Return to site

Write Pi SD Card Image Using Etcher On Windows, Linux & Mac

· software

My preferred method for writing a Raspberry Pi SD card image is a tool called Etcher. It is free, works on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and has a nice clean interface. The newer version even allows multiple SD cards to be written at the same time.

Etcher on Windows

Download and Install Etcher

Etcher can be downloaded from https://www.etcher.net/. The Windows version is available in Portable and Installed versions for both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. I use it on my Windows PC and Ubuntu laptop.

Download Your Favourite Raspberry Pi Image

Download your preferred SD card image. If in doubt the Official Raspbian (with Desktop) image from the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s website is a good start: Official Raspbian SD Card Images

Using Etcher to Write a Raspberry Pi SD Card Image

The interface looks like this :

Etcher on Windows

Step 1

Browse to the image file. This can be a conventional IMG file or a zip file. This allows you to burn Raspberry Pi images without even extracting them from the source Zip files.

Step 2

Select a drive. The list of drives provides a nice set of information so it should be clearer exactly what physical device you are selecting. You can select multiple drives and it is possible to write multiple SD cards at the same time.

Step 3

Wait for the process to complete.

Once the process has finished you have the option to burn the same image again or to choose a different image.

Etcher on Windows