Everybody knows - by raspi-config we can expand the image to the borders of the ext4 partition of the SD-card, but shrinking is impossible.
This will generate copy problems, using a second SD-card to copy to, with labeled same size, but in reality the usable space is a bit smaller (e.g. 8Gb SD-Card 1, 7,2 GB space usable; 8GB SD-Card 2, 7,1 GB space usable)
This means, even when the used space of the larger SD Card is (much) smaller than the available space of the fresh second SD-Card, win32DiskManager will not work as it can only copy physical blocks 1:1 ...
To overcome this situation shrinking the ext4 content of SD-card 1 is a Must to succeed
How to manage this situation technically?
My idea (e.g. with the below constraints):
SD-Card 1, labeled 8 GB, real space is 7.2 GB, Raspian Image is expanded to its boarders
fresh SD-Card 2, (labeled 8GB, real space is 7.1 GB, FAT32 - empty)
Additional Linux PC (e.g. Virtual Box VM running your Linux Guest on your Host windows 10 system)
Steps:
Prepare the second (smaller) SD-card with a fresh Raspian image, boot and expand it by raspi-config to the SD-card borders.
Mount the two SD-cards into your running virtual Linux system
By File Archiving (not Partition Archiving!) "fsarchiver savedir ..." prepare a file archive from all files of the ext4 partition of the 1. (larger) SD-Card
Delete all files in the ext4 partition of the second SD-Card (e.g. by "rm -r *")
Use "fsarchiver restdir" to restore the archived ext4 files from the 1. SD-Card ext4 partition into the corresponding ext4 partition on the 2nd SD-card. As you are not copying the partition - but files, the slightly smaller ext4 partition of SD-Card 2 will now contain all ext4 files of the 1. SD-Card. The nautilus explorer confirms this!!!
Unmount your 2nd SD-Card put into your Raspberry and boot ...!
I have tried this- no chance the boot fails! This method will only work when the second SD-card provides exactly the same ext4 space as the 1 SD-Card.
I am confused now, because I had assumed that copying files (and not partitions) could resolve the win32DiskManager Block Copy issue.
What is my error, please?
Your expert explanation is pretty much appreciated.
Thanks in advance