Maikel.pro Blog

How to backup your Raspberry Pi (complete OS+Personal Files)

Maikel -

There are many reasons to backup:

  • Write cycles of an SD card are much worse that an HDD or SSD (usally around ~1000 times).
  • Setting up all the OS with all your preferences can be time consuming.
  • Personal data can be lost once an SD card is corrupt.

It's actually pretty easy to backup your Raspberry pi:

  1. Properly shutdown your Raspberry Pi, shutdown from the GUI or terminal (sudo shutdown now).
  2. Insert the SD card of your Raspberry Pi in your computer. Remember under which letter the SD card was mounted.
  3. Download the newest version of Win32 Disk Imager at Sourceforge.
  4. Open the program (Start menu -> Image Writer -> Win32 Disk Imager).

  1. Select in the top right the letter your SD card was mounted on. For example H:\
  2. Click on the folder icon to choose an location for the backup. Remember to give it an filename, for example Raspberrypi-backup.iso.
  3. Press the Read button and wait for it to complete.

Now you've got yourself a complete backup of the filesystem! If your SD card goes bust, just buy a new one and write the .ISO backup file to the new SD card!