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    [Tutorial] New way to backup your retro pie

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Ideas and Development
    sd card copying
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    • ClydeC
      Clyde
      last edited by Clyde

      @Unknown Well, you could use dd to copy an sd card from Retropie's command line.

      1. Enter blkid to see a list of all connected block devices and their partitions. Example:
      /dev/mmcblk0p1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL_FATBOOT="boot" LABEL="boot" UUID="C367-3F28" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="e22bcd10-01"
      /dev/mmcblk0p2: LABEL="retropie" UUID="8988cf8f-d459-476f-9a4a-16c56702dc40" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="e22bcd10-02"
      /dev/sda1: LABEL="retropie-data" UUID="9463aedb-2ed2-4946-98a6-ab9c63966f8a" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="2c31bca2-b1f4-4466-ab20-3a347852ba2c"
      

      Here, the card in the internal sd slot of my Pi 4 is mmcblk0, and p1 and p2 are its partitions. sda is an usb drive with one partition. A second usb drive would likely become sdb and so on.

      1. Clone one block device (let's say sda) onto another (sdb):
      sudo dd status=progress bs=4m if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb
      

      sudo is needed for root access rights to the raw devices.
      status=progress will display the ongoing progress.
      bs = block size (4 MB for more speed)
      if = input file (or block device, since all devices in Linux are files)
      of = output file

      Be very careful with the device names, though. Like most Linux commands, dd will do whatever you tell it to without warning or remorse. So if you're careless, you might overwrite your original with the backup.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • ClydeC
        Clyde @mitu
        last edited by

        @mitu said in [Tutorial] New way to backup your retro pie:

        @Unknown Well, choosing between installing the desktop (and the SD card copier) I think it's easier than having 2 sdcard adapters.

        But then you'd clone the system card from within the running system, right? I remember this being discouraged in many backup guides, but I don't know how much of a problem this really is.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • UnknownU
          Unknown
          last edited by

          @Clyde @mitu Seems that there are several more ways mentioned here to backup your retropie image. Maybe this should be added to the Docs.

          You can't beat the classics(unless you copy them).

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • UnknownU
            Unknown
            last edited by

            @mitu The desktop comes with the SD card copier installed.

            You can't beat the classics(unless you copy them).

            mituM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • mituM
              mitu Global Moderator @Unknown
              last edited by

              @Unknown said in [Tutorial] New way to backup your retro pie:

              @mitu The desktop comes with the SD card copier installed.

              Sure, but we don't use the Raspbian Desktop image and I assume most users don't install the desktop when using RetroPie.

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              • UnknownU
                Unknown
                last edited by

                @mitu I meant that you would copy it with another raspberry pi, not the one that you use for your retropie system. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear.

                You can't beat the classics(unless you copy them).

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • UnknownU
                  Unknown
                  last edited by

                  @mitu I see you have moved this, could you explain what that means?

                  You can't beat the classics(unless you copy them).

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • mituM
                    mitu Global Moderator
                    last edited by

                    The Ideas and development category is more appropriate for this topic.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • windgW
                      windg
                      last edited by windg

                      Is a big plus to not have the roms in the sd card but to an external disk. i am using this approach one year now and i have to back up only the retroarch.cfg and the gamepad.cfg files.

                      My English isn't at a good level.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • UnknownU
                        Unknown
                        last edited by

                        @windg The backup would still run roms off your drive.

                        You can't beat the classics(unless you copy them).

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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