How to Clone SD Card - Jetson Nano and Jetson Xavier NX

Sometimes you need the security of having a clone of your SD card in case things go bad. Here's how to do it! Full article on JetsonHacks: wp.me/p7ZgI9-3aa
0:15 Careful Icarus!
0:51 Getting Started
1:33 Identify SD card on Host
3:38 Save SD card image to Host
4:46 Identify new SD card on Host
5:46 Restore Drive
6:35 Testing on Jetson - all is well
In the video, we use these types of SD cards and backup drives:
SD Cards we use:
SanDisk 64GB Extreme: amzn.to/30DFzzu
Samsung EVO 64 GB micro SD card: amzn.to/2Z39qBc
Disk Drives for backup:
USB Drives:
SAMSUNG T7 Portable SSD 500GB: amzn.to/3gFBxw8
Western Digital 8TB (other sizes available): amzn.to/2ZLSijf
Seagate 8TB (other sizes available): amzn.to/2OLXtZW
Items in the video:
Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit: amzn.to/3cyrZAP
Western Digital NVMe SSD: amzn.to/3fGWjeN
Samsung NVMe SSD (faster): amzn.to/2ZcdtLk
iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit: amzn.to/2S02rmz
Jetson Nano: amzn.to/3a5PiSn
These are affiliate links.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Website: jetsonhacks.com
Github: github.com/jetsonhacksnano
Twitter: / jetsonhacks
#JetsonNano #JetsonXavierNX

[@Deric_Rocks]

Great Jim thank you! Really useful!

[@JetsonHacks]

You are welcome. I am glad you find it useful. Thanks for watching!

[@michealmuga1658]

I really appreciate all your effort man ,big love ❤️I got for you thank for the clone card.

[@JetsonHacks]

You are welcome, thanks for watching!

[@CastlePete]

Heres a far simpler way to do it on a win10 PC, using 2 x card read/writers and a 2nd (identical) memory card - Execute "SD Card Formatter" to format the target card (use the more thorough formatting option) - Put your source card in card reader/writer 1 - Put your target card in card reader/writer 2 - Execute "BalenaEtcher" and use the "clone" option - to clone the source card in card reader 1 to the target card in card reader 2

[@JetsonHacks]

Thanks for the info, and thanks for watching!

[@Ivan-xg4ev]

Thank you Jim!

[@JetsonHacks]

You are welcome, and thanks for watching!

Jim is awesome. Super helpful in avoiding the "nasties".... :-)

[@JetsonHacks]

You are too kind. I hope you are weathering the shutdown well. Thanks for watching!

@@JetsonHacks we are happy developing and tinkering. what else is there to do... :-)

[@ke4est]

Thanks for this great tutorial Jim! I have been looking for an easy way to do this. I even mentioned it to Paul McWhorter. This will get done very quick here! --KE4EST

[@JetsonHacks]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching!

[@Agent-tc7us]

thanks really helpful

[@JetsonHacks]

You are welcome, and thanks for watching!

[@selfdestructint]

Very useful Jim, thanks, when are we going to see another guitar performance? Maybe one that displays the notes and chords in real time based on image recognition?

[@JetsonHacks]

That sounds like a challenging little project! Unfortunately my hands are a little banged up right now and I haven't been able to play the guitar for a few weeks. Thanks for watching!

[@selfdestructint]

@@JetsonHacks Oh no, get well soon!

[@JetsonHacks]

@@selfdestructint Thanks, it'll be a while but should be ok.

[@user-ly6bh5ol6c]

good night thanks!

[@JetsonHacks]

Good night, and thanks for watching!

[@karthikeyanmani1536]

Hey Jim great Video, I followed all your instruction after restore is done while popping card into Jetson Nano board I see nothing, couldn't see any device related information and nothing happens expect the green light in the board. Even network cable has no lights. Any Idea?

[@TheRealFrankWizza]

The video seems gone, but in regards to your last video on this subject. When I ran your script, it made no backup of anything. When I used backintime it did take a snapshot. Restoring the snapshot didn't work however. I tried it on a new installation of the same jetpack version, on the same jetson. That sd card never booted again after it started restoring which makes sense because the system crashed in the middle of the restore. Is it something I can do if install back in time on my laptop and use a couple sd card readers? How does someone carry important installations and settings to a new os flash or new device?

[@fgiraffe8751]

As always: very clear and concise walkthrough. Thank you! One question: why the "noerror" param to dd? If we are cloning a card wouldn't we want to know about read errors?

[@JetsonHacks]

It depends. The sync command basically fills the blocks with zero before copying, the noerror will copy as much as it can. Without noerror, the program will stop the copy and dump to the console if it encounters an error. Typically you want to clone the disk image, warts and all. If it has bad reads, you still want the rest of everything else in the hopes that you can recover. Thanks for watching!

[@Osmanity]

Really usefully just wish that I know this before my sd-card broke 😭😭

[@JetsonHacks]

Sorry to hear that. Hopefully this helps going forward. Thanks for watching!

[@Osmanity]

@@JetsonHacks ❤❤❤

[@zad_pan8619]

Hi brother very nice video. I have a question i was set up my Jetson nano with micro sd card then it worked fine. But i was following a guide that we need to install the sdk manager and download some computer vision package and while it was installing and flashing the packages the loading bar stopped at 99% for like one hour and now the jetson is not working when i boot up the screen is black and i tried to reinstall the image on sd card but still same issue any help please ?

[@andreijay]

every time i try this i get "production mode unfused" error screen on the cloned card, does anyone know what i'm doing wrong? the only part of the steps that i don't follow exactly is the zipping/unzipping part b/c i keep getting errors when i try it that way.

[@Lp-ze1tg]

I cloned the image from my jetson nano to a memory card. I though that I just have to unplug the original memory card and plug in the cloned memory card to the Jetson nano. But my Jetson Nano won't boot up.

[@user-xk2xg1bg9n]

Hi, thanks a lot for the efficient, clear and fun tutorials! Before I met this tutorial, I tried myself to clone custom image (official image that I've modified - added libs and os) using Win32DiskImager for reading the card to a file and Etcher to write it to another sd card. From some reason, the image booted well only on my platform and failed on another Jetson Nano's. Is it make any sense? Is my flow is valid? Thanks! N.

[@user-xk2xg1bg9n]

Ok, I've find an interesting workaround that works but I'm not sure if it is a known issue or by design. The boards that I tried was never booted before. I've started each one with 100% clean image that I've downloaded as is and just after booting and configuration procedure with the clean image, I was able to boot with my modified image. Are you familiar with that behavior? Thanks again for your helpful tutorials!

[@m.wiesner4747]

@JetsonHacks ***GREAT TUTORIAL *** The created image should be able to flash to a new card via Etcher, or??? By this way the card size can be a different one (of course larger than the image) I guess, because Etcher should be able to handle it, right?

[@JetsonHacks]

I don't know about using it with Etcher. As I recall, Etcher uses ZIP compression. In the video we use gzip. You may be able to compress it with ZIP instead of gzip if you want to flash with Etcher. Thanks for watching!

[@m.wiesner4747]

@@JetsonHacks OK, I'll try out. Thanks for answering!

[@SasteJugaad]

how to clone with windows system??

[@Gavinnnnnnnnnnnnnnn]

Basically, I have 1 Jetson that is all setup and running. Now I want to have 10 more just like it. I was hoping I could just copy 10 SD cards and plug-and-play. Will cloning an SD using the instructions in this video work in my situation or will there be some of the unmentionable problems?

[@JetsonHacks]

There are several problems with that approach. The article linked in the description will direct you to the NVIDIA forum where people explain why that is a bad idea.

[@Gavinnnnnnnnnnnnnnn]

0:41 Why should the cloned card not be used in another Jetson? What kind of problems can that cause? The whole purpose of cloning the SD for me was to use it in other Jetsons :(

[@JetsonHacks]

The purpose of the video is to clone the card so you can have a backup in case the card is corrupted for your Jetson. It is not for use in other Jetsons.

[@vijayavenkatasatyaavinashk578]

hey, it a great video. Can you provide me a img file that have all computer vision packages are installed

[@JetsonHacks]

Those are not mine to give. Thanks for watching!

[@qyy2889]

I inserted a new sD card, but jetson could not read it nor could it be opened and accessed in file management

[@JetsonHacks]

I'm not sure what steps you took to prepare the SD card.

[@fernandozanetti1215]

Hi! My windows pc doesn't recognize the sd card, How can I manage to clone it?

[@JetsonHacks]

I do not know. This video is about using an Ubuntu machine to clone the SD card.

[@qyy2889]

Hi，I used a 256g card to back up the 64g system card, but the system ended up prompting:gzip: stdout: File too large

[@JetsonHacks]

I believe that the cards need to be the same size.

[@muralikrishna5063]

Very nice video jetsonhacks which I can understand easily...thanks for the video.... and I would like to install android os on jetson nano can u please provide me the steps.

[@muralikrishna5063]

Hai sir I am waiting for ur reply kindly please do the helpful

[@JetsonHacks]

Please ask this question on the NVIDIA Jetson forum where a large group of developers and NVIDIA engineers share their experience.

[@jacksonchen8679]

What if I clone to a bigger SD card. Can it work ? E.g.: Clone 32 GB to 128 GB

[@JetsonHacks]

You can try, it depends on several factors. However, many times it will fail. Thanks for watching!

[@YigalBZ]

Why wouldn't the cloned SD work on another Jetson-Nano?? If the hardware is exactly the same, wouldn't the software?

[@JetsonHacks]

I don't understand the question. As noted, there are links in the article which explain why smart people don't do that. If none of those reasons concern you, feel free to do what you want.

[@bysinan5090]

GPS card clone please ?

[@JetsonHacks]

I don't know what this means.

[@lakshay510]

unfortunately, Mac doesn't recognize the memory card.

[@lakshay510]

The solution to finding the path of memory card Go to disk utility click -> select the memory card -> info -> look at field disk number. the path is /dev/disk_ here _ is the number mentioned on info. In my case, it was 2. so /dev/disk2

[@lakshay510]

Also, the copying command doesn't work in mac, So in place of 64K use 64k (small k)

[@lakshay510]

Also Thank JetsonHacks, you are a savior

[@JetsonHacks]

I am glad you got it to work. Thanks for watching!

[@Zancoth]

this guy sounds like a bot with a synthesized voice

[@JetsonHacks]

A man can only dream of being that good. Thanks for watching!