SD Card expansion – Raspberry Pi system image

SD card expansion allows the full use of the space on a larger SD Card after you created your new Raspberry Pi system image on it. If you don’t expand it, when you boot up, it will still show the original size of your system image.

Follow the step by step guide below.

Written by Jonathan Eames

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October 12, 2020

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Automation | Raspberry Pi

Partition expansion

Sounds painful but SD card expansion is really easy if you follow these step by step instructions. You need to do this only once, when you have created and booted up your Raspberry Pi and have a connection to it so you can see the desktop…

Step 1 – SD card expansion

From your desktop, open the Terminal window.

Type in “df -H” then enter – this should output your old dimension – ie too small!

We then need to launch the Raspberry Pi configuration tool so type “sudo raspi-config” followed by enter to get this:

Step 2 – SD card expansion

Select “7 Advanced Options”

Then Select A1 Expand Filesystem

Press OK in the following confirmation dialog:

Step 3 – SD card expansion

You should now be back to raspi-config home page. Click Finish

You must now reboot in order to complete filsystem resize. Raspi-config asks if you want to reboot now – Click Yes and wait for the reboot to complete…

Once rebooted, open Terminal again on the RPI, and type “df -H” and enter again and you should see the new full size reported…

That wasn’t too hard, was it. You are now a pro!

Comments and questions welcome as always… I will endeavour to respond promptly

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