SD card setup The Raspberry Pi will not start without a properly formatted SD Card, containing the bootloader and a suitable operating system. Many problems with booting the Raspberry Pi are a result of an improperly formatted or corrupted card. Make sure that you insert the card before powering on the Raspberry Pi, and that you shutdown the Raspberry Pi before unplugging the card. If you do have problems booting the Raspberry Pi, see the first. You will also need to choose a distribution. Available distributions; you will need the Raspberry Pi bootloader to launch your distribution, so you need one for the Raspberry Pi and cannot download a PC based distribution and use that. Note that you can have several SD Cards with a separate distribution on each, then power off, swap cards and restart the Raspberry Pi to use that card.

Some Raspberry Pi kits will come with a ready-to-go card with the distribution pre-installed, or these can be bought separately. There is more on this below. If you don't have a pre-installed card you will need to prepare your own. Make sure you get a reasonable quality card rather than a cheap one. Check the if you are not sure. When you write the Raspberry Pi image to your SD card you will lose all data that was on the card.

Official images are available from. Note: It is highly recommended that you start with the latest official NOOBS installer: check the Raspberry Pi official website for the current version. This makes the process of installing an operating system as easy as copying a few files in a zip archive to your SD card.

This contains the reccomended Raspbian distribution, as well as various other distributions, all of which are available as individual images from the downloads page, if you prefer not to use NOOBS. Safe / Easy way Buying a preloaded SD card from a reputable supplier means that you can just plug it in and power up your Raspberry Pi; it should then just work.

If you don't buy one of these, you will have to create your own using the instructions below You may need to perform an upgrade of the card once you have got the Raspberry Pi working, as a distribution (usually) is continuously updated and the card may not contain those updates Compare these for prices, delivery, distribution and card size/class:. Official.

offers a wide range of SD cards preloaded with either:. Sell high quality SanDisk SD cards pre-loaded with the latest NOOBs. There have been reports of problems with SD cards purchased from ebay and Amazon. Make sure the SD card you're purchasing is up to date with the latest version of your chosen operating System to avoid any issues.

Create your own To create your own SD Card for the Raspberry Pi you will need access to another machine, or a friend with one. You will need to be careful, as you could corrupt the disk on that machine if you do things wrong (although it is not hard to do it right, and NOOBS makes it impossible to go wrong). If you are lucky, you might find a local Raspberry Pi or Linux group who will offer to load your card for you. You will also need to choose and download a distribution (mentioned above), or use NOOBS, which has all the. Download epson printer lx 300. Check the to make sure that you are getting a distribution that will work with the Raspberry Pi. Note that the distribution must be written to the card using the methods below; the standard file copy method will not work Using NOOBS Recently, the Raspberry Pi Foundation have released a really easy way to set up your SD Card. It's called the New Out Of Box Software (or NOOBS for short) and provides a really easy way to install Raspberry Pi distributions.

Be warned, however, that it is a 1 GB download - if you have a limit on what you are allowed to download, follow the instructions below, as the other images are around 500 MB. Download NOOBS from the. Insert a (4 GB+) SD Card into your computer.

If you want to save space on the SD Card, you can delete some of the images inside the os folder in the NOOBS zip file that you don't want to use. Format the disk. Windows. Download and install the SD Association's Formatting tool from.

Open the Application you have just installed. Set 'FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT' to ON in the Options menu. Make sure you have selected the Drive your SD Card is inserted in. Click 'Format'. Mac.

Download and install the SD Association's Formatting tools from. Select 'Overwrite format'.

Make sure you have selected your SD Card, and not something else. Click 'Format'.

Linux. Use gparted (or the command-line version parted if you prefer), if you don't have it, install it as you usually would.

Format the entire disk as FAT32 (FAT16 will not work! Make sure you select the correct disk!). Extract the file you downloaded in Step 1. Copy the files you just extracted to your SD Card (see below on flashing your SD card) Not all monitors work with NOOBS straight away. If your monitor is one of those that doesn't work, press the Number buttons 1-4 until you see what you want. Default HDMI Mode.

HDMI Safe Mode - Use this if Default (1) doesn't work and you cannot see anything. Composite PAL Mode - Use this or 4. If you are using the yellow and black outputs on the opposite side to the HDMI output. Composite NTSC Mode Using Android Phone There is an android app which will both download and write SD card images direct on the phone using internal SD card reader, or an external USB OTG reader This can write NOOBS images on a standard android phone without requiring root access: Flashing the SD Card using Windows Using the Win32DiskImager program. Download the distribution from the or from a mirror or torrent. Make sure the distribution is for the Raspberry Pi, as others will not work.

Usually these are zipped (compressed) files ending in.zip or.gz (something like 'distribution-name.zip'). Extract the image file from the downloaded.zip file, so you now have 'distribution-name.img'. Insert the SD card into your SD card reader and check what drive letter it was assigned. You can easily see the drive letter (for example G:) by looking in the left column of Windows Explorer. You can use the SD Card slot (if you have one) or a cheap Adapter in a USB slot. Download the utility (it is also a zip file). You can run this from a USB drive.

Extract the executable from the zip file and run the Win32DiskImager utility; you may need to run the utility as Administrator! Right-click on the file, and select 'Run as Administrator'. Select the image file you extracted above. Select the drive letter of the SD card in the device box. Be careful to select the correct drive; if you get the wrong one you can destroy your data on the computer's hard disk! If you are using an SD Card slot in your computer (if you have one) and can't see the drive in the Win32DiskImager window, try using a cheap Adapter in a USB slot. Click Write and wait for the write to complete.

Exit the imager and eject the SD card. You are now ready to plug the card into your Raspberry Pi. See for the other things you need. In Windows, the SD card will appear only to have a fairly small size once written - about 55 to 75 MB. This is because most of the card has a partition that is formatted for the Linux operating system that the Raspberry Pi uses which is not visible in Windows.

If you don't see this small directory with files such as kernel.img then the copy may not have worked correctly. Using flashnul (if Win32DiskImager isn't successful) You may not be able to choose the device in Win32DiskImager on some notebooks so this is a different way to achieve the same thing on a Windows machine. Download the distribution from the or from a mirror or torrent. Make sure the distribution is for the Raspberry Pi, as others will not work. Usually these are zipped (compressed) files ending in.zip or.gz (something like 'distribution-name.zip'). Extract the image file from the downloaded.zip file, so you now have 'distribution-name.img'.

Insert the SD card into your SD card reader and check what drive letter it was assigned. You can easily see the drive letter (for example G:) by looking in the left column of Windows Explorer. You can use an SD Card slot in your computer (if you have one) or a cheap Adapter in a USB slot. Download the flashnul software from; here is the English with a link to instructions (also translated). Download the latest version. At the time of writing it was flashnul-1rc1.

Extract the application from the archive. Click Start button All Programs Accessories Command Prompt, right click on it and Run as Administrator. Run flashnul with argument '-p': C: flashnul flashnul.exe -p.

Flashnul will tell you something like this (it should be different, as it depends on the drives on your machine): Available physical drives: 0 size = 16 (232 Gb) 1 size = (1898 Mb) Available logical disks: C: D: E: F: Press ENTER to exit. Use the Load option of flashnul to put the image file on the SD Card. Make sure that you use the correct drive letter for the SD Card as that drive will be overwritten! C: flashnul flashnul.exe E: -L C: temp distribution-name.img Where C: flashnul flashnul.exe is the location of the flashnul program; E: is the drive you want to overwrite, and C: temp distribution-name.img is the location of the.img file.

Flashnul will give you a device summary and a caution message. Check the information to make sure you have selected the correct device, then type yes and press enter. If you get an access denied error, make sure to close all explorer windows or folders open for the device, then try re-plugging the SD card. Using the Fedora Remix Installer Download the installer program from. This will download and install the Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix images, but it will also install other images if they are already downloaded and in uncompressed or.gz format. This also works with Linux.

Using Etcher. Download the appropriate version (x86/x64) of. Download the operating system package from the or from a mirror or torrent. Make sure the distribution is for the Raspberry Pi, as others will not work. Insert an SD card into your computer.

Run the Etcher exe you've downloaded. When started, select the operating system package you've got (Etcher can burn SD card directly from compressed files such as '.zip', '.gz', '.bz2', '.xz', or from the uncompressed '.img' files, and many other format). Etcher tries to auto-select your SD card drive. If you have multiple drives that can be written to, choose manually the one that corresponds to your SD card. Start flashing. The image written to your card will be verified afterwards.

Etcher is cross-platform, and works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux as well, and it prevents you from overwriting the system disk of your computer. Flashing the SD card using Mac OS X To save yourself time and frustration, you may wish to use a procedure that has worked some time during the past 2 years. If so, skip ahead to the section for using the system tools from the command line. Note: In OS X each disk may have two path references in /dev:.

/dev/disk# is a buffered device, which means any data being sent undergoes extra processing. /dev/ rdisk# is a raw path, which is much faster, and perfectly OK when using the dd program. On a Class 4 SD card the difference was around 20 times faster using the rdisk path. Run an App (Only with graphical interface) Pi Filler is a simple tool for copying a Raspberry Pi operating system image file to an SD card, or restoring an SD card backup created.

Version 1.3 is about 5x faster than previous versions and can write a full card in 5-7 minutes. Pi Filler automatically identfies your SD card (and asks for confirmation to prevent any chance of the wrong disk being written to), and shows estimated time remaining during the copy. After it's done, if your Raspberry Pi is not connected to a display, you can use to locate it on your network and log in from Terminal. These utilities are written in AppleScript and Bash, are compatible with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard through 10.12 Sierra, and include source code.

RPi-sd card builder The utility is an application which will walk you through the process of installing to SD card. Note: This is a closed source application which requires your root password. Is a free utility that allows you to create a NOOBS SD, write an IMG file to SD card, or backup an SD card to IMG, with only a few simple clicks. This is also a closed source application and also requires your root password to write to SD cards. The application is written in Lazarus Pascal and supports Retina. Unfortunately, ApplePi-Baker requires a password for the 'Admin' user, but refuses to accept a password from a user with admin privileges.

Thus, it no longer works with Yosemite 10.10.5. PiWriter is a simple wizard made using shell scripts, PlatyPus and CocoaDialog. To prevent users from making mistakes the wizard auto-detect's the SD card you plan to use and prevents you from selecting your system disk. Also there is no need for a root password so even less damage can be done.

The nextgen PiWriter2 introduces a new 'drag and drop' approach and also includes a backup feature. PiWriter 1.0.4 does not work on Mac OS X Mavericks. Nor does it work on OS X Yosemite, 10.10.5. By: Etcher is a cross-platform disk image flasher (Win/Mac/Linux), that prevents you from overwriting your system disk by accident, verifies the written SD card image, and can also flash directly from compressed formats such as '.zip', '.gz', '.bz2', '.xz'.

Download the operating system package from the or from a mirror or torrent. Insert an SD card into your computer. Starting Etcher, select the operating system package you've got. Etcher tries to auto-select your SD card drive. If you have multiple drives that can be written to, choose manually the one that corresponds to your SD card. Start flashing. The image written to your card will be verified afterwards.

Using system tools Images are available from the Raspberry Pi organization here: Once you have downloaded the image you want, you should. Verify the file using the published hash value (note 1). unzip the file to extract the image (.img) file (note 2). use the command-line tools to copy the image to your SD card note 1: from the command line: $ openssl sha1 pathtofile.img, or drag&drop the.img file into command window instead of typing the full path and file name. Note 2: if you use the native file de-compressor in OS X, you may have issues. Instead, consider getting an app that really works; e.g.

For OS X users, the rest of the information on this page is largely outdated, and a waste of your time. Download the image from a mirror or torrent. Extract the image by double clicking on the download file. Connect the SD card reader with the SD card inside; note: must be formatted in FAT32!.

From the Apple () menu, choose About This Mac, then click on More info.; if you are using Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion then click on System report. Click on USB (or Card Reader if using an in-built SD card reader) then search for your SD card in the upper right section of the window; click it, then search for BSD name in the lower right section: must be something like disk n where n is a number (for example, disk4). Note this number. Unmount the partition so that you will be allowed to overwrite the disk by opening Disk Utility and unmounting it (do not eject it, or you have to reconnect it).

Note: On Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion, 'Verify Disk' (before unmounting) will display the BSD name as ' /dev/disk1s1' (or similar), allowing you to skip the previous two steps. From the Terminal run:. sudo dd if= pathofyourimage.img of=/dev/disk n bs=1M.

Remember to replace n with the number that you noted before!. Wait a LONG time!

(or see the note above about using /dev/rdisk#.) To see the current status, send SIGINFO signal by pressing Ctrl+T. You're done! Insert it in the Raspberry Pi, and have fun Using command line tools (1).

If you are comfortable with the command line, you can image a card without any additional software. Run:.

diskutil list. identify the disk (not partition) of your SD card. Disk4 (not disk4s1).

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/. e.g. Diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4. sudo dd bs=1m if=.img of=/dev/. e.g. Sudo dd bs=1m if=2014-09-09-wheezy-raspbian.img of=/dev/disk4.

(This will take a few minutes) Using command line tools (2) that actually works for current versions of OS X. It requires use of the command line tools, but if you follow it, you will be successful. If you try the 'GUI Tools' listed above for OS X, you will likely encounter issues. Also, you may largely ignore the balance of this section as this page has self-deprecated due to lack of maintenance. Note: Some users have with using Mac OS X to create SD cards. These commands and actions need to be performed from an account that has administrator privileges.

Download the image from a mirror or torrent. Verify if the the hash key is the same (optional), in the terminal run:. shasum /Downloads/2014-09-09-wheezy-raspbian.zip. Extract the image:. unzip /Downloads/2014-09-09-wheezy-raspbian.zip.

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(or: just double click the zip, it will extract automatically). From the terminal run df -h.

Connect the SD card reader with the SD card inside. Run df -h again and look for the new device that wasn't listed last time.

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Record the device name of the filesystem's partition, for example, /dev/disk3s1. Unmount the partition so that you will be allowed to overwrite the disk:. sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk3s1. (or: open Disk Utility and unmount the partition of the SD card (do not eject it, or you have to reconnect it). Using the device name of the partition work out the raw device name for the entire disk, by omitting the final 's1' and replacing 'disk' with 'rdisk' ( this is very important: you will lose all data on the hard drive on your computer if you get the wrong device name).

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Make sure the device name is the name of the whole SD card as described above, not just a partition of it (for example, rdisk3, not rdisk3s1. Similarly you might have another SD drive name/number like rdisk2 or rdisk4, etc.