Clone SD Card (Mac)
-
20 Mar 2014
Here’s how to clone an SD card on a Mac. Useful when you want to backup and restore your Raspberry Pi.
Find path to SD card
$ diskutil list
Should be something like /dev/disk1
, depending on what other devices you have connected to your system
Make image of SD card
$ sudo dd if=[sd card path] of=[image].dmg
Example
$ sudo dd if=/dev/disk1 of=~/Desktop/backup.dmg
Tip: During
dd
operations, hit[ctrl] + t
to check transfer status
Transfer image to SD card
This will take much longer than making an image, since you are writing to an SD card, so grab a drink!
Caution: Double check input and output disk paths before running copy commands
~ $ diskutil unmountDisk [sd card path]
~ $ sudo dd if=[image file] of=[sd card path]
Example
$ sudo dd if=~/Desktop/backup.dmg of=/dev/disk2
Storing images
Image clones can be huge files, so compressing them will help save HD space!
Compress image
$ gzip [image file]
Uncompress image
$ gzip -d [compressed image file]