Written by
Jenny ZengSummary: This article tells you how to clone an SD card on Mac in four ways, applicable to SD cards in Raspberry Pis, Anbernic game consoles, cameras, and other devices. Among them, the best way to clone SD card on Mac is with iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac. Download it to clone SD cards on Mac immediately.
There are times when you need to upgrade or back up a microSD or SD card of a digital camera, a game console like a Nintendo Switch or an Anbernic, a single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi, or another type of device. Depending on your purpose or the device, you may copy or clone the SD card on Mac.
While there are several ways to back up the SD card on Mac, some may not work as expected. For example, copying and pasting may give you a copy of the content. Still, additional adjustments are required if you intend to use the SD card with the copied data as a replacement in a game console or similar device.
We'll cover the nuances in this article and explain four ways to duplicate an SD card on Mac.
| How to clone SD card on Mac | Best suitable for |
| Clone SD card on Mac with iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac | All cases |
| Copy SD card on Mac via Finder | SD cards that don't have an operating system on it |
| Clone SD card on Mac with Disk Utility | All cases but may not be boootable and work slowly for Linux partitions |
| Clone SD card on Mac in Terminal | Users who have some command-line knowledge |
First, do the following preparation:
- Prepare a destination SD card or an external disk with the same capacity as the source SD card or larger.
- Back up the destination disk because it will be erased during cloning.
- Create a partition on the destination drive if necessary.
Note that you can choose to clone the whole SD card or one partition of it. Also, if you're planning to clone the SD card to a larger card on Mac, making a partition in the same size as the partition or disk that needs to be backed up on the destination disk is recommended.
For instance, if you want to expand the storage of a 50GB SD card to a 100GB card, create a 50GB partition on the 100GB card, then use it as the destination partition. In this case, the remaining 50GB space can still be used by your device if it has a supported file system, which is usually FAT32 or exFAT.
When you're ready, take one of the following ways to clone microSD card or SD card on Mac.
Way 1: Clone SD card on Mac with iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac
The easiest way to clone an SD card on Mac is by utilizing iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac. Its Clone feature can copy everything on your SD card into another SD card or any external storage device of your choice efficiently. With it, you can make a replica of the original SD cards, including files, partitions, boot records, etc.
Besides, this tool can clone any SD card on Mac, wherever it's used. It supports SDHC, SDXC, SDUC, and micro SD cards of all brands. Whether you need to clone a Raspberry Pi SD card on Mac, or one for a digital camera, a game console, a laptop, a smartphone, a tablet, a music player, a car dashcam, or a wearable device, etc, it's qualified.
Ensure the SD card and destination disk are connected to your Mac, then take the steps below to duplicate the SD card on Mac:
Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac.
Step 2: Select the SD card or the partition you want to clone and click the Clone button in the right sidebar.
Step 3: Choose the destination partition or disk and then click Start Cloning.
Step 4: Click OK and wait until the cloning process is complete.
Pretty simple, right? Share this tool to help others back up SD card on Mac.
Way 2: Copy SD card on Mac via Finder
Apart from cloning the SD card, you can also manually copy the content of the SD card to another disk. This way, it only copies the actual data and files, saving time and space.
While it's a good option for regular files, this method doesn't work for bootable devices, as the data necessary for booting the drive is not copied. If your SD card contains a system, for example, a Raspberry Pi SD card, you have to clone it.
Here's how to copy the SD card on Mac:
- Open Disk Utility.
- Click View > Show All Devices.
- Select the top layer of the destination SD card or drive and click Erase.
- Name the disk.
- Choose MS-DOS (FAT) as the format.
- Use the same scheme as the source SD card.
- Click Erase.
- Copy the contents of the source SD card to the formatted disk.
- Press Command+Shift+. to reveal hidden files.
- Delete the hidden files.
- Insert the new card into your device.
Way 3: Clone SD card on Mac with Disk Utility
It's also a good idea to clone an SD card on Mac for free using Disk Utility. It allows you to create a disk image containing the data and free space of the SD card and restore the disk image to a new card or disk. Here's how:
- Go to Disk Utility.
- Select the source SD card.
- Choose File > New Image > Image from "the source SD card".
- Enter a filename for the image and choose where to save it.
- Choose a format option.
- Click Save followed by Done.
- Once the image is created, select the destination card and click Restore.
- Choose the disk image and click Restore to write the DMG to the destination card on Mac.
Way 4: Clone SD card on Mac in Terminal
Another way to clone microSD card on Mac is from Terminal. It follows the same logic as the cloning in Disk Utility but is slightly more complicated. Nevertheless, it's a great alternative if Disk Utility doesn't clone the SD card.
It seems that Disk Utility has issues reading Linux partitions and is usually slow. If your SD card is for a Raspberry Pi, clone it in Terminal.
Here's how to clone Raspberry Pi SD card on Mac in Terminal (or other SD cards):
- Install Homebrew on Mac.
- Open Terminal.
- After Homebrew is installed, type the command below and hit Enter to install core-utils. It refers to the GNU Core Utilities, a popular package manager for macOS and Linux.
- Run the command below to check the disk identifier of the source SD card.diskutil list external
- Replace 4 with the disk number of your SD card in the following command and execute it to create a disk image in your home directory.sudo gdd if=/dev/rdisk4 of=sd_backup.dmg status=progress bs=16Msudo: Runs the command with special permissions.
gdd: A tool for copying data from one place to another.
if=/dev/rdisk4: Specifies the source disk from which to copy.
of=sd_backup.dmg: Specifies the destination file to save the copied data.
status=progress: Shows updates on how much data has been copied.
bs=16M: Sets the size of data chunks to 16 megabytes for faster copying. You can change it to a block size that works best with your hardware. - Enter your administrator password and press Enter.
- Wait till the image is created.
- Unmount the source SD card to prevent errors after replacing 4.sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4
- Copy the disk image to your destination SD card or external drive after replacing the disk number 4.sudo gdd of=/dev/rdisk4 if=sd_backup.dmg status=progress bs=16M
This is also an excellent way to clone SD card on Mac for free. Share it if it's useful!
Final Words
In addition to the four ways in this guide, you can also explore other tools like balenaEtcher or ApplePi Baker. The former can burn a disk image into a drive, which may be helpful if you can't restore an image in Disk Utility. The latter is created to back up or restore Raspberry Pi SD cards on Mac, but it's also used to back up other SD cards. This free utility also supports shrinking and expanding Linux partitions.
