To write an image to an SD card with dd
, use:
sudo dd if=the.image.file.path of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress
The thing most likely to get confused about and screw up here is that the device node should not include a partition number -- e.g., /dev/sda1
, which refers to the first partition on the sda
device. Instead you want the whole device, which is just /dev/sda
. If you use sda1
, the card won't work.
Pretty sure a card in a USB adapter will get labelled exactly that, unless you have other drives attached in which case it could be /dev/sdb
, etc. Have a look at ls /dev
with the adapter and card in. If sda
isn't there, it might have ended up as mmcblk1
(but I don't think so). The trick with the partitions is that unless the card has been messed up or formatted in an unusual way, it will have at least one partition on it, meaning there will be an sda
and and sda1
or a mmcblk1
and mmcblk1p1
. Again, you want the first one.
Just don't use mmcblk0
. That's the system card in the Pi.
The Retropie github refers you to the Pi Foundation page about creating a card with linux, which talks about dd
and device nodes some more. Their invocation is a bit different than mine but either one should be fine.
dd
or etcher"). Raspbian is a normative linux distro. I think Etcher is proprietary though; I see no source downloads on their site and the linux versions are x86(-64), which won't work on the pi. So you'll have to usedd
, which is bulletproof and simple enough anyway.dd
?