How to make a new SD card that uses existing PiDrive

Community Graveyard WD Labs Products
1

Darn it! I managed to break my SD card that came with PiDrive. Just when I had gotten up server up and running. So how can I reinstall Raspbian on another SD card so that I can still use the existing installation on the PiDrive? I did the default install with the included SD card with just one partition and no extra project spaces or anything like that.

Did the default SD card do anything special with the install or can I just follow some instructions on how to boot from external hard drive? There are a lot of those around (I did do it earlier with another drive before I got the PiDrive).

2

Can I use these instructions? How to install Raspbian on PiDrive using Windows PC, step-by-step

3

I think these (http://www.instructables.com/id/Boot-the-Raspberry-Pi-from-USB/?ALLSTEPS) might be the instructions I used earlier. Are there any special parameters needed for cmdline.txt or anything like that? And was there just one partition on the drive or was there a separate swap or something?

4

Hi, the easiest way to do this is download our Foundation Edition software onto a PC, reformat the SDcard and transfer the Foundation Edition files to the freshly formatted SDcard. Then boot in your set-up and reinstall Raspbian to the PiDrive.

Foundation Edition software download and instructions are here:

A few additional tips:

Use SDFormatter PC utility to reformat the sdcard, with options: Format Type: Full (Overwrite); Format Size Adjustment: On.

Download the Foundation Edition zipfile to your PC and unzip it directly to the root directory of the freshly formatted sdcard using 7-Zip utility:
http://7-zip.org

Safe-eject the sdcard from your PC, put it in your Pi+PiDrive setup, boot up and reinstall Raspbian and any other OS instances you may want.

Let me know if you run into trouble.

Thanks.

5

Yeah, I suppose that would be the easiest way, but that would also mean I lose all the stuff I already installed and configured on the server. I did manage to mount the drive on another Pi and get backups done, but I would’ve really preferred to get by without reinstalling…

Well, it was only about a days worth of work so I guess I’ll start reinstalling. Thanks.

6

Okay, finished the reinstall this morning and everything is working fine again. There seems to be two pi/SETTINGS (the other one is pi/SETTINGS1) mounts now on my system. Is that normal? Did it pick up some old mount from the previous install?

7

Ah. Nevermind. The mounts are not there anymore…