Size problems on Etcher

balenaEtcher
1

I’m trying to move a Raspbian Stretch image to a new 16gb card - the old card is lost - but its a different make from the one I backed up; the ‘real’ size is down from 15.9GB to 15.7GB, and Etcher reports ‘not enough space’.

I realise it’s probably a Raspbian issue, but since Etcher will happily create a 32GB image from a 16GB backup, I’m hoping there may be a way to reduce the image size just a little bit.

I’m using - I think - version 1.0.0 on a MacBook Pro 13 inch, early 2015 under High Sierra. Would upgrading Etcher help?

(Because I’ve no longer got the old card I can’t just boot it and use the Raspbian card copier. I’ve tried Etching a 32GB image, booting it and creating a 16GB version on the RasPi, but it seems to go wrong when I update the distro.)

2

Don’t worry, You’re not alone. I had this problom also right now. that one extra 0.1 gb is kinda the firmware for the usb. If it’s gone, your usb won’t work. You can see the secret file if you format the drive and run explorer++ in admin mode.

3

The answer, it seems, is not to use Balena Etcher to do the copy; what seems to work is that the Raspberry Pi OS SD card copier will successfully resize the image - I’ve gone from 32GB to 8GB.
I had problems at first, copying the live system; I now plug a ‘master’ and a ‘copy’ card into two USB slots and copy from one to the other.