Attempting to back-up SD card

[helloThere]

Pi Model or other hardware: 3 B
Power Supply: 5.1V || 2.3 A
USB Devices connected: keyboard, mouse
Controller used: arcade buttons and joysticks
32 GB SD Card

I wanted to clone the image of my sd card just to test if I could actually make a save in case something broke (ironic). I was following

guide, but instead of using Windows, I used parallels desktops. I used ApplePi-Baker to flash the sd card. When I re-installed the SD card, I got a screen with 4 raspberries. I tried another SD card with raspbian on it and it worked fine.

If this helps at all, the sd card was formatted in MS-DOS(FAT32) before testing. Afterwards, when I look in Disk Utility it seems to revert to MS-DOS(FAT16).

I spent almost a week figuring stuff out to get my build to work nicely, so does anyone have any leads on how to fix it?

[DavidDraper]

I use Win32DiskImager on a Windows 10 machine with an SD card slot to make backup images of RaspberryPi SD cards and either Win32DskImager or RaspberryPiImager to put images on new SD cards. You can download Win32DiskImager free from the internet, or they may be a small fee. It's very reliable.

Good luck!

David

[ReadyPlayaWon]

@DavidDraper

i also use Win32DiskImager and it works great, but i suspect the OP is using a Mac (since he said he used ApplePi-Baker)

i hear good things about etcher which i've been meaning to try it ... and it's compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux

https://sourceforge.net/projects/etcher.mirror/

[simpleethat]

If you're on a Mac the docs do describe a way to backup you SD card from OSX. You can find the method here. I don't have a Mac to try it out on but the docs are pretty good sources of info. That page does have some other backup methods to try as well.

[helloThere]

Sorry I didn't clear up the confusion earlier. I should've said I was using a mac.

I'm using parallel desktops and win32diskimager to flash it back right now. I could use the Mac method, but it has a tendency to create ._yourFileName files, which I hope using parallels can avoid. It seems to run pretty well.

Thanks, simpleethat. The Retropie Docs are generally pretty good, but I really wish making saves of images had its own page in the docs.

[simpleethat]

@helloThere I use win32diskimager on my PC and it works very well. The interface is fairly intuitive too. Hopefully it works for you.