anyone have any experience cloning sd cards with working piaware/dump1090? my rpi setup has died 4 different times for 4 different reasons. i figured in an effort to save time i’d clone it. does it work?
Yes you absolutely can (and should IMHO).
Shutdown your PI cleanly, pull the SD card, and use the Win32DiskImager utility to “read” from the card to a file on your PC. Just the opposite of how you originally put the initial image on the card.
Be aware that the PC file is going to be as large as your SD card. I make backups of my SD card images after I like how they work, then ZIP them. They usually compress to ~200-300 Megs.
Then if you scramble your SD, just re-burn the image using Win32DiskImager. Remember: “You’re only as good as your last full backup”.
do you have a recommendation for an app on an apple? it’s the only machine i have at work where i do most of the rpi maintenance.
Sorry, I can’t recommend anything for a Mac.
If you can be really careful, you may want to try the instructions found on:
http://smittytone.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/back-up-a-raspberry-pi-sd-card-using-a-mac/
If you’re not completely comfortable (and competent!) running Linux commands as Administrator, then this isn’t for you.
You could also Google for “backup raspberry pi sd card mac”, or similar. That’s where I found the above link.
For the mac, see this: raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/qu … spberry-pi
Marty
Re clean shutdown: I run shutdown twice ‘sudo shutdown -rF now’ to check the filesystem, then ‘sudo shutdown -h now’, wait for the 10 green flashes, pull the power and pull the card.
I use Acronis True Image - boot off of a UFD on an Intel box and either clone the Pi disk image or back it up