Apple Genius Bar Triage Hard Drive

Question

I was recently at the apple store and noticed that one of the technicians was using an external hard drive with 10.4 triage, 10.5 triage, and 10.6 triage. Where could I get the contents of that hard drive?

Answer 1

Because 10.4 & 10.5 & 10.6 can't all run on the same Mac, there are a couple workarounds:
1. Use as the basis one of the pre-October 26, 2007 Intel Macs to create installations of all three on separate partitions. Mind you Intel Macs start at 10.4.4, so you'd be limited to 10.4.4 or later on the first partition.
2. Create a 10.4 Apple Partition Map, and a 10.5 and 10.6 GUID partition map partition on the same hard drive using these tips:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006061610374449
Either solution won't give you more than a basis for running troubleshooting applications. They won't give you a fully functional backup that can then reliably be used as a clone to your specific Mac. There may be specific drivers inherant to the specific Mac in question. Some tools, are specific to authorized service technicians alone, while others such as those by Micromat and Alsoft can be bought by end user to go on those discs.