Can Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard share Spotlight indexes?

I have a Starup Volume with a new partition I added to install Mountain Lion on to get a feel for what Apps I will lose if/when I switch over from Snow Leopard.,
I did this yesterday and it's working fine. I can star up most of my Snow Leopard Apps, but I have to go to the Apps folder on the SL partition to do so. That's not a huge issue to me.
However, I notice that when I switch back/forth between OSX versions, Spotlight re-indexes the volumes, so it appears the invisble index file stored at the root level of the volume is not corss-compatible... or is it?
Does anyone know of a way to get both systems to read off the Spotlight Index either creates?
—David

It's not a matter of "letting" each maintain its own database, William. By default, I believe, I have no control over what gets written. In fact, if there were a way to set a preference that says, use this index named "spotlightindexSL' only [while in SL], that might solve my problem. Then when booting up in ML, it would just go after the index it last made.
My guess is that while I am in ML or SL and not the other, there are all sorts of changes to files and the system freaks and says "Oh, now look at what a mess I've made — there are all sorts of files unaccounted for. Now I have to rebuild the whole thing."
I have 2 had drives in my Mac, both 500GB. One (Working Disk) has no operating system and all my files, and the other drive is partitioned 470/30gb with SL on the 470 and ML in the 30. When I restart in either OS, the auto-start Indexing as if for the very first time, and do both hard drives (in total: 3 partitions of files, not counting the ML Restore partition).
I know it all uncoventionally — just wanted to see what my $20 new OS will cost me in software upgrades, in particular my $1800 Adobe Design Suite CS4 and a few others.

Similar Messages

Home Sharing between Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard

Hi
I have MacBook Pro both at work and at home. The one at work has Mountain Lion with the latest version of iTune and the one at home has Snow Leopard with iTune 10.7.
I want to share movies on my iTune account between Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard. However, it doesn't seem to work....
How can I solve this problem?
FYI - I am not a big fan of Mountain Lion and do NOT want to upgrade my home computer to Mountain Lion.

    I am not sure why you can't access iCloud, using a browser? Then you have the same address book, so long as you are connected to the internet. https://www.icloud.com/
    No email involved. From the browser, you can download individual iCards or all of the individual cards, BUT unfortunately, not the Groups. So, you have to fiddle on the SL machine with keeping the groups organized.
    Up until recently, I have been able to sync Contacts from ML (which stays synced to iCloud) to SL this way: copy the /Users/~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ folder from the ML computer to the SL computer by dragging the icon onto the dock's AddressBook icon, this should retain all the group info. But, recently, this has ceased being complete.
    Apple really left us behind on this one.

Dual boot drive - Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard - Correct order to load software /apps?

Hi
I want to create a dual boot drive for Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard as some of my hardware (is not supported in Mountain Lion).
I am happy how to do this, I just want to know if there is a correct way to install software and apps.
My plan was to do a clean install of both using two partitions, the larger going to ML and smaller one for SL. I was going to install SL from the DVD and then after updating from 10.6. to 10.6.8 and download ML from the app store and install on the larger partition.
Do I install all the software I use like Final Cut, Aperture, iLife (for Garageband) etc on the ML or SL partition or on both. Also, is there a better way / practise of the order software updates / apps and boxed software should be installed when doing a clean machine install.
Thanks in advance.
Matt

Thanks mende1
So, if I have software I need to use on both ML and SL - for example Final Cut as I have a Canopus AVDC box which is not supported in ML but only SL, do I need to install the same software in both OS?
I usually open apps using spotlight and didn't know if it would software / apps would open if already installed on the other partition?
Thanks again
Matt

Can I use Unix symbolic links between Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard Mail folders?

After upgrading to Mountain Lion, I partitioned my iMac HD to have two partitions: Macintosh HD has Mountain Lion; I reinstalled Snow Leopard on Macintosh HD 2. Best part: you can access your user-created files from EITHER disk partition. But not so OS X Mail. I wanted to revert to Snow Leopard, since I don't like the iOS-like Mountain Lion (swipe THIS!), but Mail is a problem since all my Snow Leopard Mail was successfully migrated over to Mountain Lion during upgrade.
Is there a way to use Unix symbolic links between actual OS X Mail folders in Mountain Lion and OS X Mail in Snow Leopard?
It seems the (trial) symbolic link created pointed to a blank file.

It's not a matter of "letting" each maintain its own database, William. By default, I believe, I have no control over what gets written. In fact, if there were a way to set a preference that says, use this index named "spotlightindexSL' only [while in SL], that might solve my problem. Then when booting up in ML, it would just go after the index it last made.
My guess is that while I am in ML or SL and not the other, there are all sorts of changes to files and the system freaks and says "Oh, now look at what a mess I've made — there are all sorts of files unaccounted for. Now I have to rebuild the whole thing."
I have 2 had drives in my Mac, both 500GB. One (Working Disk) has no operating system and all my files, and the other drive is partitioned 470/30gb with SL on the 470 and ML in the 30. When I restart in either OS, the auto-start Indexing as if for the very first time, and do both hard drives (in total: 3 partitions of files, not counting the ML Restore partition).
I know it all uncoventionally — just wanted to see what my $20 new OS will cost me in software upgrades, in particular my $1800 Adobe Design Suite CS4 and a few others.

Syncing contacts between Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard?

One of my computers is running Mountain Lion, and the other is running Snow Leopard and so does not have access to iCloud. Is there any way to sync Contacts between the two computers?

    I am not sure why you can't access iCloud, using a browser? Then you have the same address book, so long as you are connected to the internet. https://www.icloud.com/
    No email involved. From the browser, you can download individual iCards or all of the individual cards, BUT unfortunately, not the Groups. So, you have to fiddle on the SL machine with keeping the groups organized.
    Up until recently, I have been able to sync Contacts from ML (which stays synced to iCloud) to SL this way: copy the /Users/~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ folder from the ML computer to the SL computer by dragging the icon onto the dock's AddressBook icon, this should retain all the group info. But, recently, this has ceased being complete.
    Apple really left us behind on this one.

Lion and Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard, oh my!

My iMac does not support OS X Mountain Lion, but it does support Lion; is there anyway to upgrade to Lion? In the app store I can't find a way to download Lion now that Mountain Lion is available. Currently running Snow Leopard. Want Lion so that I can back everything up on iCloud.

Hi Maxemi,
Try this link:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4286784
Cheers,
GB

Sharing users between Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard -- will this break preferences?

I have now ML and SL in dual boot and want to share users (on an external drive), and try out the new XCode. I wonder, however, if I should rather use different users, so XC on SL won't have to deal with "corrupted" preferences that new XC might write to my users folder. Also I thought it would be a good idea to switch off Spotlight and TimeMachine in ML for external harddrives, so they will still be readable from SL. Anyone has some tips on how to use SL and ML with shared external drives?

You can upgrade the iMac for no extra charge - sign into the App Store there, download and install 10.8.
I recommend that you make a backup (Time Machine is probably the easiest method) before you install, and make sure that you are not using any applications that are incomptible with 10.8 (eg Office 2004) - other than that, it should go smoothly.
Matt

Upgraded my macbook pro to mountain lion from snow leopard does this mean i can upgrade my imac as well for the same price? And will it mess it up?

upgraded my macbook pro to mountain lion from snow leopard does this mean i can upgrade my imac as well for the same price? And will it mess it up?

You can upgrade the iMac for no extra charge - sign into the App Store there, download and install 10.8.
I recommend that you make a backup (Time Machine is probably the easiest method) before you install, and make sure that you are not using any applications that are incomptible with 10.8 (eg Office 2004) - other than that, it should go smoothly.
Matt

I had Leopard on may Mac. I upgraded to Mountain Lion using Snow Leopard. I can't use my video with Mountain Lion. Can I load Snow Leopard on an external hard drive so I can use it with my camera?

I had Leopard on may Mac. I upgraded to Mountain Lion using Snow Leopard. I can't use my video with Mountain Lion. Can I load Snow Leopard on an external hard drive so I can use it with my camera?

First, you cannot do this if you have a Boot Camp partition.
Second: Create a new partition.
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After the main menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Select the hard drive's main entry then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
2. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired new volume's size. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed. (Note: You can only make a partition smaller in order to create new free space.)
4. Click on the [+] button below the sizing window to add a new partition in the gray space you freed up. Give the new volume a name, if you wish, then click on the Apply button. Wait until the process has completed.
You should now have a new volume on the drive.
It would be wise to have a backup of your current system as resizing is not necessarily free of risk for data loss. Your drive must have sufficient contiguous free space for this process to work.
Third: Install Snow Leopard.
Boot from your Snow Leopard DVD. Follow instructions for installation being sure that before you actually install Snow Leopard you have selected the new partition as your target destination.
Booting From An OS X Installer Disc
1. Insert OS X Installer Disc into the optical drive.
2. Restart the computer.
3. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the "C" key.
4. Release the key when the spinning gear below the dark gray Apple logo
appears.
5. Wait for installer to finish loading.

CAn I run Lion and snow leopard on the same computer with different sign-ins?

CAn I run Lion and snow leopard on the same computer with different sign-ins?

Alternatively, partition your internal HD and dual-boot it. Do note that you have to reboot to switch back and forth. You can't do it by logging out and back in.

Can I have both Lion and Snow Leopard on One Hard Drive?

My problem is I need to run a PowerPC game on Lion which Lion no longer supports. So i thought i could download Snow Leopard back to my Mac and partiition my hard drive in the process as that is the only way i know of to have both Lion and Snow Leopard. I went through the Boot Camp Asistant process and it seems it will only partition Windows 7 to my Mac when i need Snow Leopard. If anyone has any idea how to help me have both Lion and Snow Leopard at the same time on just one hard drive or figure out how to run the PowerPC programs on my Mac (if there is a way around it). The help will be well appreciated!

How To Run Snow Leopard On A New Mac
This does not apply to new Mac Minis or MacBook Airs. When newer models are introduced that also require Lion for hardware support, the techniques described below will no longer work with the possible exception of using Parallels 7.
What has to be done:
Create a new partition on the hard drive.
Get a clone of a 10.6.8 Snow Leopard system. Put the cloned Snow Leopard system onto the new partition.
Step One: Create a new partition on the hard drive
To resize the drive and create a new partition do the following:
1.    Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
       After the main menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Select the hard drive's main entry then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
2.   You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3.    In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired new volume's size. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed. (Note: You can only make a partition smaller in order to create new free space.)
4.   Click on the [+] button below the sizing window to add a new partition in the gray space you freed up. Give the new volume a name, if you wish, then click on the Apply button. Wait until the process has completed.
You should now have a new volume on the drive.
It would be wise to have a backup of your current system as resizing is not necessarily free of risk for data loss. Your drive must have sufficient contiguous free space for this process to work.
Step Two: Obtain a clone of a Snow Leopard system:
You will need access to a Mac already running Snow Leopard. You will need a 16 GB USB flash drive or an external hard drive to which you can clone the Snow Leopard system from the Mac that has Snow Leopard installed. Alternatives are:
Option One:
Install a new Snow Leopard system onto a USB flash drive. Boot the Mac used for installing with the USB flash drive. Update the flash drive system to 10.6.8 using the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 to update Snow Leopard. Verify that you can boot the Mac with the USB flash drive.
Take the USB flash drive to your new Mac and try booting from it. If it works then clone the system from the flash drive to the newly made partition:
          Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
          Destination means the new partition on the internal drive. Source means the USB flash drive.
Option Two:
If you have a large enough external drive you can erase and use, then it would be easier to just clone the entire Snow Leopard system from the source Mac computer to the external drive.
          Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
          Destination means the external drive. Source means the Snow Leopard Mac's internal drive.
After cloning verify that it will boot the source Mac. If so then take the external drive to your new Mac boot with it. If all is well then restore the clone to the new partition on your new Mac:
          Restore the clone using Disk Utility
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
          Destination means the new partition on the internal drive. Source means the external drive.
If the above seems too daunting then you might consider running Snow Leopard inside an emulator such as Parallels 7. You are permitted to install a single copy of Snow Leopard inside a virtual machine. You will need to first purchase a copy of Parallels 7 and install it on your new Mac. Create a new virtual machine configured for Mac OS X. You may then install Snow Leopard in the virtual machine then download Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 and update to 10.6.8. Be sure to include Rosetta in your initial Snow Leopard installation. Rosetta is not installed by default rather it's an optional install.

I have just installed Mountain Lion over Snow Leopard, I now can't open Photoshop?

Hi everyone, I have just installed Mountain Lion over Snow Leopard. The installation went smooth and woks well. Now I find that Ican't open either Photoshop CS or Microsoft Word. I upgraded in order to install Lightroom 5, obviously there is now an incompatability, is there a work around?

If that is the original Photoshop CS, and Word 2004 or earlier, then they won't open because Lion and Mountain Lion do not support PowerPC apps. They must be Intel code. Snow Leopard could run them because it included Rosetta, a PowerPC to Intel (and back) interpreter.
You have a few options.
1) Go back to Snow Leopard.
2) Update your apps to compatible versions.
3) If you have Mountain Lion because newer apps require it then:
a) Install Snow Leopard Server (currently being sold by Apple for $20) in a VM such as Parallels, and then run your PPC apps in the VM.
b) Install Snow Leopard on a separate partition and boot to that version of OS X when you need to use those older apps.

I installed mountain lion over snow leopard and my macbook pro 13" taking time for login and logout,

i installed mountain lion over snow leopard and my macbook pro 13" taking time for login and logout.. any solution

Hi JoeyR. Well, according to this link at the Apple Store, OS X Moutain Lion became available in July and I downloaded it for $19.99. I figured I would do that before renewing my Norton security SW. Are we talking about the same thing?
http://www.apple.com/osx/

Exporting OS X Mail from Mountain Lion to Snow Leopard

After upgrading to Mountain Lion, I partitioned my iMac HD to have two partitions: Macintosh HD has Mountain Lion; I reinstalled Snow Leopard on Macintosh HD 2. Best part: you can access your user-created files from EITHER disk partition. But not so OS X Mail. I wanted to revert to Snow Leopard, since I don't like the iOS-like Mountain Lion (swipe THIS!), but Mail was a problem since all my Snow Leopard Mail was successfully migrated over to Mountain Lion during upgrade. But I think I found a way to Export Mail from ML to (a clean install of) SL.
Try this:
1. Open Mail in ML. For each folder you wish to have back in SL, Export it to your ML Desktop as an .mbox file. Depending on the folder size, this can take from a few seconds to several minutes. You'll see an .mbox icon for the particular folder on your Desktop. If the word "partial" appears between the folder name and the .mbox suffix, wait a few moments for the Export to complete, at which time the word "partial" will disappear. E.g., for a folder named "Mary", if it's a huge one, the icon will first appear as "Mary.partial.mbox"; when the Export is done, you'll see "Mary.mbox".
2. When you've Exported all your desired folders as above, you can exit ML and re-start your Mac in SL. Open Mail in Snow Leopard, and once again, for each file you just Exported in ML to the Desktop there, select "Import Data From Apple Mail" and choose the folder from the Desktop in ML to which your mboxes were Exported. When the Import starts, you can see via a progress bar how far along it is. When done, you'll see a new folder in your SL Mail called "Import"; click on it to reveal the folder you just Imported!
3. Then drag the folder you just Imported out of the Import folder to "On My Mac" in SL Mail; you can then delete the Import folder.
4. Repeat until all your folders are where you want them (in SL).
5. When you have time, go back into ML and clear all those .mbox files from your Desktop.
There MAY be an easier way, but this is what worked for me.

The iOS view vs classic view in Mail is not the problem; I've already configured for classic view.
Mountain Lion itself is.
My short list (to date) of crappy Mountain Lion behavior; items marked with a double asterisk (**)represent the worst of Mountain Lion for me.
** No up/down arrows in scroll bar slider;
Expose` not as easy to navigate as in Snow Leopard;
Mail does not request passwords for either receive or send;
No "Save Draft" icon in Mail compose window (workaround: use command-s);
"Save As" selection missing in most app menus;
No separate Search window in Safari (workaround: use Firefox or Opera);
** Can't export Mail from Mountain Lion into Snow Leopard if downgrading (I compiled this list before I stumbled on the method in this thread, but I'd prefer to effect this with Unix symbolic links);
iWork 09 seems to have "circled the wagons" re compatibility with MS Office or LibreOffice (workaround: just use Libreoffice);

I upgraded to mountain lion from snow leopard, now my photo studio software is no longer supported by powerpc. Does anyone know of a fix so my photostudio will work?

I upgraded to mountain lion from snow leopard, but now some of my applications do not work, most specifically I would like to use my photo studio, but now it tells me that powerpc is no longer supported. Does anyone have any fixes to this problem? I would really like to continue to use software that I already have! Thank you for your help!

PPC software will not work in Mountain Lion because there is no longer any Rosetta emulator. You will only be able to run your older software by creating another partition on your hard drive on which you can install Snow Leopard. It need not be a large partition since you can still keep your files and programs on the main partition. You could also install Snow Leopard on an external drive from which to boot the computer.
To resize the drive do the following:
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After the main menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Select the hard drive's main entry then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
2. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired new volume's size. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed. (Note: You can only make a partition smaller in order to create new free space.)
4. Click on the [+] button below the sizing window to add a new partition in the gray space you freed up. Give the new volume a name, if you wish, then click on the Apply button. Wait until the process has completed.
You should now have a new volume on the drive.
It would be wise to have a backup of your current system as resizing is not necessarily free of risk for data loss. Your drive must have sufficient contiguous free space for this process to work.
After you create the new partition boot the computer from your Snow Leopard DVD and install Snow Leopard onto the new partition.

Can Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard share Spotlight indexes?

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