[SOLVED] DD question for making duplicate OS of SD card Raspberri Pi backup

lleb · 03-12-2013, 07:24 AM

I have been working with my RPi over the past several days and am in need of backing up my SD card before I temporarily place a different OS on the card so I can get official support from the Pi store for a codec I purchased. I DO NOT want to have to spend several more hours after that rebuilding my current OS (http://www.raspbmc.com/) with all of the customizations that I have working.

I was thinking I should just be able to DD the SD card to a file on my Mac, then when Im done testing I could DD it back...

would this work for what I have in mind:

Code:

ssma-imac:Raspbmc ssma$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            999.9 GB   disk0s2
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *16.0 GB    disk1
   1:             Windows_FAT_32                         73.4 MB    disk1s1
   2:                      Linux                         15.9 GB    disk1s2

That is just a list of the devices on my MAC with /dev/disk1 being the SD card. I am not 100% how to grab the entire disk with DD.

Code:

sudo dd if=/dev/disk1 of=raspbmc.img

Would that work and grab all of the partitions, formats, files, etc...?

Then to reverse it later I would just

Code:

sudo dd if=/path/to/raspbmc.img of=/dev/disk1

lleb · 03-12-2013, 08:35 AM

found the following to create an image that i was looking for. I was close on my guess.

Code:

dd if=/dev/hdb | gzip -c  > /image.img

You can restore your disk with:

Code:

gunzip -c /image.img.gz | dd of=/dev/hdb

lleb · 03-14-2013, 07:39 AM

just a bit more info as to why I was doing this. I purchased a License for the MPEG2 codec from the Raspberry Pi Foundation store. Their e-mail and instructions indicated that I had a License for both the MPEG2 and WVC1 codec. This bounced back and forth for 3 days with them demanding that I remove my working OS from my Raspberry Pi (RPi) and install their "official" OS.

I did this. Their Rasbian installer is broken and antiquated, something worse then MSDOS installer, and looks like it is a leftover from the early 1990s. In all keeping my family from watching their videos/movies/TV Shows, etc... via my media center as it had to be down for this testing. This does not make for a happy family mind you. This morning I receive an e-mail indicating that they had lied to me this entire time. They ONLY sent me the key for MPEG2 and were not going to do anything about the WVC1 codec they had instructed me to work with and test on their "official OS". Thus bringing down my media server for the past 72hrs.

I for one hope others read their post and never buy anything from their store again let alone their codecs that half of the time, according to their official forums, are not even being delivered as paid for with ZERO recourse as many people pay via PayPal, bad move IMHO, and PayPal will do NOTHING for software if you dont receive it. You are just out of money and out of luck.

lleb · 03-14-2013, 07:59 AM

FYI an update on the official raspberry Pi forums, I have been permanently banned for TELLING the truth about their support. So not only do they offer horrid CS/TS for their products, but they hide it when people speak the truth about their product and server.

Really good way to piss people off.