Camera board • Re: write image to SD card

1) Reformat it to something like FAT32, that both OSes can read/write.

2) Find and install some 3rd party driver for Windows that allows it to read/write Linux filesystems. Or, maybe use WSL (or WSL2?). I'm not versed in these WSL things.

3) Get a Linux laptop. This, of course, is going to cost $$$..

1) I am a little reluctant to go for that, because the raspberry pi runs now...

Reformatting the USB drive (not the SD card or other boot drive) should have minimal impact. You'll lose the data that's on it and it may mount to a slightly different location but still under /media/pi. But that's it.

For widest compatibility use FAT32, for large file support use NTFS (or exFAT). All are supported by RPiOS.

2) I'll do. I didn't know there was a difference in filesystems, but I surewill do.
3) I will install Linux on my laptop tonight (I know a dual boot is possible), so I will do that because the solution was there straightaway !!

No need to install. You could boot from a Linux live CD/DVD/USB when you need to.

WSL2* was suggested above but my experience is that it isn't straight forward and may not work. You pass the raw USB drive to WSL2 (this can fail) then use WSL2 to transfer files from the USB drive to your windows drive(s).

A warning for the future:
Judging by what you've posted you're relying on the desktop to mount your USB drive. You're also unmounting it via the command line not through the file manager.

When you unmount through the command line the file manager may not clean up in /media/pi (sub directories are created/removed on the fly as drives are hot plugged and ejected). If it doesn't you'll find the mount point (the directory used under /media/pi) changes next time the drive is inserted.

There are other circumstances that can cause this too.

A suggestion:
If you only intend to remove/connect the USB drive when the Pi is off or to remove it after a umount command you might want to consider using a different method to mount it. My recommendation is to use /etc/fstab (but take care when setting that up as mistakes can render your system unbootable). There are alternatives, some more standard than others.

Be aware that fstab and most of the alternatives will prevent the desktop's automounter from mounting that particular device on hot plug so you'll need to mount it from the command line if the drive isn't present during system boot.

[shameless self promotion]
Using fstab A Beginner's Guide
[/shameless self promotion]

*: Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2

Statistics: Posted by thagrol — Thu Mar 13, 2025 11:30 am

---