The backup directory created by raspiBackup contains all information required to restore this backup also manually with standard Linux tools. The following page describes how to restore a normal tgz backup.

Create the partitions on the SD card

First of all the SD card has to be pulgged in in into a Raspberry which is used to restore the backup. It usually is detected as /dev/sda or /dev/sdb. Use lsblk to check what's the device used by the  SD card. In the following description I use /dev/sdb now.

Next mount the backuppartition on a mountpoint. I use /mnt in the following description for the backup partition and hostname raspberry and /media for the target SD card partitions.

Now create the partitions with

 sudo sfdisk /dev/sdb < /mnt/raspberry/raspberry-tgz-backup-20170812-134552/raspberry-backup.sfdisk

This shoud create two partitions

You can check whether everything is OK with sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb


Disk /dev/sdb: 7.43 GiB, 7969177600 bytes, 15564800 sectors
Disk model: MassStorageClass
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xa02ea338Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 8192 532479 524288 256M c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdb2 532480 15564799 15032320 7.2G 83 Linux

Restore first partition (boot partition)

sudo dd of=/dev/sdb1 if=/mnt/raspberry/raspberry-tgz-backup-20170812-134552/raspberry-backup.img
sync

You can check whether everything is OK with following commands: sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media; ls /media; sudo umount /media

You should get a list of all boot files.

bcm2708-rpi-b.dtb bcm2708-rpi-zero-w.dtb bcm2710-rpi-3-b-plus.dtb bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb config.txt fixup4x.dat issue.txt LICENCE.broadcom start4x.elf
bcm2708-rpi-b-plus.dtb bcm2709-rpi-2-b.dtb bcm2710-rpi-cm3.dtb bcm2711-rpi-cm4.dtb COPYING.linux fixup_cd.dat kernel7.img overlays start_cd.elf
bcm2708-rpi-b-rev1.dtb bcm2709-rpi-cm2.dtb bcm2710-rpi-zero-2.dtb bcm2711-rpi-cm4s.dtb fixup4cd.dat fixup.dat kernel7l.img start4cd.elf start_db.elf
bcm2708-rpi-cm.dtb bcm2710-rpi-2-b.dtb bcm2710-rpi-zero-2-w.dtb bootcode.bin fixup4.dat fixup_db.dat kernel8.img start4db.elf start.elf
bcm2708-rpi-zero.dtb bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb bcm2711-rpi-400.dtb cmdline.txt fixup4db.dat fixup_x.dat kernel.img start4.elf start_x.elf

Restore second partition (root partition)

Now format the second partition with sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb2

You can check whether everything is OK with following commands: sudo mount /dev/sdb2 /media; df -h /media


You should get something like

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb2 7.0G 24K 6.6G 1% /media

Now restore the tgz Backup on the partition created just now:

sudo tar --exclude /boot --same-owner --same-permissions --numeric-owner -x -v -z -f /mnt/raspberry/raspberry-tgz-backup-20170812-13455/raspberry-tgz-backup-20170812-134552.tgz -C /media
sudo umount /media
sudo umount /mnt


During the restore you should see the list of all files restored.

Boot the restored system

Now remove the target SD card, insert it in another Raspberry and boot the Raspberry with the restored backup.