Introduction: How to Image a Raspberry Pi SD Card

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Are you sick and tired of not knowing how to image an SD card? Confused and Frustrated? Well not any more! With this Instructable, you will be a master of SD card Imaging. By the time you finish reading this Instructabe you will be the.... ELITE SD CARD IMAGING MASTER OF RASPBERRY PI SD CARDS!!! ESCIMORPSC for short. Lets Begin!

Step 1: Things You Will Need

  1. Windows Computer
  2. Raspberry Pi
  3. SD Card
  4. SD card adaptor - for your computer if your computer doesn't have one
  5. A Brain - Optional

Step 2: Preparation

Computer

There is a few thing that we will need to do before we can actually image the SD card.

Ok, First you will have to go and download Win32 Disk Imager. Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ then click Download, wait for that to finish then run and install it for later. Now go ahead and download an image to put on the SD card from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/, you can choose any one you want. You will also have to unzip it, if you don't have an unzip tool, you can get a good one from http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/. After you unzip it you should see a .img file, that's what we will write to the SD card.

SD Card

Ok, Now for the SD card. Plug your SD card into your computer, click Start - Computer then right-click on the icon for your SD card and select format (It may depend on your version of windows it might be a bit different for you). Make sure you don't have anything you may need on the SD card because it will all get erased!

Step 3: Imaging the SD Card

OK, Now for the fun part. Open up Win32 Disk Imager and select the path to your .img file then select the device for it to write to. Warning!!! DO NOT SELECT YOUR C DRIVE!!!. Then click write and wait for it to finish. Once that's done put the SD card in your Raspberry Pi and boot it up, If everything is correct it should boot with the OS you chose.

That's It! Now you are a fully qualified(kinda) ESCIMORPSC!