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I have had a failure in my SD card, but fortunately, I made a backup. However, I have no idea how to do the restore procedure.

My backup was created with the raspbiBackup.sh script, and produces four files: an img, a mbr, a sfdisk and a tar file. The sfdisk and mbr files are around 500 bytes each, whereas the img is 69MB and the tar is 1.68GB. Extracting the tar reveals that the contents contain the entire filestructure of the root drive as I remember it.

However, all of the online guides to restoring disk images I can find seem to start with the premise that the img file contains everything, and doesn't mention backup systems using other filetypes. As I recall, the Raspberry Pi disk is partitioned into a 'boot' partition, and a second one which contains all the files such as my programs and documents. My first attempts to get the SD card back up and running used the img file (69MB), and restored only the boot partition of the drive. This is a great first step, but I have no idea what I now need to do to restore the other 1.68GB of data that are contained in the tar file.

I presume that I need to create a partition and then dump the contents of the tar file into that partition. However, I recall that the partition ought to be of a specific filesystem type ('Linux'?), and probably needs a specific name as well. What should that name and type be, and how do I go about creating that partition? I am doing this on OSX, but can work both DiskUtil and the graphical Disk Utility ('Linux' doesn't appear as a filesystem in Disk Utility). Note that I don't have a second Raspbian-enabled computer from which to conduct the restore procedure.

Any guidance in how I might restore the original SD card contents, given that I have these four files at my disposal, would be greatly appreciated.

CaptainProg
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    You unfortunately seem to have followed some unusual backup process, and have failed the first step of any backup (i.e. test the backup). Frankly I can't understand the "instructions" on the site. My guess is that the `.img` MAY have a disk image which could be installed by the normal install process. As you have not told us anything about what you are using it is difficult to say more. – Milliways Sep 19 '16 at 11:58
  • If it is really only 68 MB the `.img` doesn't sound like it will serve much purpose at all. – goldilocks Sep 19 '16 at 15:10
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    I can tell you how to restore the backup *if* you have a system capable of working with `ext4` filesystems. If you don't, you'll have to decide whether that is a problem worth solving. – goldilocks Sep 19 '16 at 15:13
  • @goldilocks I have ext4fuse installed on the Mac, which allows me to write ext4 filesystem partitions. – CaptainProg Sep 21 '16 at 09:56
  • @Milliways: Note there is also the `.tar` file which contains the contents of the other partition. My question is really how to correctly restore the other (i.e. non-boot) partition of the drive. What label should I give it, and how do I create it in the 'Linux' type? Is this the same as ext4, perhaps? If so, I can restore the `boot` partition with the `.img` and then copy the `.tar` contents into the other partition. – CaptainProg Sep 21 '16 at 09:58
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    See [here](http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/5492/5538) and [here](http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/29952/5538). The first one talks about the structure of the root filesystem, the second about the the device images. I believe `fdisk` exists on OSX but it may not be exactly the same. – goldilocks Sep 21 '16 at 12:36

2 Answers2

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By accident I detected this question. raspiBackup can also be be used to restore the backup created by raspiBackup (See https://www.linux-tips-and-tricks.de/en/restore). So I'm wondering why you're asking how to restore the backup. Anyhow - a main design principle of raspiBackup was it also should be possible to restore everything with just plain Linux tools.

raspiBackup saves the boot partition in an img. The root file system can be saved with dd, tar or rsync. So in order to manually restore the backup

1) you have to recreate the partition layout with the information available in sfdisk file

2) format the root partition

3) restore the img into the boot partition

4) restore the root partition with dd, tar or rsync

Hope this helps even my answer it's quite late :-)

I suggest to place all questions about raspiBackup on the website in a comment because that's monitored by me.

Update 11/5/2017: One user of raspiBackup manually restored a backup and described the steps in detail. See here for details

framp
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  • Thanks. The problem was that the Raspberry Pi is my only Linux machine - so I can't do the restore process from the Raspberry Pi whilst the SD card is corrupted. – CaptainProg May 12 '17 at 12:36
  • I see. But why don't you just setup another new raspbian image on a brand new SD card and use this system to restore the backup with raspiBackup? – framp May 13 '17 at 14:47
  • That's an option, certainly, but involves buying a second SD card and setting up Raspbian again. Not impossible, but not the simplest solution for my situation is all. – CaptainProg May 16 '17 at 13:58
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Here there is a way , not easier but a way if you are familiar with terminal :

link from raspberrypi.stackexchange

E_Angel
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