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Create Bootable Raspberry Pi SD Card

Creating a bootable Raspberry Pi SD card is super easy. There are several different ways that you can do this.

Raspberry Pi Imager

Raspberry Pi Imager is the official tool from Raspberry Pi. This is the easy and obvios choice. This tool allows you to install a variety of different operating systems to an SD card for your Raspberry Pi. It even pulls the images down for you if you want.

This tool is specifically designed to work with Raspberry Pi hardware. It probably works fine for other types of single board computers but I haven’t tested it on the m. Usually, if I’m using a third party SBC I use another tool like Etcher or dd.

This is a graphical tool. You basically just select your image, select your destination, drive, and click the button to start.

Etcher

Etcher is a really popular tool for creating bootable drives. It works great for Raspberry Pis and other SBCs. It can install almost any OS to almost any SD card or flash drive.

Balena Etcher is a great tool and I definitely recommend it.

This is a graphical tool similar to Raspberry Pi imager. It works in a very similar way. Just selct your options and go.

Rufus

Rufus is a great tool for Windows. It runs on Windows and is cablable of creating Windows install disks. It is also capable of creating Raspberry Pi install disks.

Rufus operates in a simliar way to Raspberry Pi Imager and Balena Etcher. You basically just select your options and click a button.

dd Command

The dd command is another great option. It isn’t as straight forward to use especially if you aren’t comfortable on the command line. It does have the advantage of being installed by default on most Linux and MacOS systems. It is also as easy as opening a new terminal and typing the right command.

Here is an example of what the command would look like. Make sure you specify the correct device for your system and don’t just copy/paste what I have here.



sudo dd if=2023-05-03-raspios-bullseye-armhf.img of=/dev/sde bs=4M conv=fsync status=progress