Raspberry PI tricks: migrating to larger SD card with Windows

When it comes to Raspberry PI, getting the best performance requires a fast MicroSD Card, as it changes board performances like an SDD Disk compared to an HDD disk for a common personal computer. Once get your new SD card, you probably want to keep all your data. Migrating SD cards with the right tools can make easy this process.

Usually, people start with Raspberry PI with one of the standard kits available on the internet and use the first SD card available at home. As already explained in my previous post, the simplest way to improve Raspberry PI’s performance is by using a faster SD card. Sometimes this matches also the need to have more disk space (with a larger SD card) and migrate all contents (operating system and data) from our old card to the new one.

In this guide, I’ll assume that you have installed Raspberry PI OS. Otherwise, the last step (expansion) should be done with the procedure related to your OS. Note that some users reported that OS installed via NOOBS makes impossible final file system expansion.

That said, Win32DiskImager (here the link to download) is the right tool to simplify this operation and help us in our goal.

Below are the simple steps to follow from beginning to end.

What We Need

As usual, I suggest adding from now to your favourite e-commerce shopping cart all the needed hardware, so that at the end you will be able to evaluate overall costs and decide if to continue with the project or remove them from the shopping cart. So, hardware will be only:

• Raspberry PI (including proper power supply or using a smartphone micro usb charger with at least 3A)
• high speed micro SD card (at least 16 GB, at least class 10)

Step-by-Step Procedure

Step 1: install Win32DiskImager

This should be simple for you. Just download the installer from the previous link and setup following the common installation wizard.

Step 2: create your raspberry image

With Win32DiskImager this is a very simple operation.

Insert your SD card in a card reader and plug it into your PC. In my case (that should be similar to your one) it shows SD Card in Computer Explorer with 2 partitions. One is labelled as “Boot” and associated with F drive letter, and the second one is “SDHC” and associated with H drive letter:

Consider that both partitions reside inside your SD Card. With Win32DiskImager it’s enough to select the boot one to copy the entire SD Card.

Start Win32DiskImager. Be aware: sometimes it is required to Run as Administrator to skip permission issues. Select under “Device” the drive letter corresponding to the Boot partition (“F:\” in my case). Write the name you want to assign to your image (and the folder path with “.img” extension) so that the Read button becomes active:

Press the Read button and wait for image creation to be completed successfully.

Step 3: flash the new SD card

Remove your old SD card and insert the new SD card in your card reader. Plug it into your PC and go back to Win32DiskImager. Select the Drive letter corresponding to your SD (again F:\ in my case) and the same “.img” file just created:

This time, press the Write button to flash your new SD and wait to complete it successfully.

Step 4: boot Raspberry PI and expand the partition

Insert the new SD card into your Raspberry and wait to boot completely and login. You should now see your old OS and your old data. You should also see that your drive has still the old size by typing:

df -H

If your new card is also larger than the old one, you should also expand the filesystem. You can easily accomplish this by using raspi-config. So, launch the command:

sudo raspi-config

Select “7 Advanced Options”:

Select A1 Expand Filesystem:

Press OK in the following confirmation:

Now you are back to raspi-config home page. Click Finish

You must now reboot in order to complete the filesystem resize. Raspi-config asks if you want to reboot now:

Click YES and wait for the reboot to be completed. At the end, please login again and verify the new partition space with the command:

df -H

Enjoy!