Unable to write image to SD card.

ashpi

Hi guys. Haven't posted for a while as my system has been running lovely. Until now. I had a freeze up and the only thing to do was pull the power, causing my SD to be useless, so I presume I've corrupted my data. Now about 6 months ago I used win32 disk imager to successfully copy my SanDisk 32gb card into IMG form. And I've gone to write the image to the same card (and others) and the pi won't boot and also the boot partition is not detected in Windows. Win32 says the image was successfully written to the card but something isn't right. What are my options? I'm hoping someone can help otherwise I've lost all my configs, games and saves.
How can I check to see if the image is ok? And is there any reason that the image would be duff? Am i missing something?

Thanks in advance.

Ash

mitu

@ashpi Assuming your backup image is correct, then try re-formatting the SD card before writing the backup image.

ashpi

@mitu thank you for the suggestion, but I have tried that using different programs. I formatted in Windows and the fat32 SD formatter that's recommend. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to make any difference.

mitu

@ashpi You could write a new image - get the 4.4 new RetroPie image - and write it. If it shows correctly, then your backup might not be 100% correct. If not, then you're in luck - the backup might be ok, but the SD card might be damaged (which could have caused the wreckage in the 1st place).

matchaman

Do you happen to use a 3 B + model? It's incompatible with pre-Stretch based images. If that's the case, you'll need to boot on an older model, backup manually, create a new 4.4 setup and restore your data there.

I generally recommend keeping both folder data and image backups. It's safer and more convenient.

ashpi

No I'm still using a normal pi3 although I am considering getting the 3b+. Im starting to believe that it's the actual image at fault as wrote a new official image to this card and other cards I have without issues.
The strange thing is that win32 said it was read and completed fine. But now my backed up image seems to be 'broken' and unbootable when written to cards.
Any ideas?