Pi 3B. Installed Pixel UI but 'SD Card Copier' is missing under Accessories? Help please.

[njweb]

I am a relative noob to Raspberry Pi but not new to command line OSes.

I just got a Raspberry Pi 3B with Retropie pre-installed.
I installed the Pixel UI today from the command line; the install went without a hitch and now I can use 'sudo startx' to bring up the Pixel GUI.

The only issue is that the 'SD Card Copier' utility is missing under Accessories.
Is Pixel not the right UI to have installed to get the 'SD Card Copier' utility? If so, which UI should I be installing instead to get the SD card copier utility and how can I get rid of Pixel which is rather large.

I want to back up my Pi's SD card in case it ever gets corrupted.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/another-update-raspbian/

Thanks in advance for help!

[caver01]

@njweb There is likely a way to add the utility, but what do you mean by "I just got a Raspberry Pi 3B with Retropie pre-installed"? This sounds like a third party image. Did you read this first? I am thinking your situation falls on the wrong side of #5.

Yet, even with the official image, I thought I saw someone mention that because it is based on Raspbian Lite, installing Pixel may not include everything.

[njweb]

@caver01

@caver01 said in Pi 3B. Installed Pixel UI but 'SD Card Copier' is missing under Accessories? Help please.:

@njweb There is likely a way to add the utility, but what do you mean by "I just got a Raspberry Pi 3B with Retropie pre-installed"? This sounds like a third party image. Did you read this first? I am thinking your situation falls on the wrong side of #5.

Yet, even with the official image, I thought I saw someone mention that because it is based on Raspbian Lite, installing Pixel may not include everything.

Thanks caver01.
Not sure if it is a 3rd party image or not, but assume it is official...
So if you have Retropie (based on Raspbian Lite), some features may be missing when installing Pixel?
Pixel was not included by default, so I installed it (thinking it would come with all accessories included).
The other accessories are there, although ironically SD Card Copier is the one I really wanted since I am concerned on potential SD card corruption and having to reinstall from scratch would be a pain.

I will try Win32DiskImager.
If that doesn't work, I can try the method noted at the following:
https://pimylifeup.com/backup-raspberry-pi/

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=~/PiSDBackup.img (where /dev/sda is an example of the path of the extra SD card to which the image is to be written).

[DougA]

@caver1. You are correct, it doesn’t install everything that comes with full Raspbian. I was looking for a list of what was missing last week, but I didn’t find a definitive one. It would be nice to have a standard Retro Pie image based on Full Raspbian as an option, as the cost of larger SD cards is not that high, and many, including me, would rather not install Retro Pie manually.

[caver01]

@douga said in Pi 3B. Installed Pixel UI but 'SD Card Copier' is missing under Accessories? Help please.:

many, including me, would rather not install Retro Pie manually

I agree. Funny you mentioned it, because installing over Raspbian full is a serious consideration for me. When I read the bit about missing stuff in Pixel, I too wondered what I might be missing. I'd rather do a full reinstall than an upgrade to Stretch.

[njweb]

Good news:
I had created an image of my PI 3B's SD card using Win32DiskImager a few days ago.
I 'wrote' the image to another SD card this evening, plugged it into my Pi and it booted up flawlessly, so I will not need SD Card Copier...

Hope this helps someone else who may have been leery of using Win32DiskImager.

[markyh444]

@njweb Win32DiskImager is perfect for backing up your Pi. Most people on here use it, and I've made about 10 copies of my SD cards over the years when building and testing new things out in various projects.

I'd highly recommend ditching whatever image came with your Pi though and starting with the base Retropie from the site. If you run into more problems and ask for help here it wont be supported, plus nobody will know what has been done to the image before it was sold to you to try and help you if we can.

If you are happy with tinkering and exploring things for yourself though, you wont be disappointed with starting from the image on this site and making it your own!

[njweb]

@markyh444 said in Pi 3B. Installed Pixel UI but 'SD Card Copier' is missing under Accessories? Help please.:

@njweb Win32DiskImager is perfect for backing up your Pi. Most people on here use it, and I've made about 10 copies of my SD cards over the years when building and testing new things out in various projects.

I'd highly recommend ditching whatever image came with your Pi though and starting with the base Retropie from the site. If you run into more problems and ask for help here it wont be supported, plus nobody will know what has been done to the image before it was sold to you to try and help you if we can.

If you are happy with tinkering and exploring things for yourself though, you wont be disappointed with starting from the image on this site and making it your own!

Good point, thanks. Just concerned with potential compatibility issues with EmulationStation and installed emulators, settings etc. if I upgrade Retropie (will look up steps again).