't be read or written to the SD card while you are copying
over the SD image. So run the command below, replacing "/dev/sdd1" with
whatever your SD card's device name is (including the partition number)
- umount /dev/sdd1
- If your SD card shows up more than once in the output of df due to
having multiple partitions on the SD card, you should unmount all of
these partitions.
- In the terminal write the image to the card with this command, making
sure you replace the input file if= argument with the path to your
.img file, and the "/dev/sdd" in the output file of= argument with
the right device name (this is very important: you will lose
all data on the hard drive on your computer if you get the wrong device
name). Make sure the device name is the name of the whole SD card as
described above, not just a partition of it (for example, sdd, not sdds1 or
sddp1, or mmcblk0 not mmcblk0p1)
- dd bs=4M if=~/2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.img of=/dev/sdd
- Please note that block size set to 4M will work most of the
time, if not, please try 1M, although 1M will take considerably
longer.
- Note that if you are not logged in as root you will need to prefix
this with sudo
- The dd command does not give any information of its progress and so
may appear to have frozen. It could take more than five minutes to
finish writing to the card. If your card reader has an LED it may blink
during the write process. To see the progress of the copy operation you
can run pkill -USR1 -n -x dd in another terminal (prefixed with
sudo if you are not logged in as root). The progress will be
displayed (perhaps not immediately, due to buffering) in the original
window, not the window with the pkill command.
- Instead of dd you can use dcfldd; it will give a progress report about
how much has been written.
- You can check what's written to the SD card by dd-ing from the card back
to your harddisk to another image, and then running diff (or md5sum) on
those two images. There should be no difference.
- As root run the command sync or if a normal user run sudo sync
(this will ensure the write cache is flushed and that it is safe to unmount
your SD card)
- Remove SD card from card reader, insert it in the Raspberry Pi, and have
fun
If your Pi is connected to the Internet, you can use the
BerryBoot installer to let it download and install the operating system.
This requires that you first use a normal Windows/Mac/Linux computer to download
a small .zip file with the Berryboot system files and extract it to an empty SD
card. Then you put the SD card in your Pi, and follow the on-screen prompts to
complete the installation. An additional advantage is that Berryboot allows you
to install more than one operating system on a single SD card. Also, it is not
necessary to install any additional software on your normal Windows/Mac/Linux
computer.
To write your SD card you start by downloading the SD image (the data you
will write to the card). The best way to do this is using
BitTorrent. This generally results in a faster download as it is a highly
distributed system (you will be downloading the data from users who have
previously downloaded it).
The SD card image is sized for a 2 GB card. So, if you are using an SD card
with a greater capacity, you may find that only 2 GB is available. If this is
the case, then to gain more free space, the partitions must be resized. The
Fedora Remix and the BerryBoot will automatically resize the partitions on the
mounted card during the first boot. The Debian , OpenSuSe and Rasbian images
won't, so you'll have to do it manually. The easiest way is to use the tool
RPi
raspi-config selecting menu item EXPAND-ROOTFS - Expand Root Partition to
Fill SD Card. If you want to resize the SD card whilst the SD card is not
mounted in the Pi, look
here for instructions.
If you would rather not resize the partition on another machine as described
above, either because you do not have another working Linux machine or you wish
to keep your data on another partition to your operating system, you can instead
create a new data partition and have that mount automatically at boot.
- First you need to become root and install parted (I did all of this from
the boot command prompt, although if you feel safer in a GUI, you can do all
of this in a terminal window):
sudo su -
apt-get install parted
- Then you need to run parted on your SD card, mine is /dev/mmcblk0,
ymmv:
parted /dev/mmcblk0
- Once running, set the display units to something usable and then print
your partition table:
unit chs
print
- You should see something like this:
Model: SD SD08G (sd/mmc)
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 121279,3,31
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
BIOS cylinder,head,sector geometry: 121280,4,32. Each cylinder is 65.5kB.
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Type File system Flags
1 16,0,0 1215,3,31 primary fat32 lba
2 1232,0,0 26671,3,31 primary ext4
3 26688,0,0 29743,3,31 primary linux-swap(v1)
- Now you need to create your data partition - you need to choose one more
than the end of partition 3 with ,0,0 as your start and use the number from
the line that starts with Disk as your end:
mkpart primary 29744,0,0 121279,3,31
print
- That should show your new partition:
Number Start End Type File system Flags
1 16,0,0 1215,3,31 primary fat32 lba
2 1232,0,0 26671,3,31 primary ext4
3 26688,0,0 29743,3,31 primary linux-swap(v1)
4 29744,0,0 121279,3,31 primary
- Now quit and format the partition (again, ymmv with the specific device
name, try ls /dev for some clues), and then label it:
quit
mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p4
e2label /dev/mmcblk0p4 data
- Now we need to make sure that the partition is mounted automatically
when the system boots (maybe don't use vi if you never have before, try nano):
vi /etc/fstab
- Enter a line exactly like this at the end of the file and save and quit
your text editor:
/dev/mmcblk0p4 /data ext4 defaults 1 2
mkdir /data
mount /data
cd /data
ls
Your new partition has been created!
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