1) Insert your card into the card receiver, it will pop up on the finder on a Mac. 2) Open the Application folder, scroll down to the Utilities folder, open Disk Utility. 3) Select your SD card, and click New image. 4) Name your backup, designate where to save it and Click Save. Make sure to give it a name that makes sense. 5) Let Disk Utility run. If you have an SD or a microSD card that needs to be formatted, our guide above should help you to format micro SD card Mac using the built-in tool. The guide also shows how to recover data in case you realized you had your important data on the card after you formatted it. Exactly, I need to copy a Mac Disk Image on a hard drive to a flash drive. With the “restore disk image” function completely omitted or hidden in the new and (ahem) “improved” disk utility, I am completely dead in the water with a Mac I am unable to resurrect. I found this article unhelpful and incomplete.
You’re in luck! I just added a video on this same topic although a slightly different procedure on Mac. I’ve also got videos to Learn Raspberry Pi, Python, vim and git. Or get to know me and my dog.
Okay, its time to do the SD card cloning. This is full of nuances. First thing, be sure you’re on a Linux machine, because it is equipped with the dd command, which will do a raw copy of media, plowing right through partitions and such. Preferably, you should be on an Ubuntu box, due to its expansive device support and auto-mounting.
Next, make sure you have as much room on your hard drive as the size media you’re using. This is an issue, because of the old recycled boxes and laptops we tend to use for these sorts of spare Linux boxes. The harddrive of the laptop I’m using is only 5 GB, so it is an issue. So if you’re cloning a 2GB SD card, you need AT LEAST 2GB free space available on the hard drive. You can confirm this with the simple “df” command. So just open a terminal window and type df, and you will see how much space you have available per partition on your system.
While you’re at it, promote yourself to root (so long as you don’t plan on walking away from the box).
sudo su
Next, you need to identify the name of your sd card in the /dev directory. Its hard to do, and the little bit of detective work necessary to make it easy is simply to pop your sd card (and card reader) into a port, and then go to a terminal window and type:
dmesg tail
What this does is it pipes your device messages into the tail command, showing you the last 10 device messages you’ve received. One of them will be the one created by popping the SD card in, and will probably look something like:
[ 335.316290] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
This is your smoking gun. It’ll probably be the last entry. And this gives you the device name that you will use in the dd copy command.
Now that your SD card s installed and you know that it is called /dev/sdb (or whatever), you can go ahead and copy the entire raw disk image to your hard drive. If you have 2 SD card readers, you can eliminate this step and go right from card to card. But I don’t, so here’s the copy-to-harddrive command.
dd if=/dev/sdb of=~/sd-card.bin
You might have to be root to do this, so you can sudo su and issue the above command, or optionally:
sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/home/mike/sd-card.bin
Just remember where you’re putting the file. It’s possible to open that folder through the GNOME desktop and do refreshes to see the size of the file grow. Mine went up to 1.8 GB before it finished, and took quite a long time.
Put the new media into your SD card reader, and reverse the command. Of course be sure that your source and destination media are identical, right down to the manufacturer and the batch they came from, if at all possible. This is probably best accomplished by buying them all at once, or part of a multi-pack. This is a raw copy akin to a floppy disk or CD-ROM copy, and of course all floppy disks and CD-ROMs are basically laid out the same. But that is not true of SD cards that have many differences, so the more identical the source and destination media you use, the less grief you will cause yourself.
dd if=/home/mike/sd-card.bin of=/dev/sda
If this command seems ridiculously easy, it is. It’s just a long wait. And considering how easy it is, setting yourself up with an Ubuntu box just for this purpose is really the path of least resistance, compared to trying to do it on a PC with Norton Ghost or using some other paid software, or even setting up Cygwin on your PC. Just have a Linux box around for these types of things. It will help you immensely over time with the whole ShankServer thing.
Look, if you made it all the way down to here and have developed the skill to clone SD cards, then you might as well get the most out of it and play with the Raspberry Pi where each SD card can become its own entire system boot disk:
Quick Navigation:
- Solution 1: Transfer files from PC to SD card by Cut/Copy andPaste
- Solution 2: Copy files from PC to SD card using CMD
- Solution 3: Transfer files from PC to SD card via apowerful freeware
When to transfer files from PC to SD card?
SD (Secure Digital) card is a non-volatile memory card format. With high memory capacity,fast data transfer rate, great mobility and good security, it is favored by plenty ofpeople. It is commonly used in portable devices like mobile phones, music players, camerasand so on. You can store photos, music, movies and games on an SD card and transfer themeasily. There are some occasions when you want to transfer files from PC to SD card:
Move needed files from PC to SD card so that you have access to those fileseverywhere without taking the computer with you.
Move rarely-used files from PC to SD card in order to release space on yourcomputer hard drive.
You have learned the advantages of transferring files from PC to SD card. Then, how to dofile transfer efficiently?
How to transfer/copy files from PC to SD card in Windows 7/8/10?
I’m going to show you three different solutions to transfer files from PC to SD card inWindows 7. These solutions apply to Windows 10/8 as well. If you have a large number offiles to be transferred, then Solution 3 is recommended.
Solution 1: Transfer files from PC to SD card by Cut/Copy and Paste
These are simply operations and are familiar to most computer users:
1. Connect the SD card to your computer and make sure it is detected.
2. Press “Win + E” to open “Computer”. Locate the files you want to move from yourcomputer.
3. Cut/copy and paste the desired files from your computer to your SD card. You can also dragand drop items.
4. Safely disconnect your SD card.
Tips: If you use “Cut andPaste” method, the files you choose will only be saved on your SD card, thus releasing spaceon the local disk; if you use “Copy and Paste” method, you will get a duplicate of chosenfiles, thus keeping a backup on your computer.
Although it seems easy, it will be a tough work to transfer a large number of files by“Cut/Copy and Paste”, especially when the files are located in different folders.
Solution 2: Copy files from PC to SD card using CMD
Some users prefer Command Prompt operations. Follow the guidance below:
1. Connect the SD card to your computer and make sure it is detected.
2. Press “Win + R” to open the Run dialogue. Type cmd and press Enter orclick “OK” to open Command Prompt.
3. Type cd c:Pictures and press Enter. “c:Pictures” indicates the locationof the files to be transferred.
4. Type copy tulips.jpg f: and press Enter. “tulips.jpg” indicates the filename with file extension and “f:” is the drive letter of the SD card.
Tips:
• To transfermore than one file, you can repeat the “copy” command.
• If there are spaces in the file'sname, you need to put quotation marks around them. For example, a file named 'tulips inspring.jpg' would be tulips' 'in' 'spring.jpg inCommand Prompt.
5. Type exit and press Enter to exit Command Prompt. Safely disconnect yourSD card.
Solution 3: Transfer files from PC to SD card via a powerful freeware
AOMEI Backupper Standard, the bestfree backup software for Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP, can help you with fast filetransfer from PC to SD card. It offers you multiple practical features:
✧ Backup and Restore:Create an image file for the operating system, disk, partition, or files and restore thebackup image whenever you need.
✧ Sync: Synchronize files or foldersfrom one place to another.
✧ Clone: Make a duplicate of a disk or apartition, such as cloneNTFS drive.
Learn how to transfer files from PC to SD card using the “Sync” functionality in AOMEIBackupper below:
Copy Raspberry Pi Sd Card
Step 1. Connect the SD card to your computer and make sure it is detected.Download, install and launch AOMEI Backupper.
Clone Linux Sd Card
Download Freeware
Win 10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download
Step 2. Click “Sync” on the left pane, and select “Basic Sync”.
Step 3. Click “Add Folder” to select the folder(s) you want to transfer fromPC to SD card.
Step 4. Click to select the SD card as destination location.
Step 5. Click on “Start Sync” button to perform the operation. When the syncprocess is complete, safely disconnect your SD card.
✎ Notes:
If you want to run regular file transfer from PC to SD card, you may resort to the“Schedule” feature. As for “Real-time Sync”, please upgrade to highereditions of AOMEI Backupper.
“Sync” is a folder level data transfer. If you want to transfer files withoutfolders, you can do “FileBackup” in AOMEI Backupper and then restore the backup image to your SD card.
Summary
Now you know how to transfer files from PC to SD card in Windows 7/8/10 efficiently. Comparedto “Cut/Copy and Paste” and Command Prompt, AOMEI Backupper provides you with a faster wayto do file transfer. What’s more, it can help you solve the problem that clonedto new computer Windows 7 won’t boot and it works as CompactFlashcard copier if you own a CompactFlash card. Give AOMEI Backupper a try and you willbe surprised by all the wonderful features it has!