What is your backup and restore method?

[Cyric]

For my backup I tried to just make an image of my card, so if something were to ever go wrong, I could just reimage my card and it would work. Well, we lost power yesterday, and something went wrong. I formatted the card, re imaged it, and it eventually booted after some errors. The problem was that my config.js was corrupted or something, because I couldn’t edit it anymore. I’ve tried to reimage it again, but i’ve now gotten a different set of errors and a debian load screen i’ve never seen before. No idea where I went wrong.

[sdetweil]

@Cyric there is a false sense of security w sd cards. the memory technology used is write once. the bits cannot be reused

the software does not know this… the hardware does the work under the covers and say Success!
even when its not.

once the bits are used, the card is dead. may turn read only or may start exhibiting corrupted files ( the software does not know)

this technology is great for cameras and music, low write activity… not so much for os’s that page, write log files… or apps like mm that constantly cause log files

I think, based on your description your card is used up. time for a new one…

I changed my pis to boot from SD card, but run from ssd (same technology, just really bigger)

ps. I have lost 10 sd cards to this problem over the last 4 years…

[pastormingle]

@sdetweil I have a 32gb UHS-I that has my current configuration that I wanted to backup and also clone it to a new ssd that is same type and size… My question is this I have cloned it but when I copy it to the new ssd it says that it isn’t the same sizes… But it is the same type of card… Can the image be reduced? What can I do to clone to a new ssd?

[cowboysdude]

https://www.raspberrystreet.com/learn/how-to-boot-raspberrypi-from-usb-ssd

There may be an easier way but this helped me.

[swvalenti]

@cowboysdude said in What is your backup and restore method?:

https://www.raspberrystreet.com/learn/how-to-boot-raspberrypi-from-usb-ssd

There may be an easier way but this helped me.

@cowboysdude You the man that worked well for me and easy to follow!

[cowboysdude]

@swvalenti Yes but this ONLY works for an RPI4… So I KNOW someone is going to see this and try it on a 3 and come back with ‘it doesn’t work’… it does.

You can also do it on a 3 but it’s different…

https://thepi.io/how-to-boot-your-raspberry-pi-from-a-usb-mass-storage-device/

Just replying here so I can save myself trouble when someone tries it LOL