Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi Quick Start Manual - page 3
Preparing your SD card for the Raspberry Pi
In order to use your Raspberry Pi, you will need to install an Operating System (OS) onto an SD
card. An Operating System is the set of basic programs and utilities that allow your computer to
run; examples include Windows on a PC or OSX on a Mac.
These instructions will guide you through installing a recovery program on your SD card that will
allow you to easily install different OS’s and to recover your card if you break it.
1. Insert an SD card that is 4GB or greater in size into your computer
2. Format the SD card so that the Pi can read it
a. Windows
i. Download the SD Association's Formatting Tool
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from
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/eula_windows/
ii. Install the Formatting Tool on your machine
iii. Run the Formatting Tool
iv. Set "FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT" option to "ON" in the "Options" menu
v. Check that the SD card you inserted matches the one selected by the Tool
vi. Click the “Format” button
b. Mac
i. Download the SD Association's Formatting Tool from
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/eula_mac/
ii. Install the Formatting Tool on your machine
iii. Run the Formatting Tool
iv. Select “Overwrite Format”
v. Check that the SD card you inserted matches the one selected by the Tool
vi. Click the “Format” button
c. Linux
i. We recommend using gparted (or the command line version parted)
ii. Format the entire disk as FAT
3. Download the Raspberry Pi Recovery system (also known as the New Out Of Box Software)
from:
downloads.raspberrypi.org/recovery
4. Unzip the downloaded file
a. Windows Right click on the file and choose “Extract all”
b. Mac Double tap on the file
c. Linux Run unzip [downloaded filename]
5. Copy the extracted files onto the SD card that you just formatted
6. Insert the SD card into your Pi and connect the power supply
Your Pi will now boot into the Raspberry Pi Recovery System and show a list of Operating Systems
that you can now install. We recommend that you start with Raspbian.
Have fun!
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Note: The builtin Windows formatting tool will only format the first partition that Windows can read not
the entire disk. For this reason we advise using the official SD Card Association Formatting Tool.