Create a new pi-star flash SDcard

[ab3vz]

Hi Everyone,

Newbie on the forum, pi-star and DMR. So bear with me.

I have two mmdvm hotsopts. One is a Jumbospot with pi 0, I believe (chinese made) and more than 8 yrs old. I have lost the original flash SD microcard and want to create a new one from scratch. I tried several versions of pi-star and none worked. Also, using Balena etcher tool FAILED on validation step. what specific version of pi-star should I use? Pls provide the link to website, steps and tools used.

The other is a Zumspot with Nextion 2.4 display, has Rspberry Pi 3B board. Works fine. Want to create a backup Micro SD card. Same question as above on version, website link and tools used. I have tried, Etcher, win32 disk imager. and Pi-star image flash.

Thanks,
AB3VZ, Vijay

[KN2TOD]

Your best bet is to use Etcher (balenaEtcher) to "clone" the drive from your working system. The clone can then function as both a backup and a replacement for the drive in your first system (with appropriate reconfiguration).

[KB8EMD]

I too am having trouble getting a new 32 GB card to work.
I downloaded the latest image file, flashed it to the card
installed it into my working mmdvm pi-zero w2 all the new program
is blink at me no matter how long it sits
after several tries I added the wifi maker file it still doesn't boot
nor am I able to log-on
the reason I'm trying is I am not the only one not able to get it to work with new card
and was ask to help

what am I doing wrong? help this old man........
Larry KB8EMD

[G8SEZ]

I too am having trouble getting a new 32 GB card to work.
I downloaded the latest image file, flashed it to the card
installed it into my working mmdvm pi-zero w2 all the new program
is blink at me no matter how long it sits
after several tries I added the wifi maker file it still doesn't boot
nor am I able to log-on
the reason I'm trying is I am not the only one not able to get it to work with new card
and was ask to help

what am I doing wrong? help this old man........
Larry KB8EMD

You need to write the image to the SD card using a program that can read the .iso file (which itself may be in an archive such as a .zip file) and write it to the card sector by sector.

On a Windows machine you could try the RaspberryPi Imager or the balena Etcher utility to do this.

The card will have 2 partitions on it after the writing process, the first is a FAT partition, the second will be an EXT2 partition which Windows can't read by default but it will be there.

There are some guides on writing the image to cards on this page below the actual image download zip files:

https://www.pistar.uk/downloads/

HTH

[KB8EMD]

Thanks Brian
I should have explained the steps I used to download, unzip, format and flash the 32GB SD card.
Downloaded Pi-Star_RPi_V4.1.5_30-Oct-2021.zip
Unzipped into a folder on my computer
Formatted the SD card using "Erase" FAT32 formatter part of Raspberry-imager
Flashed this img file to the SD card Pi-star_RPi_V4.1.5-30-Oct-2021.img using the Balena-Etcher
I have three MMDVM hotspots all are Pi-zero W2 Chinese made hotspots.
all are working with SD cards formatted and flashed like I said above with the exception the
img file may be different.

any and all help is appreciated.
Pete KB8EMD

[G8SEZ]

It should work, can you see the FAT partition on the SD card on a PC?