Step-by-step Ubuntu SD Card Setup -- for Windows Users

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Revision as of 17:06, 15 January 2013 by Osterluk (Talk | contribs)

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This tutorial is for Windows users. See Step-by-step Ubuntu SD Card Setup for Linux/Mac version

Prerequisites

You are going to need:

  • To have and SD-Card reader/writer
  • To download an SD-Card image to use
  • To be able to verify the md5sum of the image to make sure it is complete
  • To be able to expand a compressed SD Card image file (.xz)
  • Be able to identify the Windows device designator assigned to the SD Card. (Like E:)
  • Write the SD Card image file (.img) to the SD Card

    Software Tools

  • 7zip is free. You can use it to expand a .xz file. Here is a link: [7-Zip Project]
  • The free md5sums program can calculate checksums: MD5Sums Project
  • Win32 Disk Imager is also free. You can use it to write the .img file to your SD-Card. Here is a link: Win32 Disk Imager

    Step-by-Step

    Is it possible to write a non-blank media with Win32 disk imager? I had to attempt to format the SD-Card before I could write the image. Windows complained that it could not format the SD-Card, but then Win32 Disk Image was able to write it.

    Download the compressed image

    Check the md5sum against the expected one. The md5sum value is usually posted separately. It could be in a forum, on a website or contained in a separate file. The cd12a526ecdb34c12b4a737044e867e7 value is the checksum that verifies the file transferred correctly.

    md5sums odroidu2_20130104-linaro-ubuntu-desktop-uSDeMMC.img.xz
    

    Expand the image

    7z -z odroidu2_20130104-linaro-ubuntu-desktop-uSDeMMC.img.xz
    

    Now we have the expanded SD-Card image file, (.img)

    Connect your SD-Card reader with an SD-Card installed to your PC.

    Warning: Make double sure you know which device designator represents the SD-Card -- no joke, Win32 Disk Imager is completely unforgiving. It will happily wipe a hard drive if you tell it to.

    Use the Win32 Disk Imager GUI to select the SD-Card image file (.img) and write it.