Duplicating RetroPie SD Card?

[bfollowell]

I have my RetroPie setup and ROMs perfect. Everything is exactly like I want them. I don't, but let's say I do. Now I want to create duplicates of the SD card to duplicate this setup in other RetroPie rigs for my daughter & son-in-law, my son and daughter-in-law, and my nieces. Is it as simple as copying everything, all the files from one card to another, or do I need to create an image of my SD card and then install that image on other cards, much I did with the initial RetroPie image I installed on the original card before I started installing cores and ROMs and tweaking?

Thanks.

[lostless]

@bfollowell you can do it both ways. If you custom code like a power switch or retroflag case, etc.. Or if you did some custom code on the boot up sequence to hide the boot text or whatever. If so, making an image is the easiest way to copy. it'll be just as you set it. Just make sure you buy the same sd card brand and model. Not all cards are the same size. some other brands are usually off by a mega byte or upwards around a couple 100MBs and the image may not fit on an another brands card. If you go for a larger card, this is no issue.
the other option is you can also copy every file from the roms, configs and bios folders and recopy them all back in into the folders of a new image, and pretty most of your configs will transfer over. I've done it both ways and I like the image way. It just comes out just as if you never changed sd cards. It takes longer to do an image as you are also copying the free space of the sd card, but i do a lot of custom configs that don't transfer over the 3 main user accessible folders.

[bfollowell]

Thanks! I think I'll probably go the imaging route then. Any suggestions on a good imaging tool? Or do the same tools we use to write images, such as Win32 Disk Imager or balenaEtcher, create them as well?