The excellent Raspberry Pi Imager software is ideal for burning zipped operating system images to a SD card or hard drive. There’s no need to unzip the file as Imager does it for you.
Here’s the step-by-step process:
- Download the free Imager from here: Raspberry Pi Imager software:
- Double-click the downloaded file to install the Imager.
- Run the Imager
- Insert your blank SD card (16GB or more) into a card reader on your Windows computer
- Click the Operating System box (left-hand) of Imager and scroll down to Use Custom
- Navigate to the zip file that you want to burn
- Move to the Storage box in Imager and choose your blank SD card. Be careful here to choose the correct drive
- Click the Write box and follow the prompts
- When the copy has been verified you will see a message to that effect
- Move your new card to the Pi, which may boot a couple of times before being ready for use.