How to Backup/Restore Your Raspberry Pi SD Card on macOS

Steps for Backup

1. Mount your Raspberry Pi SD card to your Mac.

2. Find your SD card’s name:

diskutil list

3. and backup your diskX as myPiBackup.dmg:

sudo dd if=/dev/diskX of=~/myPiBackup.dmg

4. Enter your password when prompted.

5. Backup will take some time. If you want to see the process:

Control+T

6. Eject your SD card:

sudo diskutil eject /dev/rdiskX

Steps for Restoring

1. Mount your empty SD card to your Mac.

2. Find your SD card’s name:

diskutil list

3. Write your myPiBackup.dmg into your diskX.

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX
sudo dd if=myPiBackup.dmg of=/dev/diskX

4. Enter your password when prompted.

5. Restoring will take some time. (31914983424 bytes transferred in 15260.841046 secs (2091299 bytes/sec)). If you want to see the process:

Control+T

6. Eject your SD card:

sudo diskutil eject /dev/rdiskX

Credits