The Pi Hut has a straightforward tutorial on how to update Raspbian on your microSD for your new Raspberry Pi 2.
So, you have bought yourself a Raspberry Pi 2 to supplement your previous Pi, but you want to use the same microSD card as the old Pi? The processor in the new Pi2 is based on the ARM 7, with the old Pi (models A, A+, B and B+) based on the ARM 6. What this actually means is that the Pi’s brain has been upgraded to a newer version, with the side effect of the original operating system needing an upgrade to work on the Pi2. You can’t just plug the old microSD into to the new Pi2 without first upgrading the operating system.
There are three options:
- Download the new version of Raspbian from the Raspberry Pi website and overwrite your microSD card.
- Copying the files from the microSD card onto a memory stick and use option 1. We will be covering this in a future tutorial.
- Upgrading the operating system on the microSD card, keeping everything else in place.
With option 1 you will lose everything on your microSD card, including all your hard work and configurations. While it’s nice to have everything new, it’s not necessary and why should you use all your hard work?Option 2 is the next best thing – you can keep some files, but you will lose the configuration, settings and any programs that you have installed.
Option 3 is the best option. You can upgrade the operating system on your Pi so that it will work on your new Pi2. In fact, after upgrade it will work in both the old Pi and the new Pi2, so you have the best of both worlds!
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