Writing the Raspbian Stretch image to a microSD card

After downloading Etcher and the Raspbian Stretch image, let's write Raspbian Stretch to our microSD card:

  1. Insert the microSD card into the microSD card reader, then connect the card reader to your laptop via USB:
  1. Next, open Etcher and click on the Select Image button. After this, select the Raspbian Stretch ZIP file and click on Open:
  1. After that, make sure that the microSD card reader drive is selected, as in the following screenshot. If any other drive is selected by mistake, click on the Change button and select the microSD card drive. Click on the Flash! button to write the Raspbian OS to the microSD card:
The process of writing or flashing an  image to an SD card is also called  booting.

It will take around 15-20 minutes for Etcher to flash your SD card with the Raspbian OS:

Once the OS is written to the SD card, Etcher will automatically eject the microSD card reader.

Now that we've written Raspbian Stretch to our microSD card, let's begin setting up the Raspberry Pi 3B+.