The first thing we need to do is put an operating system on the SD card using another computer. You can buy SD cards with preinstalled software, but doing it yourself guarantees that you get the latest updates and is also a useful learning experience. These instructions assume that you are using a computer running Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X; if you are using another operating system or having difficulties, detailed instructions are available online at http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads.
There is a Troubleshooting section at the end of the chapter if you get stuck. We can prepare the SD card by performing the following steps:
Download the SD association's formatting tool, SD Formatter, from http://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/.
Download the latest version of the NOOBS (offline install) operating system collection from http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads.
Insert the SD card into the SD card writer (shown in the following image):
If the SD card writer is separate from your computer, plug it in.
Install and run the SD Formatter (shown in the following screenshot). Select the SD card you just inserted and click on Format. In this example, the SD card is drive G, but this will vary from computer to computer.
Note
Make absolutely sure that you have the right SD card selected. All the data will be lost from the formatted card.
Extract the contents of the NOOBS ZIP file to the SD card. The way this is done will vary depending on what software you have installed, but will typically involve double-clicking on
NOOBS.zip, clicking on Extract or Extract to..., and selecting the SD card as the destination. There is a lot to extract, so this will take a few minutes to complete.Safely remove/eject the SD card and take it out of the SD writer, as shown in the following figure:
