Backup your ISS-Above SD Card as SOON as you can

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As you will have already found out the Raspberry Pi (the computer at the heart of the ISS-Above) does not come with an on-off switch.

Just like any computer – they don’t like it when the power is just pulled from them without doing an orderly shutdown.

If the power is lost suddenly this can (sometimes) corrupt the SD card containing the ISS-Above code).

The best solution is to clone / backup the SD card to your computer.  This will allow you to quickly restore the setup to your SD Card if it ever gets corrupted.  This will only take 10 minutes and is HIGHLY recommended (otherwise tears and upset might be in your future).

You will need 8GB of space for the backup (the size of the SD card) 
- although you can Zip (compress) the backup file for safekeeping and the file will be about 800Mb in size).

Backing up your SD card image is the SMARTEST thing you can ever do.  

This will allow you to quickly restore the setup to your SD Card if it ever gets corrupted.  This will only take 10 minutes and is HIGHLY recommended (otherwise tears and upset might be in your future).

You will need 8GB of space for the backup – although you can Zip (compress) the backup file for safekeeping and the file will be about 800Mb in size). Instructions for Windows and Macs are below.

If you need to RESTORE your ISS-ABOVE code, click here.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR WINDOWS COMPUTERS

Cloning the SD card is simple. Just follow these steps.

  1. Download and Install Win32DiskImager (If you’re on OS X or Linux, you’ll have to use the dd command as described here instead of these steps).
  2. In the “Image File” box, enter the path of your soon-to-be image file. For example, I put mine in C:\Users\Liam\images\issabove.img
  3. Under the “Device” box, select the drive letter for your SD card.
  4. Click the “Read” button to create the image file from your card.
  5. The program will begin reading the card.
  6. When it’s done creating the image file (it may take as long as 10 minutes), you can eject your SD card and put it back in your ISS-Above/Raspberry Pi. Keep that IMG file in a safe place.

Now, if anything ever goes wrong with the ISS-Above code image you can restore your fully-set-up image using the reverse instructions:P

  1. Insert the SD card back into your computer.
  2. Open Win32DiskImager again and browse for your image file you saved previously. Select your device from the Device dropdown just as you did before.
  3. This time, click “Write” to write the image to the SD card.
  4. When it finishes, eject the SD card and re-insert it into your ISS-Above. When you boot it up, it should be in the exact same state it was in when you first cloned the SD card.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAC COMPUTERS

I am not a Mac user – so I have no personal experience of the following … but hopefully this will make sense to you.

I have heard of two approaches.

The first approach uses  “command line” tools you enter in the “Terminal” window of the Mac.  The other approach uses a free tool called Pi Copier and to backup the card and Pi Filler to write the saved image back to your SD Card.  You can download both utilitieshere.

This is what you do with the command line to clone your SD card

On Mac, you can also use the standard dd tool with a slightly different syntax:

dd if=/dev/rdiskx of=/path/to/image bs=1m

Where /dev/rdiskx is your SD card.

(using rdisk is preferable as its the raw device – quicker)

To find out which disk your device is type diskutil list at a command prompt – also, you may need to be root – to do this type sudo -s and enter your password when prompted.