A Raspberry Pi Needs A Second SD Card

A Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole or RetroPie is easy to ignore until the SD card decides it has had enough. The failure is cheap. Rebuilding the little machine is not, especially when the configuration exists only in your memory and a few terminal commands.

My rule now is simple: keep a second SD card next to the Pi, and make a fresh image after any change I would hate to repeat.

The useful checklist:

• Shut the Pi down cleanly before removing the card.
• Make an image of the working card, not just a copy of a few visible files.
• Store the image somewhere other than the Pi itself.
• Label the spare with the project and the date.
• Boot the spare once. A backup that has never booted is a theory.

This applies to the Raspberry Pi I used for Pi-hole and the older RetroPie setup. The card costs less than a takeout lunch. The test boot takes a few minutes. It is much nicer than discovering a dead card while trying to remember which settings made the network behave.