Cloning RACHEL SSDs

Hi All,

It’s been a while since I have posted! We are currently working on our rollout of a ‘Solar RACHEL Briefcase’ using li-ion batteries and the Rasp Pi 4B with an SSD.

We created our own Khmer module for the Pi and have one solid SSD with all the content that we want. When we try to attempt to clone the 240GB Kingston SSDs using AOEMI BackUpper, we get two volumes on the clone with Boot and un unnamed Volume that is Healthy but RAW. This drive refuses to boot on the pi. Any insight into why this is happening or other suggested software to use?

Side note, I am planning on releasing the design of the Solar Rachel Briefcase (procurement, assembly, .stl’s, etc.) in the upcoming months. The design procured from the US is sub $250 and would be around that $200 wholesale from Alibaba.

Cheers,
Brandon

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Hi @brandonks,

Good to hear an update on your project. Sounds like things are moving along!

The drive should have two partitions. One is the FAT boot partition which contains the Pi’s boot settings and files, the other is the rootfs partition which is the main storage for the pi. I have never used AOEMI BackUpper, but I suspect it may not be able to handle the ext4 filesystem of the rootfs partition.

My go to process for cloning pi drives is to first use win32diskimage to read a full copy of the drive. You will need the amount of space available to save the image, so a little more than 240GB.

  1. Choose a location and name to save to and give the file a .img extension.
  2. Pick the device to copy. Usually I select the drive letter with the boot partition
  3. Click read

Once that .img is completely read, use raspi-imager to flash .img file to the target device. There’s an overview of that process in this tutorial.

It’s not a one click solution, but it does work every time for me.

Looking forward to your updates.

James

Hey James,

This is all fantastic, we will for sure use your proven method for the cloning.

Thanks for the help and I am hoping to push out those updates soon!
Brandon

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Hello brandonks,

 I use EZ Dupe and Star Tech 1:2 USB duplicator for my microsd and SSD's. 

I wanted a standalone option without the need for a computer or more programs. It takes about 50 min for me to copy 100G ssd.

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Hey @SHOMI, these are some great options that I will check out for our field use later in our project! I appreciate you reaching out about these devices.

@jamesk your process worked! Thanks as always.

Brandon

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@brandonks - Great to hear! Feel free to email me again any time if you want to pick up where we left off with the system monitoring.