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Because I have installed a bunch of things for a larger project on my Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, I would like to backup the entire (bootable) SD card on my Mac.

I tried to insert the SD card into my Mac and subsequently copy the whole SD card image using sudo dd bs=4m if=/dev/sdb of=raspbian.img, as specified in: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/linux/filesystem/backup.md

However, when I plug the SD card into my Mac (running the latest OS), it tells me it cannot read the medium and gives me 3 options: Initialize... | Ignore | Eject.

I tried clicking "Ignore" and ran the command sudo dd bs=4m if=/dev/sdb of=raspbian.img, while I replaced the if path correctly (using "disk2" instead). It then tells me that there is an input/output error.

The SD card is booting up my Raspberry Pi completely ok, however, so I do not think it is corrupted.

  1. Is it safe to let my Mac "Initialize..." the SD card and will this help me to back it up?

  2. How can I back up the SD card in this scenario without losing the current state of it?

Help on this would be very much appreciated.

raspberry_bc
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1 Answers1

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It is unclear from your question what you actually did - "follow these instructions" leaves us to wonder if the instructions are wrong or you didn't follow them, although in this case the instructions DO NOT cover use of a Mac.

I use the following

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/72047/8697

DO NOT initialize (sic) i.e. ERASE the card if you want to keep the contents.

PS I always check using diskutil list to see what is mounted, and the script includes this as an extra check.

Milliways
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