Set up a rasbian distro using a Pi 3, will it work in a Pi 4?

Question

I need to set up a SD card using a Raspberry Pi 3.

Will that SD card then work fine in a Raspberry Pi 4 as long as I use Raspbian Buster or newer?

Answer 1

You can't run Raspbian Stretch which has been used on a Raspberry Pi 3. On the other hand, if you have run a Raspbian Buster on a Raspberry Pi 3, it's possible to run it on a Raspberry Pi 4.

The Raspbian Stretch isn't supported by Raspberry Pi 4.

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More information:
How can I upgrade a pi3 SD card to pi4?

Answer 2

The Raspberry Pi 4B needs "new" drivers which are not compatible with Raspbian Stretch and older Raspbian versions. So Raspbian Buster was released together with the RPi 4B that runs on it. According to the policies of the Raspberry Pi foundation all versions are downstream compatible and run on all Raspberry Pi versions. But of course they cannot be upstream compatible. As long as you use Raspbian Buster it will run on all Raspberry Pi versions, including RPi 3 and RPi 4B. But if you use a distribution based on Stretch or a lower version it will not run on a RPi 4B, except it has native drivers installed for RPi 4B.