Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange
Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [sd-card]

SD (Secure Digital) cards and their associated SC/HC/XC technologies are the primary storage medium for the Raspberry Pi. The Pi Models A and B use SD Cards, and new models use Micro SD. SD cards are non-volatile flash memory.

Secure Digital (SD) cards are non-volatile memory cards, which were originally designed for portable devices, such as cameras, phones and tablets.

To minimise start-up costs, the Raspberry Pi utilises SD cards as its primary storage medium.

This decision does have its down sides, SD cards have comparatively slow read/write speeds and can have relatively short life spans.

Operating Systems for the Raspberry Pi are 'flashed' to the SD card, meaning that complex installation procedures can easily be skipped.

Working/Problem SD Cards

Not all SD Cards are compatible with the Raspberry Pi. The below links are a list of both working and problem SD Cards.

SDHC (SD High-Capacity) are 4 GB-32 GB.

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How do I backup my Raspberry Pi?

I have been writing programs for my Raspberry Pi (running Raspbian) for a few weeks now and would like to make sure I protect the work I have done. How can I backup the files I have created? Can I simply plug the SD card into my Windows (XP or 7)…
Steve Robillard
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How can I extend the life of my SD card?

I'm not all that keen to buy a USB hard disk, but I'm aware that SD cards aren't suitable for many repetitions of reading and writing. Are there any steps I can take to extend the life of my SD card while it's being used by my Raspberry Pi?
Highly Irregular
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How can I resize my / (root) partition?

Even though my SD card is 16GB, the image I flashed onto it was only 2GB and now I can only see 2GB of storage space on the disk. How can I resize the image so that I have more space on my root partition?
Jivings
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How can I reformat my SD card to use it normally again?

I wish to reformat my SD card to use normally again (it currently has one 78 MB FAT32 partition and one 3.9 GB Linux partition). How do I do this (on Windows/Mac/*nix)?
Tom Medley
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How can I determine when an SD card needs replacement?

Is there a way to estimate the lifetime of a SD card? If not, is there a utility I can use that monitors its integrity and reliability so I know when to use a new SD card?
ramblinjan
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Which SD cards are compatible?

The site http://www.raspberrypi.org/quick-start-guide says: You will need an SD card with an operating system preloaded before you can boot the Raspberry Pi. A brand-name (not generic) Class 4 card of 4GB or more is recommended. To obtain an SD…
Cade Roux
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How do I install an OS image onto an SD card?

I have just ordered my Raspberry Pi, and I want to prepare my SD card. How do I install an OS image onto an SD card?
Alex Chamberlain
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How can I prevent my Pi's SD card from getting corrupted so often?

I get an I/O error at boot and then get this 'error': (I am running the latest version of Raspbian) Entering kdb (current=0xca82ac80, pid 1) due to keyboard entry kdb> _ And I have seen it before, and was explained that my SD card got corrupted…
user151324
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What's the maximum SD card size that the Raspberry Pi will accept? Do larger cards give slower performance?

On my digital camera, I noticed a performance decrease when I used a larger card; will this happen with the Raspberry Pi too? What's the maximum sized SD card it can handle? I see there is comprehensive list available from this question.
Highly Irregular
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Is it possible to dual boot from the SD card?

Say I wished to have Debian Squeeze and Arch Linux ARM on my SD card. Would it be possible to dual boot from Grub?
Jivings
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Writing .img file to SD Card from a Mac

I want to burn a .img file of Wheezy OS to my 8GB SD Card from Mac OS X but can't figure out how. Any help would be appreciated.
user4039
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Kernel panic-not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown- block(179,6) running Raspbian on top of NOOBS

When booting, the sequence stops at the following: Kernel panic-not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,6) What can I do to get my Raspberry Pi 2 to boot again using the existing Raspbian installation, as it contains many…
Vlad Schnakovszki
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"Resource busy" error when using `dd` to copy disk img to SD card

I've downloaded Raspbian wheezy from the Raspberry Pi downloads page and following the RPi Easy SD Card Setup wiki page. I formatted the SD card, and cded into the folder containing the Raspbian img file, but when I run sudo dd…
3cheesewheel
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What is a typical boot time for the standard Debian distribution on a typical SD card?

How long does the RasPi take to boot when using the standard Debian distribution on a typical SD card? Are we talking less than a second? A couple of seconds? 10 seconds? 100 seconds? This isn't too important for most users and applications, but…
winwaed
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Copy existing Raspbian installation to smaller SD card

Is it possible to copy an existing and configured Raspbian installation to a smaller SD card? When I first installed Raspbian I only had a 32 GB card at hand which obviously is bigger than needed.
mwld
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