“Clone/backup”, plus Upsize to Larger SD Card
WHY? If you own a RAK v1 hotspot, you should make a backup copy of its SD card. Why? On v1s, the identity of the hotspot is stored directly on the card. A damaged card will probably leave your v1 ‘bricked’ (unusable).
LATER VERSIONS: Don’t worry; be happy. The v1.5, v2, or RAK/MNTD can run from a fresh card ‘flashed’ with the latest ‘image’ (firmware + blockchain data).
VIDEO: See BFGNeil’s video , RAK Helium Hotspot SD Card Replacement. He covers it all – for the later versions RAK v1.5, v2, RAK/MNTD.
How do you know if you have a RAK v1?
If your hotspot has a button on its side, it is not a v1 (it is also not a v1.5). Move on.
If your hotspot does not have a button on its side, it might be either a v1 or a v1.5 . See my post, How to tell RAK v1 from v1.5, v2, RAK/MNTD.
So you have a v1 and you want to backup (clone) your SD card, or you want to upgrade from the stock 32 GB to a larger 64 GB SD card…
HOW I DID IT:
This not for the faint-of-heart.
Overview
Steps 1 – 10 are to “clone” your SD card onto the new blank one. Cloning makes a bit-for-bit copy of your data. Because of this, it does NOT take advantage of the extra space on a bigger card! Cloning is like taking a pot of water off of your stove and putting it in your bathtub… not pouring the water, but merely setting the pot in the bathtub. At the end of step 10 you will have a fully-functioning backup SD card, useful for keeping your hotspot safe.
Steps 11-14 are to expand what you’ve put on the new, larger card – so your hotspot can use all that extra space… to expand the pot to fit that bathtub. Unless you do this, you’ll still have what appears to be a 32 GB card, but physically on a 64 GB SD card. The extra 32 will be useless. You will not have added any free space!
I did this expansion step using “gparted”, a disk-partition editor on Linux. The “gparted” also exists on Windows too, although in ‘.iso’ form, so not convenient.
An update: EaseUS Partition Master Professional Edition definitely has the resize option for this kind of partition (ext3 partition) . Any “partition editor” on Windows should be able to perform this step – as long as it supports an “ext3” Linux partition.
There are probably simpler ways to (a) make the second card bootable for your hotspot, and (b) backup data to it – to automatically make the extra space usable. I could not find such ways. The backup softwares I tried, would not do this – not onto an SD card. I was happy to buy software to do it, but couldn’t find any, or the vendors’ specifications were unclear about this. Vendors – take note, I wanted to buy your product but it did not meet this need! If you find a simpler way, please leave me a comment.
Diagnostics – optional
First, power-cycle your hotspot and use your phone’s Helium app to bluetooth-pair to the hotspot. Tap ‘Diagnostics’. Tap’Send to Support’. From that draft email, observe the blockchain height your hotspot knows about, the “Height” value, and record that somewhere simple. If the height is zero, keep tapping ‘Diagnostics’, ‘Send to Support’ every 30 seconds until you see a value. It takes a few minutes for the embedded Linux operating system to fully boot up. If you leave the hotspot alone, Bluetooth will shut off after a few minutes and you’ll lose visibility… so keep tapping. Also if you switch apps in your phone, you’ll have to re-authenticate in the Helium app, which disconnects Bluetooth. So be patient and keep tapping. Oh – don’t send that email to support; they probably get spammed by accidental sends.
Reminder: if you have a v1.5, v2, or RAK/MNTD, skip this below, since your solution is far simpler – see BFGNeil’s video , RAK Helium Hotspot SD Card Replacement.
(A) Cloning to a new SD card
KEEP your hotspot plugged in as long as you can. Prepare all this in advance.
1– Watched BFGNeil’s video , RAK Helium Hotspot SD Card Replacement.
2– Obtained a bigger SD card. Obtained 128 GB; a 64 GB would have been better (explained below).
3– Obtained 2 card reader USB plug-in devices.
4– Installed Balena Etcher on Windows (as BFGNeil suggested).
4.5– Optional: For diagnostics, unplug and replug your v1 hotspot as above. Bluetooth-pair to it from your phone app. Tap Diagnostics. Tap “Send to support”. Record the block height listed in that draft email. See above for details.
5– Removed SD card from the v1 RAK
6– Placed RAK’s 32 GB SD card into reader device. Noted that its drive letter was “D:”
7– Placed blank, larger SD card (64 GB) into second reader. Noted its drive letter was “E:”.
8– Ran Balena Etcher to “clone” the RAK’s SD card to the larger one. Don’t make a mistake; you’re going from source (32 GB) to destination (64, or 128 GB). Might take 30 minutes for 64 GB; twice that for 128.
9– (If cloning to same size card, don’t mistake which one is source vs. destination!) If you mix them up you will end up with two blank cards, neither of which has the data crucial to your now-useless v1 hotspot.
10– (If Balena finishes the clone step but complains of error when beginning the verify step, I found it was safe to ignore this error.) If you cloned to a larger card, you need to “expand” the last partition that you wrote onto the new SD card, so the space can be used.
You now have a fully-functioning backup SD card.
If you want to use the extra space of your new card, continue on…
(B) Expanding the partition on the newly-written card so you can use the extra space
11– I install “gparted”, the disk-partition editor. I did this on Linux, but a version exists on Windows (albeit harder to run). Update: I see that EaseUS Partition Master Professional on Windows can do this (resize an ext3 partition).
12– Run your partition-editing tool (gparted/linux for me) (perhaps EaseUS Partition Master Professional for you). Select your newly-written SD card.
CAUTION – partition-editing can break your computer if you make a big mistake. If you’re confused – back out and ask a friend.
Here I’ll assume it your new card is 64 GB big. You will see 3 “partitions” plus 32 GB of empty unallocated space on that card
The 1st partition is about 32 MB in size; it is probably the “boot partition” – a space where the hotspot’s firmware looks to see if the card contains something runnable. The 2nd partition is about 1 GB big; likely it has the Linux operating system that your hotspot runs. The 3rd partition is about 25 GB and is where the blockchain data resides. It’s this one that runs out of space.
But beyond that is 32 GB more of unusable space! Let’s fix that!
13– Grab the 25 GB partition (25 in my diagram) and drag its right edge to make it bigger. (Don’t go all the way; stop a little short, as in 0.002 GB less then available. I believe this will make subsequent backup-cloning simpler for you in the future next time – in case you ever clone to an SD card with a few bad/unusable blocks.) Don’t worry about that tiny bit of lost space; your hotspot won’t miss it.
14– From the top menu, execute the ‘resize’ operation that you specified. It will be very fast – under 1 minute.
DONE! You now have a good copy of your hotspot’s “boot sector”, operating system, and data – on a bigger SD card!
Verifying your hotspot works with the new, bigger SD card
15– Put the SD card back into your v1 hotspot. Heed BFGNeil’s caution to not drop the card into the opening!
16– Connect to the hotspot using the Helium app on your phone. Use the steps described in the “Diagnostics – optional” section. Keep interrogating your hotspot.
17– Observe the “Height”. Within 10 minutes you should see the number climb, as your hotspot synchronizes with the blockchain.
18– Once the “Height” increases – you’re done! Your hotspot is synchronizing, and should eventually catch back up and begin earning.
Re-stating this – if yours is v1.5 or v2 or MNTD, you don’t need to do the above.
(But as I noted elsewhere, I believe the WiFi reception in the v1 is stronger than the RAK/MNTD, so these v1 units have some advantages over the brand-new ones. This takes some of the sting out of the above steps)
