Can i revert to snow leopard from lion without a time machine backup?

can I revert to snow leopard from lion without a time machine backup?

You can with a Snow Leopard DVD, but if you don't have that or a Time Machine backup there's no way.

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Can I restore to Snow Leopard from Lion using time machine?

Can I restore to Snow Leopard from Lion using time machine? I did not make a new partition on my external HD. My reason for doing this is to import data from Quicken 2007 to Quicken Essentials and then upgrade back to Lion. Can I restart and hold down the "OPTION" key upon start up that will take me to Apple Recovery HD and recover from time machine? I'm a noob at these sort of things. I appreciate your comments and suggestions.

Probably not. See Kappy's going back to SL from Lion guide.

How can I revert to Snow Leopard from Mountain Lion on a 2013 iMac?

I have a brand new 27" 2.9Ghz iMac, bought a few days ago, equipped with Mountain Lion. I'm using it for recording, and at the time, my recording software and hardware are incompatible. On Snow Leopard, however, it all runs flawlessly. I know I can't simply revert to Snow Leopard, as there is some sort of firmware that blocks these types of downgrades. Can I partition the internal hardrive and install Snow Leopard and boot from that partition? I have no real use for Mt. Lion for the time being, so I wouldn't need to boot them both simultaneously or even go back and forth. I just want Snow Leopard...any help would be much appreciated. Thanks

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
You have different problems with a Late 2012 iMac and Snow Leopard:
1. The firmware doesn't allow you to run it.
2. Snow Leopard isn't compatible because it hasn't got the drivers for the hardware of the iMac. Furthermore, you can only run OS X 10.8.1, 10.8.2 or 10.8.3 on a Late 2012 iMac at the moment, because older versions haven't got the drivers it needs.
3. It's illegal.
As you can see, you can't run Snow Leopard natively. If this is a requirement, I suggest you to return your iMac and search a Mid 2011 iMac with Snow Leopard (there are some Mid 2011 iMacs that came with Snow Leopard, although most of them came with OS X Lion). If you don't find anything, buy a Mid 2010 iMac.
Another possibility is to buy Snow Leopard Server and install it on a virtual machine, but I doubt it's legal

Why I reverted to Snow Leopard from Lion....

Mac Mini (Late 2009)
2GHz Processor
2G RAM
320GB Hard Drive
I've loved this computer from the moment I got it....used...on eBay...Leopard disk included, but wiped clean by seller. My second Apple purchase after the iPhone 4. I loved the way that Apple products did away with the annoying "thinking time" so familiar to PC users....they just worked (bleugh!). They didn't get sick, they didn't slow down, they made your whole computing experience less computational and more creative.
Snow Leopard, when it came out, made my second hand Mac even better, took up less space and just seemed to run extremely smoothly. As a musician, I record into CPU-intensive programs like Ableton, and yet, my ickle 2 Gig box handled the loads superbly.
Lion, on the other hand has turned out to be a major disappointment....
After the initial 'excitement' of side-swiping webpages had worn off, I began to notice that the computer was very slow, with that beachball appearing much too frequently for my tastes...I got several spinning hourglass flashbacks! I thought I had left those days behind me....Ableton started using massive amounts of CPU and doubling it's RAM consumption, to the point where the mouse would freeze, drop-down menus would appear blank, basically the whole system freezing until I closed the offending program...in this case Ableton. I was seriosuly considering upgrading my RAM, but my gut instinct was that Lion was causing it. I checked the forums, and found a few incidents of people with similar problems, saying Lion was the culprit. They were being arrogantly dismissed as fools for daring to criticise anything Apple related. I'm no expert, but I know when my computer is not working the way it should. So I searched YouTube for the method of reverting to Snow Leopard...sat up late last night completing it...but it was well worth it. I'm back on 10.6.8
I now love my Mac Mini again.....all my programs run faster, RAM and CPU usage is down, no more spinning hourglasses, I mean BEACHBALLS
My verdict:
Snow Leopard is a fantastic operating system.
Lion is not.
I don't know or care for the politics of why it is not, but a few gimmicky tricks and full-screen apps do not even begin to make up for the frustration of using a slow, buggy operating system, that developers say was rushed out and no't tested properly...I believe them!
I have heard a few people refer to possible power management problems with Lion....sounds plausible
Lion is Apple's Vista.
Cheers for reading my first post
Paul

Welcome to the crowd.
I reverted my MBP 3,1 back to Snow and the Lion black death and video artifacts are gone.
Yes, Lion certainly needs to go back into the oven for more cooking, unfortunately they release it and inflict millions with it and don't have a easy, user friendly method to revert.
Not only that they make UI changes that people just have to blindly accept, with no option to turn them off.
Things needs to change, even Windows has System Restore and some measure to revert some features back to what they were and let change be accepted gradually.
Storage drives are fat, some with as much as 750GB, there isn't a reason in the world not to provide two OS''s on one drive to ease the transition between the two. Let those who can afford to beta test with arrows in their backs do so.
Let the rest of us who just want our computers to work left alone, we don't want new features if it they don't work reliably yet.
The way it is now, when a new OS is about to be released, one has to run out and buy new hardware prematurely because the whole next year will be nothing but misery.
Really nice way to treat newcomers to the Mac experience.
Change and improvement is welcome, but it has to be gradual and reliable. Not sudden and drastic.

Can't downgrade to Snow Leopard from Lion will not recognise imac dvd

iMac 27-inch, Mid 2010
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 (11E53)
Can someone please tell me how I can downgrade from OS X Lion to Snow Leopard on my iMac
When i insert the DVD it just spins for about 10 seconds then ejects the dvd..
any help would be great thanks

Lion has installed a recovery partition on your Hard Drive and you must completely erase and reformat the Hard Drive before you can go back to Snow Leopard.
Check out some of downgrade threads just to the right in "More Like This"

Can i install snow leopard on Macbook without using Time Machine?

Hi, I've backed up my files using SuperDuper and made 2 copies of my data on 2 usb sticks. Do I also need to use Time Machine to back up my files aswell, in order to update osx and install snow leopard?? If I've already got my 2 copies of my files on usb sticks, isn't that enough backing up? Any suggestions will be appreciated thanks!

aprilsviv wrote:
Thanks for answering, so did you manage to upgrade your mac with snow leopard without using time machine? I'd just like to make sure I'm doing the right thing.
To clear up some possible confusion, you don't need any backups (Time Machine or otherwise) to upgrade a Mac from an earlier OS version to Snow Leopard. To do that, just follow Apple's instructions to launch the "Install OS X" app on the Snow Leopard DVD, which upgrades the OS to Snow Leopard without changing your user settings, erasing or changing your user files, & so on. It is an easy process & generally works quite well.
The backup(s) are in case something goes wrong, which is unlikely but not impossible. You should regularly be backing up at least your important user files to an external device whether or not you upgrade ("important" meaning anything you can't afford to lose) since hard drives can fail without warning or other calamities might destroy some or all of the data on them.
At upgrade time, bootable clones like SuperDuper! makes are especially good insurance against any unforeseen upgrade problems: if something goes wrong you can just clone back to the internal drive & return to the pre-upgrade state, without having to hassle with installing anything.

Can I revert to Snow Leopard? Lion took my Office

I have two Macs - one an iMac, the other a laptop MacBook Pro.
Both came with and run well on Snow Leopard 10.6.6
I downloaded OS X Lion for the laptop and lost my Office 2004 and Parallels 6.
Can I revert to a Backup from pre-Lion? Do I need to do a clean install and lose all my downloaded apps eg Pages?
My iMac is as I want but it is frequently monopolised by She Who Must Be Obeyed who uses it alongside her work-from-home computer.

Hello:
"She who must be obeyed" That broke me up - TY for the chuckle!
Anyway, the way I would proceed would be to restore the system from either a Time Machine bakup or a bootlable clone. I don't think you would be able to reinstall OS X 10.6 on a system that has already been updated to OS X 10.7.
Barry
P.S. I encountered the Office 2004 issue myself. I decided that Office 2011 was not worth $150, so I moved to iWork. iWork included a word processing program (Pages) which is fully compatible with Microsoft's Word. I like it better, but that is just my own reaction.

How can I go back to Snow Leopard from lion without loosing files, etc.?

I recently downloaded Mac OS X Lion, but I can't stand it. I've heard you can't get a refund from the app store but I'm not sure how that works and I'd realy like my money back. Also, if I do downgrade, I'm not sure how to back up my files. I have music, documents, and pictures I don't want to lose. I don't have time machine. I have a usb but I'm not sure if it is capable of holding music from itunes? Other than that I'm not sure how else to back up things. I realize I have a lot of questions and I'm not exactly well informed with this stuff so any help would be greatly appreciated (:

See Kappy's going back to SL from Lion guide and Bombich's Get Ready for Lion tutorial.

Upgraded to snow leopard and now all my time machine backups are gone

Could this be related to the upgrade? This backup is fine as I have nothing to recover, but I don't understand why time machine won't perform an incremental backup. There are 340GB on the disk with 160GB available. The error message I receive is "This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 275.15 GB but only 160.90 GB are available." Shouldn't back up just be making an incremental backup (erasing GBS?)

Christine Rios wrote:
Could this be related to the upgrade? This backup is fine as I have nothing to recover, but I don't understand why time machine won't perform an incremental backup. There are 340GB on the disk with 160GB available. The error message I receive is "This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 275.15 GB but only 160.90 GB are available." Shouldn't back up just be making an incremental backup (erasing GBS?)
Normally, yes. How did you do the upgrade? If you erased your HD, installed Snow Leopard and used +Setup Assistant, Migration Assistant,+ or just drag & drop to restore your data, everything on the disk is considered changed, so Time Machine must do a full backup.
The 275 GB figure includes about 20% for workspace, so the estimated size of the actual backup is about 230 GB.
If that's a full backup, see #D3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) for the common causes.
If it's not a full one, see #D4 there.

Can't find iPhoto photos after downgrading to Snow Leopard from Lion

I had my photos on my External Hard Drive being used as a backup for TIme Machine.
After downgrading to Snow Leopard from Lion (my computer was running rediculusly slow likely due to being so close to the minimum requirements), I can not access any of my Time Machine dates prior to the date I downgraded. I have reinstalled Lion to try to access the files that way, but am having issues finding my old photos.
Any help would be appreciated as I've got about 15000 photos of my kids on there.

There are issues with iphoto which changes versions..
I would strongly recommend you do an archive of the TC before you do any more playing.
I presume the TC is the only place you have these photos stored??? So your entire library is hard disk erase from total annilahation.. not good!!
Load a real utility into Lion.. archive is not present on the new version.. why apple why??
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482
You can then do a full restore to an external drive.. or something fancy..
Pondini is the saviour here.
http://pondini.org/TM/15.html
There is a specific section on iphoto and its pain.
I strongly suggest you read the entire section from Q14-18 so you actually understand what TM does.

HT1338 Purchased a used macbook pro with Mountain Lion. My old Mac runs Snow Leopard is backed up to Time machine. How do I register the operating system to me and how do I use Time Machine to move my files to the new used computer?

Purchased a used macbook pro with Mountain Lion. My old Mac runs Snow Leopard is backed up to Time machine. How do I register the operating system to me and how do I use Time Machine to move my files to the new used computer?

If you look at the User Tips tab, you will find a write up on just this subject:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4053
The subject of buying/selling a Mac is quite complicated. Here is a guide to the steps involved. It is from the Seller's point of view, but easily read the other way too:
SELLING A MAC A
Internet Recovery, and Transferability of OS & iLife Apps
Selling an Old Mac:
• When selling an old Mac, the only OS that is legally transferable is the one that came preinstalled when the Mac was new. Selling a Mac with an upgraded OS isn't doing the new owner any favors. Attempting to do so will only result in headaches since the upgraded OS can't be registered by the new owner. If a clean install becomes necessary, they won't be able to do so and will be forced to install the original OS via Internet Recovery. Best to simply erase the drive and revert back to the original OS prior to selling any Mac.
• Additionally, upgrading the OS on a Mac you intend to sell means that you are leaving personally identifiable information on the Mac since the only way to upgrade the OS involves using your own AppleID to download the upgrade from the App Store. So there will be traces of your info and user account left behind. Again, best to erase the drive and revert to the original OS via Internet Recovery.
Internet Recovery:
• In the event that the OS has been upgraded to a newer version (i.e. Lion to Mountain Lion), Internet Recovery will offer the version of the OS that originally came with the Mac. So while booting to the Recovery Disk will show Mountain Lion as available for reinstall since that is the current version running, Internet Recovery, on the other hand, will only show Lion available since that was the OS shipped with that particular Mac.
• Though the Mac came with a particular version of Mac OS X, it appears that, when Internet Recovery is invoked, the most recent update of that version may be applied. (i.e. if the Mac originally came with 10.7.3, Internet Recovery may install a more recent update like 10.7.5)
iLife Apps:
• When the App Store is launched for the first time it will report that the iLife apps are available for the user to Accept under the Purchases section. The user will be required to enter their AppleID during the Acceptance process. From that point on the iLife apps will be tied to the AppleID used to Accept them. The user will be allowed to download the apps to other Macs they own if they wish using the same AppleID used to Accept them.
• Once Accepted on the new Mac, the iLife apps can not be transferred to any future owner when the Mac is sold. Attempting to use an AppleID after the apps have already been accepted using a different AppleID will result in the App Store reporting "These apps were already assigned to another Apple ID".
• It appears, however, that the iLife Apps do not automatically go to the first owner of the Mac. It's quite possible that the original owner, either by choice or neglect, never Accepted the iLife apps in the App Store. As a result, a future owner of the Mac may be able to successfully Accept the apps and retain them for themselves using their own AppleID. Bottom Line: Whoever Accepts the iLife apps first gets to keep them.
SELLING A MAC B
Follow these instructions step by step to prepare a Mac for sale:
Step One - Back up your data:
A. If you have any Virtual PCs shut them down. They cannot be in their "fast saved" state. They must be shut down from inside Windows.
B. Clone to an external drive using using Carbon Copy Cloner.
1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Select the Source volume from the Select a source drop down menu on the left side.
3. Select the Destination volume from the Select a destination drop down menu on the right
side.
4. Click on the Clone button. If you are prompted about creating a clone of the Recovery HD be
sure to opt for that.
Destination means a freshly erased external backup drive. Source means the internal
startup drive.
Step Two - Prepare the machine for the new buyer:
1. De-authorize the computer in iTunes! De-authorize both iTunes and Audible accounts.
2, Remove any Open Firmware passwords or Firmware passwords.
3. Turn the brightness full up and volume nearly so.
4. Turn off File Vault, if enabled.
5. Disable iCloud, if enabled: See.What to do with iCloud before selling your computer
Step Three - Install a fresh OS:
A. Snow Leopard and earlier versions of OS X
1. Insert the original OS X install CD/DVD that came with your computer.
2. Restart the computer while holding down the C key to boot from the CD/DVD.
3. Select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu; repartition and reformat the internal hard drive.
Optionally, click on the Security button and set the Zero Data option to one-pass.
4. Install OS X.
5. Upon completion DO NOT restart the computer.
6. Shutdown the computer.
B. Lion and Mountain Lion (if pre-installed on the computer at purchase*)
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because
it is three times faster than wireless.
1. Restart the computer while holding down the COMMAND and R keys until the Mac OS X
Utilities window appears.
2. Select Disk Utility from the Mac OS X Utilities window and click on the Continue button.
3. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the left side list. Click
on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
4. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on the Security button
and set the Zero Data option to one-pass.
5. Click on the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
6. Quit DU and return to the Mac OS X Utilities window.
7. Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button.
8. Upon completion shutdown the computer.
*If your computer came with Lion or Mountain Lion pre-installed then you are entitled to transfer your license once. If you purchased Lion or Mountain Lion from the App Store then you cannot transfer your license to another party. In the case of the latter you should install the original version of OS X that came with your computer. You need to repartition the hard drive as well as reformat it; this will assure that the Recovery HD partition is removed. See Step Three above. You may verify these requirements by reviewing your OS X Software License.

My time machine does not want to save any more the data from my powerbook 13" Snow Leopard; i get the message "Time Machine could not suppress the disk image of saving "Volumes/Time Capsule Disk/PowerBook _2011_03_21_123627 sparsebundle" What should I do?

My time machine does not want to save any more the data from my powerbook 13" Snow Leopard; i get the message "Time Machine could not suppress the disk image of saving "Volumes/Time Capsule Disk/PowerBook _2011_03_21_123627 sparsebundle" What is the problem? What should I do?
Thanks !!
Alain

Could that read " . . . could not access . . ."? If so, try repairing your backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If not, or if that doesn't help, see #A1 there. Use the TM Buddy widget it details to copy and post the messages here.

How can I downgrade back to OSX Mountain Lion From OSX Mavericks without any Time Machines Backups

How do I downgrade from OSX Mavericks to OSX Mountain Lion. I do NOT have a Time Machine Backup and I dont want to lose all my files. Is there a way to downgrade WITHOUT a Time Machine Backup and still have all my files????

Since you need to erase your hard drive in order to downgrade, you would lose all your files. You cannot do what you want without erasing, so make a backup first.

How do i retrieve photos from iphoto on a time machine backup?

how do i retrieve photos from iphoto on a time machine backup?

To restore the entire library do the following:
For a single photo you need to know the file name? If so you can extract photos one at a time out of the TM backups for import into iPhoto. You would do it as follows:
1 - download and launch Find Any File.
2 - select the Time Machine external hard drive.
3 - enter the file name and search. It will take longer than a normal search due to the nature of the Time Machine structure, maybe up to 1 miinute.
4 - select the file that is in the Masters or Originals folder in the search results window and drag to the Desktop where it can be imported into iPhoto:

HT1578 I have found that I can't access the contents of the encrypted disk in time machine backups. The Finder window displays a grayed-out icon representing the disk. Can this be remedied?

I have found that I can't access the contents of the encrypted disk in time machine backups. The Finder window displays a grayed-out icon representing the disk. Can this be remedied?

Time Machine error: Apple Support Communities
OSStatus 5 when trying to use Lion...: Apple Support Communities

Can i revert to snow leopard from lion without a time machine backup?

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