Some PC tools may be able to access an EXT4 image directly.

You can however image the sdcard and mount the image in a Linux VM that understands the EXT4 filesystem, which I assume is what the sdcard is using.

Imaging just a partition strips off all boot info so you definitely don't want that.īasically you need to forget all thought of turning the SDcard into an 'ISO' or of getting the ARM based RPi OS to boot on an x86 PC. There will be a secondary (ARM coded) boot on the sdcard tho, designed to be compatible with the RPi bootloader. Another problem is I don't think an RPI sdcard is even bootable in the standalone sense: AIUI the bootloader is in flash on the RPi itself. The RPi is ARM based so you obviously won't be able to boot that on an x86 PC (whether or not the PC is also a VM). Also, just like all disk drives, there are a number of requirements of an image before you can boot from it, not least that boot code has to be present, and both boot code and OS has to be for the right processor. So while all ISO files are indeed raw disk images, not all raw disk images are ISO files - and giving the file a lying extension will cause confusion, it will not help. ISO is not a synonym for 'raw disk image', it directly refers to the ISO-9660 (and later relative) filesystems found on an optical disk.

Vbox raspberry pi