Re: [Gumstix-users] making copies of microSD cards

[<cod...@gm...>]

Just thought I'd add my $0.02 here regarding imaging a large disk to a
smaller disk.  I've had some luck in the past with resize2fs.  You can use
that to shrink a filesystem that exists in a partition.  Then use fdisk (or
other partitioning tool like qparted) to shrink the partition itself.  Make
sure you do not shrink the partition so small that it truncates the shrunken
filesystem.  If you can get the filesystem and partition small enough to fit
on the new drive, then the dd if=/path/to/old/disk of=/path/to/new/disk
bs=1M should work.

I haven't tried this specifically with MicroSD cards, but I've had some luck
with it with imaging a 750GB SATA drive onto a 300GB one.  Perhaps it's
something to try, on a test card of course.  :)

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Alex Gibson <al...@al...> wrote:

> On 27/01/2010 5:36 PM, Dave Hylands wrote:
> > Hi Alex,
> >
> > On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 7:49 PM, Alex Gibson<al...@al...>
>  wrote:
> >
> >> On 27/01/2010 3:42 AM, asufi wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi
> >>>
> >>> I have an image built and working fairly well on the Overo fire. I wish
> to
> >>> make copies of my 8GB microSD card using 4GB cards.
> >>> Can I just follow conventional methods or is there something special I
> need
> >>> to do?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Use dd.
> >>
> >> eg One card mounted as /dev/sdb1 and sdb2 other cards as sdc1 and sdc2
> >>
> >> then
> >>
> >> dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd
> >>
> >> Just did this for 15 microsd cards.
> >>
> > That will definitely work if the partitions are the same size. If the
> > source is bigger than the destination, then you may wind up losing
> > data.
> >
> > It won't necessarily work if they're different sizes.
> >
> > I found using a block size of 1M or more cranks up the performance on
> > USB connected hard drives (30 MB/sec with 1M block size versus 3
> > Mb/sec for the default). I haven't measured with SD cards.
> >
> >
>
> I've copied smaller to larger cards ,mostly works , sometimes doesn't
> seems to depend on distro. More success with fedora.
>
> Not all copies work even wirth using the same sized cards. Maybe 1 in 4
> gets a kernal panic on boot.
> Usually can't find initial console.
>
>
> Alex
>
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