# clone copy of sd card

**URL:** <https://dietpi.com/forum/t/clone-copy-of-sd-card/442>\
**Category:** General Discussion\
**Created:** [7 July 2016 10:19 UTC](https://dietpi.com/forum/t/clone-copy-of-sd-card/442 "2016-07-07T10:19:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hatahata](https://dietpi.com/forum/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/2acd7d/32.png) [@hatahata](https://dietpi.com/forum/u/hatahata)\
**Post date:** [7 July 2016 10:19 UTC](https://dietpi.com/forum/t/clone-copy-of-sd-card/442/1 "2016-07-07T10:19:05Z")

</div>

hi all .

i tried clone copy of sd card .

by kali linux ,

```nohighlight
dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sdb bs=16M

```

/dev/mmcblk0 is original sd card , and /dev/sdb is cloned sd card .

but this method is to be cloned bigger size sd card .  
what to do to clone to smaller seze sd card ?

* * *

regards  
the clone methods by using rsync are failed , i do not know the reason .

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Fourdee](https://dietpi.com/forum/user_avatar/dietpi.com/fourdee/32/11_2.png) [@Fourdee](https://dietpi.com/forum/u/Fourdee)\
**Post date:** [7 July 2016 18:31 UTC](https://dietpi.com/forum/t/clone-copy-of-sd-card/442/2 "2016-07-07T18:31:17Z")

</div>

> [@hatahata](#):
>
> hi all .
> 
> i tried clone copy of sd card .
> 
> by kali linux ,
> 
> ```plaintext
> dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sdb bs=16M
> 
> ```
> 
> /dev/mmcblk0 is original sd card , and /dev/sdb is cloned sd card .
> 
> but this method is to be cloned bigger size sd card .  
> what to do to clone to smaller seze sd card ?
> 
> * * *
> 
> regards  
> the clone methods by using rsync are failed , i do not know the reason .

You should not clone a active partition.

Your best bet would be to plug the SD card into a usb reader, then something like:

```plaintext
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

```

Where /dev/sda is the SD card you want to clone, /dev/sdb is the target card.

Or for simplicity. Win32Diskimager, click read to create an .img file. You can then write that to another SD card.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hatahata](https://dietpi.com/forum/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/2acd7d/32.png) [@hatahata](https://dietpi.com/forum/u/hatahata)\
**Post date:** [8 July 2016 18:15 UTC](https://dietpi.com/forum/t/clone-copy-of-sd-card/442/3 "2016-07-08T18:15:59Z")

</div>

i use **kali linux**.

it runs on intel CPU .  
and  
it has both usb intterfaces and sd card interface .

so dd if=sd card interface of=usb intterfaces .

* * *

by the way  
i can clone sd card on running arm machine which runs armbian .  
see [http://odroid-akita.blogspot.jp/2016/05/odoroid-c2-arch-linux.html](http://odroid-akita.blogspot.jp/2016/05/odoroid-c2-arch-linux.html)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hatahata](https://dietpi.com/forum/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/2acd7d/32.png) [@hatahata](https://dietpi.com/forum/u/hatahata)\
**Post date:** [9 July 2016 05:29 UTC](https://dietpi.com/forum/t/clone-copy-of-sd-card/442/4 "2016-07-09T05:29:07Z")

</div>

another example of cloning on running arm is [https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video\_id=k1vJzOUqiwQ](https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=k1vJzOUqiwQ)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Fourdee](https://dietpi.com/forum/user_avatar/dietpi.com/fourdee/32/11_2.png) [@Fourdee](https://dietpi.com/forum/u/Fourdee)\
**Post date:** [9 July 2016 19:16 UTC](https://dietpi.com/forum/t/clone-copy-of-sd-card/442/5 "2016-07-09T19:16:06Z")

</div>

> [@hatahata](#):
>
> and sd card interface .

Ah, my bad, I assumed you were trying to run DD the active SD card on a SBC, apologies.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hatahata](https://dietpi.com/forum/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/2acd7d/32.png) [@hatahata](https://dietpi.com/forum/u/hatahata)\
**Post date:** [11 June 2017 18:12 UTC](https://dietpi.com/forum/t/clone-copy-of-sd-card/442/6 "2017-06-11T18:12:19Z")

</div>

recently i backup micro sd card to hard disk by archlinux .

```plaintext
fdisk -l /dev/sdb
x=`date +%m%d-%H`
echo $x
read X
echo $X
dd if=/dev/sdb of=./MBR-$x.img bs=512 count=10000
partclone.ext4 -c -s /dev/sdb1 -o ./sdb1-$x.pcl
partclone.ext4 -c -s /dev/sdb2 -o ./sdb2-$x.pcl

```

restore namely clone is easy .  
for example about sdb1

```plaintext
dd if=./MBR.img of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=10000
partclone.ext4 -r -s ./sdb1.pcl -o /dev/sdb1

```

## this is time sparering and more volume sparing 🤣 . i also use this for btrfs➡ .

regards  
[http://nanopi-akita.blogspot.jp/2017/02/nanopi-m1-dietpi.html](http://nanopi-akita.blogspot.jp/2017/02/nanopi-m1-dietpi.html)  
➡[http://hatahata50.blogspot.jp/2016/12/uefi-btrfs-arch.html](http://hatahata50.blogspot.jp/2016/12/uefi-btrfs-arch.html)[http://hatahata50.blogspot.jp/2017/01/bluetooth-cloning-snapshots-png.html](http://hatahata50.blogspot.jp/2017/01/bluetooth-cloning-snapshots-png.html)