Create a backup of your Raspberry Pi SD card using Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and restore when you need

As already know there are many situations you can corrupt the file system of the SD card which makes it hard and ruin all the hours of work you have dedicated to your project. After you read this guide you will stop re-installing everything over and over again.

In this tutorial we will learn how to create a backup SD card in many different ways.

Manage backups using Windows and Win32DiskImager

Win32DiskImager is an application for Windows that allows you to make backups and restore it again.
Click here to download

Backup

• Click the folder icon to choose the location and the name of the backup you want to take, write the name of the image file to save.
• Select the SD card drive letter (under "Device").
• Click the Read button

Restore

Choose the image file you created and click on Write button to write it back to an empty SD card.

* NOTE
If you not like Win32DiskImager, you can try another software: "HDD Raw Copy Tool". It can be used to create a compressed backup.

http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/


Manage backups using Mac OS X

To backing up a Raspberry Pi SD card using a Mac, you can use two utility software:

• PiCloner-1.0.4-Universal.dmg - Simple tool to help you create a backup of your RaspberryPi's SD card.
• PiWriter2-2.0.0-Universal.dmg - Graphical interface to create Raspberrypi SD-cards in OS X

Manage backups using Linux

Matt Hoskins have written a script that will copy all of the SD files into a gzipped archive.


Download the script

      
cd /tmp
wget -O sysmatt-rpi-tools.zip  https://github.com/sysmatt-industries/sysmatt-rpi-tools/archive/master.zip
unzip sysmatt-rpi-tools.zip
cd sysmatt-rpi-tools-master/
chmod +x sysmatt.rpi.*
mv sysmatt.rpi.* /usr/local/bin
    
 

Use the script 
sudo sysmatt.rpi.backup.gtar it will create a file in /home/pi/backups/

To restore the backup to SD, run  sudo systmatt.rpi.restore.sd.card script passing the name of the SD device and the tar archive to restore from. Insert the destination SD card and discover what /dev/sd device it has been assigned  and after write the command. For example

sudo sysmatt.rpi.restore.sd.card /dev/sda/ /home/pi/backups/backup.tar.gz


Manage backups using a shell script

Pi-clone is a shell script to clone a running Raspberry Pi SD card to a USB mounted SD card.
https://github.com/KoljaWindeler/pi-clone

This shell script backup (clone using dd and rsync) a running Raspberry Pi file system to a destination SD card plugged into a Pi USB port (via a USB card reader).

• "rpi-clone sda" command will copy everything to USB-flash drive 
• "rpi-clone sda sdb" to restore everything.