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Developing on NVIDIA® Jetson™ for AI on the Edge

Clone SD Card – Jetson Nano and Xavier NX

An often asked question is “How do I backup the SD card for a Jetson Nano or Jetson Xavier NX?” Here’s an answer, “Let’s use the dd tool”! Looky here:

Background

According to Wikipedia, dd is a command line utility, the primary purpose of which is to convert and copy files. With dd, you can easily copy a partition or an entire drive.

The dd command is the oldest disk imaging tool on Linux still in use. Why? Because it works! dd is a powerful tool. We will use it to create a clone of a Jetson µSD card into an image file using an Ubuntu host computer. Then we will use the image file to create a clone image on another card.

While we can create a clone of a µSD and use it in our Jetson Nano or Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kits, other Jetson models with built in eMMC memory cannot easily use this method.

Careful Icarus!

It is important that you understand the arguments that you are using with dd. Incorrect arguments can lead to catastrophic data loss on your host machine. You have been warned!

The dd utility will copy every byte on your µSD card (even unused space). We will use a file compression tool, gzip, to help reduce the size of the µSD card image.

Note: Naturally, you will need enough drive space on your host computer to store the card image. If you do not use file compression, the size of the image file will be the size of the µSD card. For example, if you have a 64GB SD card, then you will need a little more than 64GB in free drive space on the host to create the image file.

Here are some SD cards and drives we use here at JetsonHacks:

SD Cards

External USB Drives

By using file compression the resulting image file may be much smaller, but you still need a significant amount of free space.

Let’s Clone!

The first step is to figure out which drive is our µSD card. Plug the card into the host computer. You can then check for the device name using the command line:

$ sudo parted -l

You will see an entry similar to:

Model: Generic- SD/MMC/MS PRO (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 63.9GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name               Flags
 2      1049kB  68.2MB  67.1MB               kernel
 3      68.2MB  135MB   67.1MB               kernel_b
 4      135MB   136MB   459kB                kernel-dtb
 5      136MB   137MB   459kB                kernel-dtb_b
 6      137MB   203MB   66.1MB               recovery
 7      203MB   204MB   524kB                recovery-dtb
 8      204MB   205MB   262kB                kernel-bootctrl
 9      206MB   206MB   262kB                kernel-bootctrl_b
10      207MB   311MB   105MB                RECROOTFS
11      311MB   311MB   18.4kB               UDA
 1      312MB   63.9GB  63.6GB  ext4         APP

You can also use the Disks GUI application to identify the µSD card:

Disks application

The device name should be similar to /dev/sdX where the X represents a letter. In the examples above the µSD card is /dev/sdc

The Jetsons have several partitions on the µSD card. These partitions serve a variety of purposes, mostly to do with machine configuration and startup. You will need to copy all of the partitions for your Jetson to work properly with the card.

Note: A number following the device name indicates a partition on the drive. Because we are copying the entire drive, we only need to use the device name, and do not include a partition identifier.

Clone the Drive

The second step is to create the clone of the card:

Make sure that the card is not mounted:

$ sudo umount /dev/sdX

Replace sdX with the actual device. Then:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/sdX conv=sync,noerror bs=64K | gzip -c > ~/backup_image.img.gz

Naturally, you can name the image file and place it where you want. The above will place the backup_image.img.gz file in the home directory. As an example, if the card is /dev/sdc

$ sudo dd if=/dev/sdc conv=sync,noerror bs=64K | gzip -c > ~/backup_image.img.gz

The arguments sets the block size (bs) to 64K (you can experiment with this, larger block sizes are faster), noerror ignores read errors, and sync fills blocks with zeros if there are read errors.

Once the command starts, it may take a long while to complete depending on the size of the card. There is no progress indicator. This may take a while, in the example copying a 64GB card with 15GB in use took around 45 minutes. The amount of time varies widely depending on the usual factors, such as disk speeds, transfer speeds, size of the card and so on. When the copy is done and the Terminal prompt returns, you can remove the SD card from the host computer.

Restore the Drive

Once the image has been created, you are ready to test it out. Using a different µSD card that is the same size or larger than the original, insert the new card into the host computer. Typically we try to use the same type/brand of card, if only for good luck. The card does not have to be formatted, as dd makes a bit for bit copy of the drive.

Then, go for it. Again, make sure that the card is not mounted, and start the restore. Depending on how your system is set up, you may not need to be in super user mode to do the restore. In other words, ignore the sudo su command. To restore:

$ sudo su

$ gunzip -c ~/backup_image.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sdX bs=64K

Where ~/backup_image.img.gz is the path and name of your clone image. For example:

$ sudo su

$ gunzip -c ~/backup_image.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sdc bs=64K

Once this process is complete, you should go check it out in your Jetson! Pop the card in, start it up, and you should be right where you left off with the master disk.

Another Big Fat Warning

You should only use these clones in the same machine. This is a quite wonderful method for creating a backup for your Jetson once you have it setup the way you like it. However, you do not want these clones to run on more than one Jetson due to security reasons. Here’s a more comprehensive NVIDIA Jetson forum thread on the subject: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/jetson-nano-cloning-and-deployment-of-the-image-to-other-devices/74904

Conclusion

The actual process of creating a clone of a µSD for the Jetson is simple. Having a backup (or several) provides quite a bit of comfort when things go bad. Takes a while, but then doesn’t everything?

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10 Responses

  1. Hi, I want to clone my sd card into a larger size. I used this method but as a result, it gave me two separate parts. I would appreciate it if you help me on how to solve this issue.

  2. Can this be done in the Jetson Nano instead of a host computer, i.e. cloning the running SD card into a mounted SD card on USB port? Still trying to wrap my head around Linux.

  3. hi i can follow the same for tx2 as well..? someone kindly respond on the same..? I am looking for taking the clone of the working TX2 and flash the same on to new board.. please help me on this..
    Thanking in advance.

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