0

Raspberry pi Image with Debian got different startsector. Raspbian image start at 8192. Debian for Raspberry start at 2048. I want use dd in linux to put on the sd-card

https://raspi.debian.net/tested-images/ I have a Raspberry Pi 4B

Is this a problem?

2 Answers 2

1

Debian image partitions are aligned to a 1MB boundary, while the Pi OS image partitions are aligned to 4MB boundary. The alignment is done to insure that partitions include a whole number of physical blocks which have different sizes on different media. Having a fraction of physical block inside a partition could lead to very rare problems, such as data corruption on a partition that wasn't even mounted: if you unplug the power while the physical block on the border is being overwritten, the entire block content may be lost: for a hypothetical 4MB block that could be 1 MB in the partition you were writing to and 3MB in the next partition.

I would expect Debian maintainers to do their research before choosing this boundary value, so I suggest you keep it as it is. It is very unlikely that you'll have an SD card which suffers from the problem above, because if such cards were widespread, Debian would have redefined the partition boundaries.

0

Partitions on a SD Card should be located on an Erase Block boundary, and Foundation images enforce this.

If an image does not there will need to be extra block erases, potentially impacting the Partition table when the boot sector is updated. See https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/94855/8697

While this is desirable, not observing the boundaries will not have a major effect.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.