PLEASE HELP! LOSING FAITH! Saving image to sd card

Hi! Okay so I got a BBB Rev C in the mail, no sd card came with it so I bought one (8gb). I turned on the BBB and had to change a driver on my computer (Windows 10) to be able to see the board in putty, success. The software that is on it is old and nothing will work properly. I downloaded:### Stretch LXQT (with graphical desktop) for BeagleBone via microSD card- Debian 9.4 2018-06-17 4GB SD LXQT image

  • Which downloaded as an .img.xz file. I used 7-Zip to extract the files (i just clicked ok, never chose a specific folder), and the files were extracted to an .img file. When I click on this new file, windows says that it is corrupted, and I do not know what is going on. If I use Win32DiskImager or Etcher, both programs say that writing the image was successful! But it is not! if i remove the sd card and insert it back in my computer, everything is lost and I have to reformat it (Fat32)!
  • I do not know why I have to reformat the card, I do not know why I lose everything, I do not know why files are being corrupted, I do not know why the image will not stay on the sd card, and I do not know if a previous software being installed on the board can cause issues.

PLEASE HELP!!!

There's no reason to extract the *.img.xz file, etcher.io will
correctly write the image to a microSD card as is..

Windows doesn't know how to read a ext4 partition, thus it would like
to format it..

Just stick the microSD into the BBB.

Regards,

On Wed, 22 Aug 2018 11:51:23 -0700 (PDT), Garrett Higgins
<gahigg1@umbc.edu> declaimed the following:

  - Which downloaded as an .img.xz file. I used 7-Zip to extract the files

  Where were you told to extract the contents? Etcher directly reads the
.xz format (Win32DiskImager might need the first level extract).

  successful! But it is not! if i remove the sd card and insert it back in my
  computer, everything is lost and I have to reformat it (Fat32)!

  Nothing is lost... A properly written image will be a Linux ext3 or
ext4 partition. Windows does not have drivers to read Linux partitions,
which is why it says you need to reformat.

  If Etcher said it was successful, stuff the card into the Beagle and
boot the Beagle. Once in, you may need to expand the partition (the image
writes a 4-GB partition, leaving larger cards with a lot of wasted space).
Probably want to configure your time zone too.

  sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

  cd /opt/scripts/tools
  sudo git pull
  sudo ./grow_partition.sh

(and reboot after that)