Creating backup images of RetroPie?

[TheHeroBilly]

I have a tendency to change the OS on my Pi, and having only a single 128gb SD Card doesn't exactly help. (Dual boot doesn't work either because I'd have unused OS's lying around) is there a way to make a backup of the image that isn't 100+ GB in size? IE shrink the partition size and clone just those partitions? I've tried the Win32DiskImager but it always copies the Empty partition into a file.

[pjft]

There's a nifty tool called rpi-clone (to be used on the pi) that lets you clone the content of your SD card to a new SD card (plugged in via a USB adaptor, I imagine). I used it quite successfully in the past as I had a 32gb card that needed to shrink to a 16gb one.

If you only have a single SD card, maybe you can try the following as a workaround:
A) run rpi-clone to backup the SD card to a regular USB pen drive (it will format it, so bear in mind that you'll lose the content) smaller than the SD card that you have lying around.
B) then use disk imager and backup the USB drive.

There are several areas where this may fail, namely whether this can backup the SD to the USB drive, because of the multiple partitions and their types, and whether it'll work if you restore it to the SD card then. Be aware that if you do this, and it works, I imagine the restored SD card will be formatted to match the size of the image, which will be the size of the USB drive. If you want more space you'll need to expand the partition on the pi afterwards.

I'd be curious to see if it works. If you have the materials at hand and would be able to try it out (making a proper 128gb backup of the card beforehand, though, in case it goes wrong and you need to restore it) let us know.

Oh, an alternative would be to backup straight to a zip file - at least on a Mac that's what Apple Pi Baker does, so it doesn't take up all the space. Maybe you can zip the image after you perform the backup, though your problem may be that you won't always have the room for such a large file. On the Mac it can backup and restore straight from the zip, so that's handy.

Best of luck!

[TheHeroBilly]

I haven't heard of the rpi-clone tool. I'll look into it shortly. I can't use apple pie Baker because I only have access to windows and Linux. But I will definitely give the rpi-clone a try.

[Darksavior]

I was going to try rpi-clone until i read that it doesn't support noobs. I'm using the "multibootpi" noobs setup with diff partitions. I guess i'll just copy the opt and home folders instead..

[A Former User]

To create backups for my PI I use Win32 disk imager as I already had it installed from when setting up Retropie on to my SD card.

There are some useful YouTube videos on to how to use the tool but effectively it's just the reverse process of how you got the image of retropie on the SD card but now you are copying an image off and storing it on a PC.