[SOLVED] Drop Win32 Disk Imager and use balenaEtcher for easier card imaging

[wmupchurch premium]

wmupchurch premium

25. Dezember 2018 at 21:16 #42942

Just passing this along.

I had so many problems with Win32 Disk Imager taking control of my SD card to burn the image. I keep getting an „… access denied‘ error no matter all the tricks I tried. Due to some power supply issues, I had to burn my Max2Play image 4 times this month. I fixed the problem with my power supply, but each burn was painful. You can see more here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=65034
and on many other sites.

Essentially, the problem is that on Windows, Disk Imager can’t take control of the card because some other system process has access/control. BalenaEtcher doesn’t have this problem at all. I just works. So if you are using a windows computer to burn your Max2Play image and are having issues, try BalenaEtcher. https://www.balena.io/etcher/

[Heiner premium]

Heiner premium

3. Januar 2019 at 11:46 #43051

Hi wmupchurch,

Thanks for the feedback! We already recommend using Etcher alongside WinDisk. The latter has a specific version by HardKernel that overwrites the card with zeroes before burning the new image which can be useful. But otherwise Etcher is indeed a recommended alternative.

[wmupchurch premium]

wmupchurch premium

3. Januar 2019 at 18:20 #43093

Hi Heiner,

That’s great news. I had nothing but frustration with win32disk. Glad to know the other version exist but a casual user may not be able to find it. Therefore I’d like to make a suggestion that you change the text on this page to either point the user to the hardkernel version or the balena etcher site. Just trying to make it easier for new users or those less technical to install and use max2play.

This is the page: https://www.max2play.com/en/wiki/burning-the-image-onto-memory-card

[Heiner premium]

Heiner premium

7. Januar 2019 at 15:05 #43208

Thank you for the suggestion, we will add info Etcher as well.