Raspberry Pi Operating System Installation Guide

Preface

This guide is for Raspberry Pi boards only. The images below do not work for single board computers from other brands such as Orange Pi and Banana Pi.
Flashing should be performed after you understand what it is that you are doing. You can overwrite critical data resulting in partial or complete data loss. We encourage you to use care in the application of the below guide. We are not responsible for any damage or data loss as a result of following the guide below.

Prerequisite

  • 4GB or larger Class 4 or faster MicroSD card required (except for Raspberry Pi 1 Model A and Model B which uses full size SD card)
  • 8GB or larger Class 10 or faster MicroSD card recommended (except for Raspberry Pi 1 Model A and Model B which uses full size SD card)
  • MicroSD card reader (or SD card reader for Raspberry Pi 1 Model A and Model B)
  • Computer with Windows, Mac, or Linux

Available Operating Systems

Procedure

The process here is a re-hash of the instructions found here. Please make sure to extract the image prior to flashing. Flashing a compressed image will not work.

Windows

Win32DiskImager is an utility for writing raw operating system image files to flash devices like MicroSD cards and USB sticks.

  1. Download and install Win32DiskImager.
  2. Download the image for an operating system listed above.
  3. Extract the image file to any location on your computer.
  4. Plug in the MicroSD card into the card reader.
  5. Start Win32DiskImager.
  6. Select the image file and the drive letter of the MicroSD card device.
  7. Click Write and wait until the image is fully written to the MicroSD card.
  8. Eject the MicroSD card device and remove the card from the card reader.
  9. Plug in the MicroSD card into your unpowered Raspberry Pi board.
  10. Plug in MicroUSB power into your Raspberry Pi board.

Mac

dd is your friend. Take extra precaution when using raw imaging utilities or you will irrecoverably wipe your hard drive. If you have data that you want to save on the MicroSD card, save it before hand because it will be overwritten during this process. Please read through all the steps and take the time to fully understand the process before attempting anything. If you do not understand any part, do not proceed!

  1. Download the image for an operating system listed above.
  2. Extract the image file to any location on your computer.
  3. Plug in the MicroSD card into the card reader.
  4. Open a Terminal
  5. Type “diskutil list” and determine the path to the unbuffered raw device for the MicroSD card (usually /dev/rdiskn where n is device number, /dev/diskn is the same device with write buffering and you do not want to use the buffered version).
  6. Unmount any mounted partitions of the MicroSD card by running the following command for each partition of the device: “diskutil unmount /dev/disknso” (where n is the MicroSD card device number and o is the partition).
  7. cd to the directory containing the image file (usually ending with .img).
  8. Run “sudo dd if=imagefile.img of=/dev/rdiskn bs=1m” where imagefile.img is the name of the extracted image file and n is the device number. If you put the wrong device number, you will destroy the data on that device and it is unrecoverable. Take extreme caution and verify before running this command.

Linux

dd is your friend. Take extra precaution when using raw imaging utilities or you will irrecoverably wipe your hard drive.

NOOBS

NOOBS (New Out Of the Box Software) is an installer created by the Raspberry Pi Foundation that runs on the Raspberry Pi board. It can either install Raspbian or one of a few operating systems that can be downloaded from the internet. This is a much slower process than flashing the MicroSD card from a computer directly and we do not recommend using it. It requires a FAT32 formatted MicroSD card. Many MicroSDXC cards are exFAT formatted by default and is not compatible with NOOBS. If that is the case, the partition on the MicroSD card needs to be resized and re-formatted as FAT32 which creates additional complexity and confusion.
If you would like to flash back to NOOBS after using Win32DiskImager, see our guide here.

Advanced Troubleshooting Guide