How I Backup and Shrink My SD Card Images [Raspberry Pi | Armbian]

#Compact #Backup #Shrink #SDCards

Full steps can be found at https://i12bretro.github.io/tutorials/0735.html

What is Win32DiskImager?

[Win32DiskImager] is designed to write a raw disk image to a removable device or backup a removable device to a raw image file. It is very useful for embedded development, namely Arm development projects (Android, Ubuntu on Arm, etc). - https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

Things You Will Need

   - A microSD card to backup  https://amzn.to/36CpShC |  https://amzn.to/3CXJngt |  https://amzn.to/3JqyxSP    - A Linux based VirtualBox VM  https://youtu.be/V4pNO3amhV4 |  https://youtu.be/wIa07KhkQOg |  https://youtu.be/mmTCh1NG3AM

Creating the Base Image

   01. Insert the SD card into the Windows PC    02. Download Win32DiskImager  https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/Archive/Win32DiskImager-1.0.0-binary.zip/download    03. Extract the downloaded .zip file    04. Run Win32DiskImager.exe    05. Select the SD card from the Device dropdown    06. Click the folder icon ≫ Browse to a location to save the SD card image ≫ Enter a file name ≫ Click Open    07. Click the Read button at the bottom of the application window    08. Wait while the contents of the SD card image is read

What is PiShrink?

PiShrink is a bash script that automatically shrinks a pi image that will then resize to the max size of the SD card on boot. This will make putting the image back onto the SD card faster and the shrunk images will compress better. In addition the shrunk image can be compressed with gzip and xz to create an even smaller image. Parallel compression of the image using multiple cores is supported. - https://github.com/Drewsif/PiShrink

Shrinking the Image Partitions

   01. Launch VirtualBox    02. Select the Linux based VM ≫ Settings ≫ Shared Folders    03. Click the Add Share icon to the right    04. Click the Folder Path dropdown ≫ Other... ≫ Browse to the folder containing the Win32DiskImager .img    05. Check the Auto-mount box, set the Mount point to /host and check the Make Permanent box ≫ Click OK    06. Right click the VM ≫ Start    07. Log into the guest OS    08. Launch a terminal and run the following commands          # install prerequisites          sudo apt install parted xz-utils          # download the pishrink script          wget -O ./pishrink.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Drewsif/PiShrink/master/pishrink.sh          # make the script executable          chmod +x ./pishrink.sh          # run pishrink on the .img file          sudo ./pishrink.sh -v /host/≪%imagename.img%≫    09. PiShrink should complete in just a minute or two    10. If no errors occurred, shutdown the VM

Compressing the Image Further

   01. Download and install 7-zip  https://www.7-zip.org/download.html    02. Right click on the shrunken .img file ≫ 7-Zip ≫ Add to archive...    03. Set the Archive format to xz and the Compression level to 9 - Ultra ≫ Click OK    04. Wait while 7-Zip compresses .img file  

Connect with me and others

★ Discord: https://discord.com/invite/EzenvmSHW8 ★ Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/i12bretro ★ Twitter: https://twitter.com/i12bretro ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdgO3Ncl6k