What happens when your computer crashes — for whatever reason — or your drive suddenly dies? You’ve got a backup? Great. But have you ever actually tested restoring it?
I’d already written a few months ago about cloning a Raspberry Pi. That works well and it’s quick. But you don’t always have the USB stick handy that you wrote the backup — or “clone” — to. And then what? Start from scratch.
Or maybe not.
There’s another approach that takes a bit longer but comes with real advantages: backing up to an image file. You can stash that file in the cloud and later write it back to a fresh SSD or USB stick using the Raspberry Pi Imager tool.
Here’s how:
Create an image file. There are various apps for this. I like Pi Powertools because it not only creates an img file but can also compress it straight away. Handy when space on your SD card or USB stick is tight. Install Pi Powertools via Pi Apps.
Once Pi Apps is installed, a shortcut appears on your desktop. Click it and install Pi Powertools.
Launch Pi Powertools and click “Next” on the first screen. Choose a directory for the img file and Pi Powertools kicks off the backup. This can take a while. The resulting img file is already compressed. You can park it on your desktop or in the cloud.
Use the Imager tool to write the img file to an SSD or a FAT-formatted USB stick.
Beautifully simple — worth doing regularly alongside the clone method.
From the archives of reinergaertner.de, running since 1997. Translated with AI help and my questionable bilingual proofreading. If you spot a Germanismus — that’s a feature, not a bug.