Hi,

 

I successfully installed and tested PiClone (or also called SD Card Copier) in Armbian 25.8.1 Trixie on a Raspberry PI 4b with SD cards and SSD via USB adapter and vice versa. Might also work on other Debian based distro's. I just leave my personal instructions here in case others need PiClone too to make copy of good working Armbian install and configuration. To be clear I am not a very advanced user, so others may know to do more efficient. But it is working here without issue.

 

Moved to Armbian because was fed up with annoyances in DietPI, certain things being too different from pure Debian that I use on "regular" computers. Raspberry PI OS is too much slower than DietPI, Raspberry PI OS Lite with custom DE install too many bugs and errors. Armbian so far seems best option. Very close to "real" Debian and seems even faster than DietPI. 

 

In DietPI based on Bookworm could install app PiClone via apt, but in Armbian Trixie not, probably not in official Debian repo for Trixie anymore. But in Bookworm based Debian instead of building and compiling PiClone at step 3 could try: sudo apt install piclone.

 

SO I INSTALLED PICLONE LIKE THIS:

 

1) DEPENDENCIES:

 

-NEEDED VIA TERMINAL: sudo apt-get install debhelper dh-autoreconf libglib2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev parted dosfstools e2fsprogs coreutils mount uuid zenity dbus-x11 libgtk-3-0

 

-ALSO NEEDED: sudo apt-get install libtool automake autoconf nasm pkgconf

 

2) INSTALL APP VIA TERMINAL:

 

 

wget https://github.com/raspberrypi-ui/piclone/archive/refs/heads/master.zip -O piclone.zip
unzip piclone.zip
cd piclone-master

 

THEN: 

 

-sudo apt install meson
-meson setup builddir
-cd builddir
-meson compile
-sudo meson install

 

3) START APP

 

Now can start PiClone app via application menu or in terminal type "piclone" and enter.

 

Sources:

 

1) LAST STEP INSTALL PICLONE ITSELF WAS NOT WORKING: https://www.childs.be/articles/post/how-to-install-raspberry-pis-sd-card-copier-on-your-non-raspian-linux-machine 

 

2) LAST STEP INSTALL PICLONE APP VIA THIS LINK: https://github.com/raspberrypi-ui/piclone#

Edited November 11, 2025Nov 11 by J-on-ARMBIAN
typo's

Corrected in OP, Armbian version 25.8.1. Accidentally in post wrongly wrote 28.81

Edited November 11, 2025Nov 11 by J-on-ARMBIAN

Thank you for sharing.

You might want to have a look at Shrink Backup as well.