Partition Resize Question

Targets Raspberry Pi
1

I have successfully gotten my Pi up and running but I wanted to create a bigger disk. I found some instructions to backup the disk image on my Mac and restore it to a new bigger SD card but it ended up with the same size partitions and lots of unused free space. Disk Utility on OS X says it cannot resize the partitions.

I have seen some instructions on the Web to use the Pi command line tools to essentially delete all of the partitions and then recreate the boot partition with a much bigger size. Since it gets created with the same starting sector the data is intact and it will boot. That sounds a bit hazardous to me and maybe prone to some hidden problems.

Is there an easy and safe way to take my current SD and copy it to a new bigger SD and enlarge the boot partition?

2

After a bit more digging I thought I found the answer with the rasps-config script but it won’t enlarge the partition since it was built with NOOBS.

I decided to just download Jessie and build a fresh install on the new SD card. I was trying to preserve a few config settings and installs like VNC but Jessie is probably a good idea anyway.

3

Creating a new bootable SD card with Jessie was pretty easy using OS X. The new SD card is a Class 10 and it is noticeably faster than the one I bought with the Pi that had NOOBS and Raspbian pre-installed.

I debated installing NOOBS Lite which then could download Jessie directly to the SD on the Pi but I decided to download the image to my Mac and created the SD card on the Mac.

Just so others won’t have to look so hard here are some links that helped.

I downloaded Jessie from here:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

I found most of the steps for OS X here. Of course you will have to change some of the file and disk references. Note that you may be able to use “RDISK” (raw) instead of “DISK” (buffered) in these notes and it is much faster.
http://computers.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-clone-raspberry-pi-sd-cards-using-the-command-line-in-os-x–mac-59911

I installed VNC with the instructions in this link. VNC makes things much easier to use your Pi and you can do it headless if you like.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/vnc/

You may want to change the screen dimensions in the geometry parameter to fit your VNC client screen to eliminate any screen viewer scroll bars.

Also I installed the “official” Raspberry Pi touch screen. Be sure to use a big enough power supply. The screen seems to demand a full 2 amp power supply.
http://swag.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-7-inch-touchscreen-display
There are other sources that have these in stock as of this writing.

4

This is useful information Mark. Thank you for sharing.

5

This is what I ended up doing as well.

Also, there are some other Raspberry Pi tips on the Raspberry Pi Overview page in the Dev Center.

6

use Raspbian jessie, go to system settings (configure) and repartion trought the GUI (desktop)