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C H A P T E R 2
G E T T I N G S T A R T E D W I T H T H E R A S P B E R R Y P I
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Installing NOOBS on an SD Card
The Raspberry Pi Foundation supplies a software tool for the Pi known as New Out-Of-Box
Software , or NOOBS . This tool, is intended to make it as easy as possible to get started with
using the Pi, and is available pre-installed on SD cards bundled with Raspberry Pi boards as
well as separately and as a free download. It provides a selection of different operating sys-
tems for installation on the Pi, along with tools for changing its configuration.
If you have purchased an SD card with NOOBS already installed on it, you need do nothing
at this stage. If not, download the latest version of the NOOBS software from the Raspberry
Pi Foundation at
www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
. Note that this is a large file, and
can take some considerable time to download; if you are on a capped Internet connection of
around 1 GB a month, you will be unable to download the file. In this case, invest in an SD
card with NOOBS preloaded from any Raspberry Pi-carrying retailer.
To use NOOBS, you’ll need an SD card of at least 4 GB capacity, and preferably at least 8 GB to
give you room to install additional software as you use the Pi. You’ll also need an existing com-
puter with an SD card reader, either built-in as with some models of laptop or an add-on device.
To begin, insert the SD card into the card reader. If you have previously used your SD card with
another device, such as a digital camera or games console, follow the link on the Raspberry Pi
Downloads page to the SD Card Association’s formatting tool and use this to
format the SD
card, preparing it for the installation. If the card is new, you can safely skip this step.
The NOOBS software is provided as a Zip archive. This is a file format where the data is compressed ,
so that it takes up less space and is quicker to download. Double-clicking on the file should be
A Note on Storage
As you’ve probably noticed, the Raspberry Pi doesn’t have a traditional hard drive. Instead, it
uses a
Secure Digital (SD) memory card , a solid-state storage system typically used in digital
cameras. Almost any SD card will work with the Raspberry Pi, but because it holds the entire
operating system, you need a card with at least 4 GB in capacity to store all the required files.
SD cards with the operating system preloaded are available from the official Raspberry Pi
Store as well as with numerous other sites on the Internet. If you’ve purchased one of
these, or received it in a bundle with your Pi, you can simply plug it into the SD card slot on
the bottom side of the left-hand edge.
Some SD cards work better than others, with some models refusing to work at all with the
Raspberry Pi. For an up-to-date list of SD card models known to work with the Pi, visit the
eLinux Wiki page at
http://www.elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards
.