What you did should work in principle, but there are a couple of very common gotchas when cloning Raspberry Pi SD cards—especially when increasing size.
Let’s go through the likely causes and fixes.
🚫 Why the 128GB card won’t boot
1. Partition layout didn’t expand (or got corrupted)
When you clone a 64GB image onto a 128GB card, the partition table is copied exactly as-is. That means:
- The Pi still sees a ~64GB layout
- The remaining ~64GB is unallocated
- Sometimes the partition table or alignment ends up slightly off → Pi won’t boot at all
2. Boot partition issue
The Raspberry Pi boots from a small FAT32 partition. If this gets corrupted or misaligned during imaging:
- The Pi will appear completely dead (no LED activity or no HDMI output)
3. SD card compatibility
Not all SD cards behave the same way in a Pi:
- Some 128GB cards (especially certain brands or counterfeit ones) fail to boot
- The Pi 4 usually supports large cards fine, but formatting matters
4. Imaging method issue
Some tools (including older versions of Active@ Disk Image) can:
- Copy hidden sectors incorrectly
- Mis-handle GPT/MBR differences
- Create a non-bootable clone even if the process “succeeds”
✅ Best way to fix it
🔧 Option 1 (Recommended): Re-image cleanly and expand
Instead of cloning, do this:
- Download Raspberry Pi OS again
- Use Raspberry Pi Imager
- Flash directly to the 128GB card
- Boot the Pi
👉 On first boot, it will automatically expand to fill the full 128GB
🔧 Option 2: Fix your cloned card
If you want to salvage your clone:
Step 1 – Check if it boots at all
- Insert card → power Pi
- Watch LEDs:
- No activity → boot partition issue
- Blinking → OS issue
Step 2 – Repair filesystem
Put the 128GB card in a Linux machine or Pi and run:
sudo fdisk -l
Check:
- Does it show partitions?
- Is the boot partition (~256MB FAT32) present?
Step 3 – Expand partition
If it does boot (or mounts):
sudo raspi-config
Then:
Advanced Options → Expand Filesystem
Reboot afterward.
Step 4 – Use GParted (more reliable)
If it doesn’t boot but partitions exist:
Use GParted on another Linux machine:
- Resize the main partition to fill the disk
- Apply changes
- Safely eject and retry
⚠️ Common pitfalls to check
- Card is actually 128GB (fake cards are common)
- Card is formatted MBR, not GPT (Pi prefers MBR for boot)
- Power supply is solid (Pi 4 is picky)
- Try another SD card reader when imaging
🧠 Quick diagnosis trick
Put the 128GB card in your computer:
- If you only see one small partition (~256MB) → boot partition OK, root missing/damaged
- If you see nothing or weird sizes → bad clone
- If it looks normal → likely needs filesystem expansion
👍 My recommendation
Cloning is convenient, but for Raspberry Pi upgrades it’s often less reliable than a fresh install + copying your data.