16 GB ePiC SD Backup Gone Wrong

Hi All,

Just recently got a 16GB ePiC SD card for my Raspberry Pi 4 8GB edition.

All went well on 1st boot, and I wanted to make a back up copy of the SD card before making too much modifications.

I am using a Mac, used disk utility to make a master/dvd copy of the SD card as .DMG file.

I don’t think Raspberry Pi’s recognize .DMG boot files.

Then I used the Mac terminal to convert .DMG to .ISO so that it acts as a bootable file.

I used that .ISO file I created on a blank 64 GB SD card using disk utility.

It was successfully burned onto the blank 64 GB card, I can see the duplicate files from 16GB SD to 64GB files find on my Mac.

I then proceeded to install 64GB SD card on Raspberry Pi, the RISC OS splash screen appears.

Then a black box appears with only a *supervisor?

Question: What steps have I done wrong to create a backup? Thank you.

If you’re familiar with Terminal then you’re probably better off using dd.

diskutil list will show you the names of the disks. In this example I’m going to assume the SD card is disk4, as that’s what it is on my machine.

Then do dd if=/dev/rdisk4 of=epic.img bs=1m (I can’t remember whether this requires sudo) and it’ll generate epic.img with the contents of the card. You can then dd this onto a new card, or alternatively use something like Etcher if you prefer.

Note that the 64 GB card will still only show 8 GB of usable space.

As you have the ePic card, you already have CloneDisc: this will allow you to copy the SD card to another SD card from RISC OS. You will of course need an SD card reader to hold the second SD card.

Hi All,

I have backed up the ePIC files successfully.

For whatever inexplicable reason to why I am not 100% sure why.

Each time I clone or use the DD command plus using CloneDisc app.

The RISC OS splash screen would appear on each SD card I tried from 16, 32 to 64 GB.

It would just show this black box with the word *Supervisor on screen.

I looked up additional resources and found a RISC OS manual (a very handy resource to have) on page 128.

I used a Fat32 8GB USB key and dragged the ePIC contents onto the USB key successfully.

Many thanks for the additional feedback in this thread, it is very much appreciated.

It would be helpful if anyone has any ideas why RISC OS would boot into *Supervisor mode? Thank you.

What happens if you type Desktop at the Supervisor prompt?

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your reply.

I tried typing the *desktop and I get this message:

Machine Startup Not Completed Successfully: File & !BOOT not found.

I have cancel or retry buttons.

I tried retry, same message as before.

I tried cancel, I can now boot to the desktop.

But it a very minimalist desktop.

One thing to note, I see the PiBoot directory is showing RISCOS/IMG with a ? icon.

I looked at the config/txt file and compared the file on a working RISC OS system, it looks the same.

I appreciate your help Steve, in the end I managed to get a back up copy of the ePIC files.

I just started from scratch again and used the Pi Imaging tool to get a fresh bootable RISCOS installation going again.

In summary to create a backup of the ePIC SD Card, I did was:

1. I copied the !Boot directory onto a Fat32 8GB USB key.
2. Stored the ePIC SD in a safe place.
3. Reflash a spare 16GB SD card using the Pi Imaging tool to reinstall RISC OS.
4. Copy the necessary ePIC files from the fat32 8GB USB key and pasted onto the re-flashed SD card.
5. It is working as normal.

It sounds like when you did the copy of the ePic card, you only copied the FAT partition, not the whole SD card.

I’m wondering whether the boot status of the system hadn’t been copied across.
That Supervisor prompt and the “minimalist desktop” is typical of a system that isn’t configured to boot from the available file system.
Does it just need that setting with the usual commands:

Configure FileSystem <filesystem-name>
Configure Boot 

@Bryan Hogan, I would not know?
- I used Apple Disc Utility to create an image of the whole SD card,
- possibly it may write differently onto the SD card because by default,
- it creates a complete image using Apple’s .DMG file format as oppose to the common .ISO standard file.
- I did had to convert the .DMG file to an .ISO file using the Mac Terminal
— and used the Raspberry Pi image to burn it onto the SD card.

@Steve Pampling, may I ask, how do you input those Configure file system and boot parameters?
— I am assuming I put those parameters into the !boot folder, config.txt file? Thank you.

@Steve Pampling, may I ask, how do you input those Configure file system and boot parameters?
— I am assuming I put those parameters into the !boot folder, config.txt file? Thank you.

Plain old command line stuff. If you arrive at the desktop, then press F12 for a command prompt and enter the commands – note that the Filesystem name changes with the file system in use on the specific machine.

Since RO is somewhat foreign in behaviour from your viewpoint, you could usefully read documents starting here: https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/HomePage and especially the User Guide – download at the bottom of this page: https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/common and the stuff here

Those will help as ready to hand references, and then your questions here can be more targetted.