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I have tried several methods on my Mac to backup and recover an image of the SDs on my raspis. The only method that has consistently proved to work for me is the "dd" from Mac terminal. The inherent problem with this approach is that if you fail to write the correct disk address (/dev/rdsknn) you can wipe out the hard disk from the Mac or some of the external mounted drives.

Other methods (Balena Etcher, etc...) have not worked mostly because of errors related with the capacity of the SD card.

Does anybody know some effective method (alternative to dd) to backup and restore a SD card image on a Mac that do not put at risk the integrity of the drives in the Mac?

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  • Doesn't seem to be about Raspberry Pi. Wrong community
    – Vadim
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 7:36
  • ?? It is about backing up the SDs of a Raspberry. It is one of the first things to do for anyone playing with Raspis
    – Joan I
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 14:20
  • Yes it is essential, however to me sounds rather like "how to backup an SD card..?" which is generic independent if it is Pi's SD or any else. Unless you see a critical difference, and will be willing to point it out in your question
    – Vadim
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 15:11
  • I know how to copy a SD card to another one, but this kind of copy cannot be used for backing up raspi SDs. There are quite a lot of apps intended for doing this that when executed give errors (BalenaEtcher, PiBaker,...). The question is so, inherent to Raspis
    – Joan I
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 16:00
  • Perhaps you can point it out in your question, especially if you know what is making it different from simple copy
    – Vadim
    Commented Apr 19, 2023 at 7:13

1 Answer 1

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See https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/29085/8697

This is a script I used to use which performs a safety check.

dd is not a particularly good backup strategy; it is slow and can only restore to an identical (or larger card).

I use an incremental backup approach.

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  • Milliways, this is a very well crafted bash script. It is a very good option to avoid errors and avoid fatal accidents. Thanks for sharing
    – Joan I
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 15:54

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