Create a new SD card for Organelle (complete description for Windows)

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I need a new SD card replacement with backup for my worn out 4.1 SD card, and I want another new SD card that would contain the current OS so I can switch and try both. I found the information about these topics a bit confusing so I asked Claude to put it all together. If you know about these things and find anything that is wrong, outdated, or not complete enough, I’d be grateful if you could comment with your suggestions.
Here is Claude’s complete guide.

Organelle M: backing up the internal microSD card and making a new card with OS 5.1 (Windows 11)

Two separate jobs, in this order:

  1. Make a byte-for-byte backup image of the card that is currently in the Organelle, so you can always get back exactly where you were.
  2. Flash a second, new card with the current Organelle OS, so you can swap between old and new at will.

You never have to overwrite the original card. Keeping it untouched is the whole point.

0. Which card to buy

  • The OS image requires 8 GB or larger.
  • The image writes a fixed layout (roughly 4 GB system + 4 GB patch storage) and does not auto-expand on first boot. Extra capacity just stays unallocated unless you resize the partitions by hand (rupa’s guide: https://gist.github.com/rupa/9ee4d2f3f00c06c722b1ccd4ed58c50f).
  • So 16 GB is the practical choice, 32 GB if that’s what’s available. Bigger buys you nothing without resizing. Decent 8 GB cards are hard to find nowadays.
  • Buy a brand-name card (SanDisk Ultra/Extreme, Samsung EVO), Class 10 / A1. Card quality matters far more than capacity here — cheap no-name cards are a classic cause of boot trouble.

You will also need a microSD card reader, and a paperclip or pin.

1. Removing the card from the Organelle

  1. Power the Organelle off and unplug it.
  2. The card slot is behind the thin slit on the rear panel, between the MIDI In and the HDMI ports. It is easy to overlook.
  3. It is a push-push socket. Push the card in with a pin or straightened paperclip until it clicks; it then springs out a few millimetres and you can pull it free. Trying to pull it out first is exactly why it feels stuck.
  4. Put the card in your reader and plug that into the PC.

Windows will greet you with one or more dialogs saying “You need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it.” — always click Cancel. The card holds Linux partitions Windows cannot read. This is normal and the card is fine.

2. Backing up the current card

2a. Full disk image (recommended)

This copies the entire card — OS, patches, settings, everything — into a single .img file you can write back later.

Tool: Win32 Disk Imager — https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
(Small, native Windows, and unlike Etcher it can read a card into a file.)

  1. Install and start it (right-click → Run as administrator).
  2. Under Image File, click the folder icon, navigate to where you want the backup, and type a new file name, e.g. Organelle-OS41-backup.img.
  3. Under Device, select the drive letter of the card. Windows usually assigns a letter to the small boot partition; that letter is the correct one to pick — the tool reads the whole physical card, not just that partition.
  4. Tick Read Only Allocated Partitions if the option is present. This skips empty space and makes the file much smaller.
  5. Click Read and wait. An 8 GB card takes roughly 10–20 minutes depending on the reader.

Notes:

  • Without the “allocated partitions” option, the .img will be the full nominal size of the card (an 8 GB card gives an 8 GB file), regardless of how much is actually used.
  • The image can only be restored to a card of equal or larger capacity. Nominal sizes vary slightly between manufacturers, so restoring an 8 GB image onto a 16 GB card is safe, but 8 GB → another 8 GB occasionally isn’t.
  • Alternatives if you dislike Win32 Disk Imager: USB Image Tool (can write compressed backups), or balenaEtcher’s Clone drive function, which copies card→card directly. Clone drive needs a second card of at least the same size and has a mixed reliability record, so prefer the image file.

2b. Restoring the backup later

Write the .img back to a card with Win32 Disk Imager’s Write button, or with balenaEtcher (Flash from file). Same procedure as flashing a fresh OS.

2c. Additionally: a file-level backup of your patches

Worth doing even if you have the disk image, because it gives you patches you can actually open on the PC. Connect the Organelle to WiFi, start the web server from Settings → WiFi Setup, open the Organelle’s IP address in a browser, then select patch folders, Zip them, and download.

3. Downloading the OS image

Current release, for Organelle M / S / S2 — OS 5.1:

https://cgdiskimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/OGSMS2_v5.1.img.zip

Previous release (models M and S only), OS 4.2:

https://cgdiskimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/OGM-v4.2.img.zip

OS 5 does not support the original Organelle 1.

4. Downloading the flasher

balenaEtcher for Windows — https://www.balena.io/etcher/

Install it or use the portable build. Right-click → Run as administrator if it doesn’t see the card.

5. Flashing the new card

  1. Put the new card in the reader. (Take the original one out first, so there is no chance of picking the wrong drive.)
  2. Etcher → Flash from file → choose the downloaded .zip. Do not unzip it; Etcher reads the zip directly.
  3. Select target → pick the card. Check capacity and drive letter carefully — Etcher writes raw sectors and will destroy the wrong disk without hesitation.
  4. Flash!, then let the verification pass finish.
  5. Windows will again offer to format the disk. Cancel.
  6. Eject the card via the taskbar icon.

6. Putting the new card in

  1. Insert it into the slit on the rear panel, contacts oriented the same way the old one came out.
  2. Push it in with the pin until you feel or hear the click. If the card can be wiggled noticeably, it isn’t seated in the socket — push again.
  3. Power on. The first boot takes a little longer than usual.
  4. Check Settings → Info; it should report version 5.1.

Swapping back to the old card is the same procedure, so you can keep one card on your old OS and one on 5.1 indefinitely.

What’s different in OS 5.x

  • Factory patches are sorted into PLAY (8 new synth patches) and EXPLORE (the 100+ classic patches). These are ordinary folders and can be rearranged.
  • Pd is version 0.53.
  • Browser-based editor with a code editor, compile button, error console, and a web terminal. Lua, Chuck and Faust are installed.
  • The WiFi Access Point (the “ORGANELLE” hotspot) is disabled as of 5.1. You must join an existing network, and reach the web interface by typing the Organelle’s IP address — the organellem.local hostname is currently unreliable.
  • mother.pd and the OSC messaging are unchanged, so existing patches should generally still run.

Side note: Organelle hangs at boot with a dark green LED

A healthy boot goes: steady pale green briefly → blinking blue → Patches menu. Stalling at green means the boot never completed. In order of what to try:

  1. Reseat the internal card (section 1, without flashing anything): push it in until it clicks, pull it, push it back until it clicks.
  2. Check the power supply: 9 V DC, 1000 mA minimum, 2.1 mm centre-positive. An ageing or underpowered adapter produces exactly this kind of intermittent boot failure.
  3. Try a freshly flashed card. A card that has been in daily use for years is the prime suspect — flash wear typically shows up first as intermittent boot failures that disappear on a retry, which matches this symptom well. If the new card boots reliably every time, that was it.

Sources: Organelle M / S / S2 User Manual, section 7.1 (docs.critterandguitari.com) and the OS v5 announcement on the Critter & Guitari forum.