FLASH MEDIA
Install a new OS to SD and USB media
Les Pounder is always flashing a new OS to his Raspberry Pi and these are the tools of his trade.
OUR EXPERT
Les Pounder is associate editor at Tom’s Hardware and a freelance maker for hire. He blogs about his adventures and projects at bigl.es
YOU NEED
› Any model of Raspberry Pi (Pi 4 for USB 3 boot)
› The latest Raspberry Pi OS release
› USB card reader microSD card
› USB stick or OSB to SATA adapter and SATA SSD A computer running Linux, we had Ubuntu
M icroSD cards are fickle little things. One moment they’re fine, the next they no longer work. Backing up your SD cards and keeping up to date with the latest releases is an essential part of the Raspberry Pi experience. In this tutorial we shall take a look at two graphical tools that can be used to create new SD cards, a terminal tool that offers the same but for more advanced users, and look at how you can back up your Raspberry Pi OS image to share with friends and colleagues. We also examine how it’s possible to copy our Raspberry Pi OS install to an SSD for use with a Raspberry Pi 4 for a speedy Raspberry Pi experience. All this in just two pages!
Using a GUI
There are two main ways to flash an SD card via a GUI. For many years Etcher was the main means with which to flash a card. Etcher provides a simple three-step interface where we choose our downloaded OS image, choose the destination SD card, then write the image.