Installed OS X Snow Leopard on external HDD, now won't allow me to delete files from Mac internal drive

Hi,
I am stuck!  My 1 TB iMac 27" decided to stop booting up and would only stay at the grey screen with the apple, gear turning and progress bar. When it got to a certain point on the progress bar it would shut down.  Thanks to so many helpful people and their experiences I was able to try many different things including (Command + S, typing /sbin/mount -uw / enter , chmod 775 / enter, logout enter, then rebooting holding down Command + V) and (Reinstalling OS X and using Disk Utility to repair - came up with Disk can't be fixed).
Nothing worked until I read a couple of very wise answers who said "Your hard drive is not dead, but too full...keep at least 10% free at all times". I was down to about 1% (ooops!)  Thankfully hubby had bought me an external HDD for Christmas, onto which I installed OS X and being connected to my iMac, it recognized my internal Macintosh HD and all my files are there.  Phewww!  But I don't want to use my external HDD as my startup disk, I wan't to keep my Macintosh HD for startup but it is too full to repair and select as startup.
My problem is that I cannot delete files from Macintosh HD, and I've tried to unlock files/folders but they don't seem to be locked.  But when I drag them to the trash can it says "The item ... can't be moved to the Trash because it can't be deleted."  Again, many helpful answers online, but nothing is working.  I have 2 Finder windows open, one with external HDD (new startup disk), and old HDD (Macintosh HD) but all items in Macintosh HD can't be altered or deleted (right click doesn't highlight to change the name).  So if I can't delete my files, I can't reinstall OS X and repair disk and select it as my startup disk.  I'd be so thrilled if someone can help me.  I have tried unlocking folders, and I downloaded 'Trashit'. Neither worked, so I figure because it has the little pencil crossed out on the menu bar that it is protected somehow...I just don't know how/what to do.  Thanks

Ok, so I'll try set it out a bit clearer than my first post,
This is what I've done, and the results:
1. My son unplugged working iMac Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2, 1TB with only 11GB available space
2. Turned it on and got the white screen, apple, turning gear and load-up bar
3. Turned Mac off and waited 1/2 a minute.
4. Turned Mac back on...(same as 3.), tried again many times
5. Began searching internet for answers (see original post)
6. Found answers and did the following:
               1.     Put OS X installation disk into drive
               2.     Attached External Hard Drive
               3.     Installed OS X onto External Hard Drive (With a different name & password to original HDD)
               4.     Found Macintosh HD still worked so tried to delete files only to get message saying                                           files couldn't be deleted (see original post)
I've tried changing the permissions in 'Get Info' and this is what happens:
1.Right click Macintosh HD - says "You can only read"
                                                  Name: System - Read & Write
                                                             Admin -   Read & Write
                                                             Everyone - Read only
2.Click on padlock to unlock - doesn't turn black to be able to change anything
3.Check the box "Ignore ownership on this volume" (someone else advised to do this)
4.Name changes to 'mydrive (Me)'
5.Lock padlock and Name still says mydrive (Me) but still 'You can only read'
I don't know what is wrong or what to do, but perhaps you are right LowLuster, that because I named them different names it is protected in some way.
My thought now is to copy all my files to the external HDD and then erase and install again on my internal HD, but I really need my calendar, emails etc from my old HD and not sure they can be found on the old HD to copy over.
Still stuck!

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    You can't if the Mac is a Late 2011 and later, perhaps if it's a Early 2011 (as some came with 10.6 and some with 10.7) and it should be possible for all Intel Mac's earlier than Early 2011.
    Also, like what has occurred in the past, Apple does eventually issues a firmware update in later OS X versions so that earlier OS X versions, despite the Mac previously being able to boot from them, won't any longer. However far as I know Apple hasn't done this quite yet, but will one day.
    Baring those issues, if you installed 10.6 on a external drive using a machine specific black/gray disk from another Mac, it has hardware drivers for that model/year of Mac only.
    If you used the 10.6 white retail disks from Apple, it only has hardware drivers for all previous Intel Mac's that came originally with 10.6.2 or earlier from the factory. Mac's with 10.6.3 or later on the drive from the factory have different hardware drivers, thus not on the 10.6.3 white retail disk.
    To find out what OS X version came on your machines, use the free MacTracker and use your model indentifier in the Apple menu More > Info (aka System Profiler)
    So for those Mac's that originally came with 10.6.3 or later, machine specific disks must be gotten from Apple, or if your really talented, it's possible to create a univeral 10.6-10.6.8 install disk by combing the 10.6.3 image with the 10.6.8 combo update which will boot on any Intel Mac if the firmware permits and the hardware drivers are compable.
    There is a method to bypass the firmware and install on Mac's that are Early 2011/Late 2011 via Target Disk Mode, or via taking the drive out of the machine as some Late 2011's use the same hardware drivers as the Early 2011 machines (only a processor bump basically)
    How to revert your Mac to Snow Leopard
    For the MacAir, you can install 10.6 via a USB thumb drive, of course provided it has the hardware drivers.
    http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html
    So in your case you likely should be rather looking at running Snow Leopard in a virtual machine program in Mountain Lion, which MichealLax over at MacRumors has perfected a technique.
    Windows in BootCamp or Virtual Machine?
    http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1365439

  • Snow Leopard on external firewire hard drive keeps crashing/freezing

    I own a 2006 iMac that came with OS X 10.4 Tiger installed and it has always been stable and reliable. Lately I had the need to use some software that only ran on OS X Snow Leopard so I installed an external Firewire (Western Digital) 260GB hard drive and put OS X Snow Leopard on it. For the first few months, everything ran fine, but as the drive slowly filled up (or perhaps with time), my Leopard external drive started giving problems, most commonly, it would lose its Ethernet connection for no reason, or I would get a line of black/multicoloured pixels appearing across my Firefox browser (or something else weird would happen to the display), followed by the rainbow wheel spinning indefinitely... this happened more and more often, when I opened too many applications at the same time, or more than 3-4 tabs in Firefox. Occasionally the screen would "white out" or go completely black. I'd have to physically switch the computer off and on again.
    However, I still have not even used 20% of the hard disk space so its not a matter of the hard drive becoming full...
    The Tiger internal drive is still running 100% fine so it's not a problem with my RAM...
    I've tried verifying/repairing the disk, but it doesn't show any problems. Any ideas about what I should try doing next?
    Thanks in advance for any pointers.
    Message was edited by: artemisworks

    Just so I understand this correctly:
    1. Your internal hard drive is on Tiger?
    2. Your external (a WD) is on Snow Leopard?
    3. Where is the "partition"? Do you have either drive partitioned?
    4. You only have the problems when you are booted from/working on something using the external drive?
    I've seen quite a few posts here regarding problems with external Western Digital drives; it appears that their internal drives are fine, but the externals do not play nice with Macs after a while (maybe the enclosure they use??).
    In any case, if your problems are only when using the Western Digital, I'd say return it if possible, get it replaced, or buy a different brand and use the WD as a not-often-needed extra backup.

  • I bought a macbook pro on november 2011 wich had Lion OS installed on it. Playback plug-in in Mainstage 2.1.3 does not play files from the beginning (it leaves out like 50 mSecs or so). Is there a way to revert to Snow Leopard OS?

    I bought a macbook pro on november 2011 wich had Lion OS installed on it. Playback plug-in in Mainstage 2.1.3 does not play files from the beginning (it leaves out like 50 mSecs or so). Is there a way to revert to Snow Leopard OS?

    BrettGoudy wrote:
    ...Is there any way I can install a partition that runs snow leopard on my early 2011 MB pro with what I have (new SSD, New RAM, Current version Lion running, no external drive, lack of original snow leopard disks [I lost them ] and the general 10.6.3 snow leopard boot disks)...
    As the last post suggests, call Apple and order a replacement original disc for about $17.  They will ask you the model and serial numbers.
    Your retail version of Snow Leopard OS 10.6.3 will not work on that Mac as it requires a minimum of OS X 10.6.7 to boot and operate.
    Another alternative is to again borrow another Mac to install your retail Snow Leopard into an external HD or partition, upgrade it to 10.6.8 and then clone it back to a partition on your MBP.

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