Win32 disc imager issue

Support
1

Hi, I’m trying to back up my raspberry pi sd card by using the most widely recommended backup tool: Win32 disc imager.

A few weeks ago I gave it a go and despite it saying ‘write successful’ - the output file was invalid. There was no file extension - I tried to add the file extensions .img, .rar, .zip .IMG but no joy with any.

Last night I gave it another go, noting my every action in case I did anything wrong! The only thing I can think of is to type the file extension in the output name before the write, but I don’t see how this should make the image valid.

I’ve looked into this as deep as I can, including using a linux explorer along with adding/removing file extensions but nothing seems to work… Hoping this is something silly as I can’t find this issue anywhere on Google!

Thanks

2

I have found win32 diskimager a little tricky to use to make images “of my card”. What I do is click an image that is already there, like you do when you want to write an image to a card. Then I change the name to what I want my saved file to be. Then click read instead of write.

3

I’ll give that a go! Does this overwrite the source image?

Thanks for your quick response btw :)

4

No, not if you change the file name to something else, and its not a name of any image you already saved. The save image function of Win32 isn’t very intuitive, IMHO.
Just to recap
Select an “image file” you already have, can even be Raspbian etc. One with an img extention
Then edit the name to what you want to call your new saved file. Leave the extention as img just edit the file name.You can change the path too, just don’t make a typo
Then click read instead of write.

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