Can't boot Snow Leopard from USB drive made in Yosemite

Hi all,
I have a brand new macbook pro running Yosemite, but some of the software I have will only run in Snow Leopard.
Running Snow Leopard as a Virtual Machine has been clunky, so I wanted to try an alternative and install Snow Leopard onto an external HD and work from that.
I got hold of the Snow Leopard dmg file and created a bootable USB thumb drive (I did this within Yosemite) to try to install it onto the external HD. I used the instructions here:
http://www.maciverse.com/installing-snow-leopard-onto-an-external-hard-drive.htm l
But when I restart the computer and try and boot from the USB drive, I just get the grey background with dark grey apple symbol, indefinitely. The installation process never commences.
What am I not doing right?
Thanks in advance for any insights.

You can only do what you are trying from a model that can be booted into Snow Leopard. You have a 2014 model that can only be booted by Mavericks or Yosemite. You cannot run Snow Leopard on your machine except in a VM or a Mac from 2010 or earlier.

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Can't boot snow leopard from external drive

I have a copy of snow leopard installed on a separate usb hard drive which I use to run some PowerPC programmes under rosetta. I can attach this USB drive to my Mac Pro and also to an Intel Macbook and choose to start up on this external drive without any issues. However when I try restarting my new 2011 iMac on this external usb drive the machine crashes every time with a kernal panic. Is this problem unique to me or does everyone else have this issue with new iMacs. Mine is a 27" 3.4ghz i& with 12ghb ram installed running 10.72. Is their soemthing I can do to resolve this problem?

I have now solved the problem of being able to boot from either Snow Leopard or Lion on a new Mid 2011 iMac. This is how I did it.
1. Attach an external USB drive to an earlier Mac or borrow one from a friend. In my case I used my 2009 Unibody Macbook (which has Lion installed on it but does allow you to install Snow Leopard on an attached device) Put the Snow Leopard install disc in this machine and tell it to install Snow Leopard on your attached USB Drive.
2. Start up the Macbook (or whatever machine you are using) and get it to restart on the attached USB drive so that it boots up in Snow Leopard. Then when Snow Leopard is up and running on the attached external drive, do a software update to bring it up to 10.68 (the current version). This step is important as I found that if I plugged in the external USB drive into the iMac with only operating system 10.6 installed it would cause a kernal panic on start up when I choose to start up on the external USB drive.
3. With Snow Leopard updated to system 10.68 you can now plug it into your iMac and restart the iMac booting into Snow Leopard from the external USB drive. You do this by either going to System Preferences>Startup disk and choosing the external drive, or by holding down the option key when you restart your Mac and choosing the external USB drive.
4. The next step is to make your iMac dual boot now that you know it can run Snow Leopard successfully from an external USB drive. To do this, go into Utilities>Disk Utility and select your main drive. Select the main disk (with Lion on it) and then choose Partition and choose 2 Partitions. Drag the first partition bundary line down to make the second partition size as small as possible. In my case I had a stock 1TB drive and the smallest partition size it would allow me was 70gb. Create the second partition (assuming you have spare space on your drive to allow this to happen). This will then create a second hard drive icon on your desktop. I renamed mine "Snow Leopard startup".
5. Download the free (and excellent) utility Carbon Copy Cloner and use it to copy your Snow Leopard operating sytem from your attached USB external drive to your new partition.
6. That's it! Now you can choose to start up your iMac from either Lion or Snow Leopard using either method mentioned in 3 above.
7. As a final step I suggest your install your Rosetta only programmes in your new Snow Leopard partition so that you can access them easily and keep them all together.

Can't boot install disk from usb drive

I bought a macbook pro back in late 2007 and up until now im getting ready to sell it. So now while restoring to factory settings, i wiped off the hard drive and i need to reinstall my install discs which i still have. However, the cd drive doenst work on the laptop. It hasnt worked since i can remember. I already imaged the instal disk into a usb flash drive and tried booting from there. When i turn it on and hold "option," it reads the flash drive as a backup, but it wont boot from it. I click the flash drive, and it loads, but then the apple logo gets replaced by a "no symbol."
I have a new macbook pro, but not a firewire cable or an external cd/dvd drive. Anyone know how i can get the old laptop to boot from the usb?
BTW, the install cd's are for tiger, but i installed snow leopard when it came out. Im not sure if i still have the cd for snow leopard, but i dont think that would help since the cd drive doenst work. Do i need to buy an external cd drive to reinstall my operating system?

chonke wrote:
the install cd's are for tiger, but i installed snow leopard when it came out. Im not sure if i still have the cd for snow leopard
Well that's your problem you used Tiger and the firmware was changed to prevent booting from the older operating system once you upgraded to Snow Leopard.
You will need a copy of the Snow Leopard disks, the white one's online at Apple will work
Then you need to follow this to make a 10.6 install USB
http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html
Here are the instructions to install Snow Leopard, I advise zero erasing the entire drive first, this will clear any bad sectors and make the install work perfectly when you sell it and not get call back (although the cd drive is dead of course)
You might be able to extract the free iLife off the Tiger disks, then Software Update fully to bring it up to date using Pacifist from CharlesSoft.
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
BTW, you can't boot/install off a external optical, only internal.

Install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard from USB Drive

My MacBook Pro (Late 2006 15.4-inch 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) has a SuperDrive that does not work.
I wish to re-install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, as this is the latest DVD I possess, to wipe the HDD prior to selling. It has Lion installed but this was done via the Mac App store and I don't want to sell with any links to my account or as an authorised computer.
How do I boot the MacBook Pro from a USB stick, wipe the HDD and install Snow Leopard?

You will still need a Mac and a optical drive, a external one will do. To read the disk to put it on a USB, external opticals are not bootable.
http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html
Here is how to remove data off the machine (hold on, extermely paranoid )
How do I securely delete data from the machine?

Can I Install Snow Leopard From USB On Another Mac?

Hello everyone,
I own a 2010 macbook air that came with a snow leopard usb drive.
I've recently been given a 2008 macbook 4,1 that is running leopard. I'd like to install snow leopard on this and use it as a secondary computer. Will I be able to use the usb stick from my macbook air to update this computer from leopard to snow leopard? If updating won't work would I be able to perform a fresh install of snow leopard from my usb drive? Or is my only option to purchase a snow leopard dvd from apple?
Thanks.

Ah! Thank you, Niel. Forgot about the "weird" Air models without any kind of optical drive. I realize to get the Air models as thin as Apple did required the removal of such a drive, but virtually every user who bought one had to then go out and buy an external DVD drive anyway so they could install their other purchased software.

Boot Snow Leopard from Thumb Drive in Single User Mode on Macbook Air

I'm trying to boot from a thumb drive that I transferred the Snow Leopard .dmg on. My macbook air only lets me get into single user mode. Every time I try to boot or enter safe mode or regular mode, the Macbook Air shuts down.

I do have the installation media on my usb flash drive. I'm sure it's leopard, and the problem is that I cannot get passed the apple logo on boot. The laptop turns off after trying to finish the boot for twenty seconds. However, I can get into single user mode. I just can't seem to install the media in single user mode due to my lack of know how.

Can't run Snow Leopard from CD drive

I just bought a second hand mac pro 5,1 (mid 2010) with no hard drives and no installation CDs.
I bought a 120GB Samsung EVO SSD. I am waiting on an IcyDock to connect the SSD to hard drive bay 1.
In the meantime I'm using an extention sata cable to connect the SSD to the motherboard (HDD bay 1) and powering it via a power adapter to sata power.
I've formatted the SSD using my 2008 iMac to extended (journaled).
I've inserted my Snow Leopard disc (that I bought years ago) into the optical drive restarted the mac holding c to boot from CD.
I hear the disc spinning, the white background with gray apple logo appear but nothing happens. The disc stops spinning. Background stays.
Am I doing anything wrong?
Does the macpro side door have to be closed?
I've contacted apple about needing the original installer discs and they said I could just buy Snow Leopard and use that. I already own it.
Another symptom: If I unattach the SSD and restart the mac holding the mouse button on, the DVD drive doesn't open. It only opens with the SSD attached.

While you're waiting:
Install Snow Leopard into a new partition on your 2008 iMac.
Upgrade it to 10.6.8.
Clone it.
Restore your clone to your SSD for your MacPro.
Install the SSD into your MacPro.
Boot it up!

Start Snow Leopard from USB on a mac mini early 2009

Hi.
It is possible to start Snow Leopard from a USB drive (Pendrive, USB disk, etc)??????
The DVD drive of my mac mini doesn't work properly and I have some problems with my HDD.
Thanks in advance.
BR

Get at least a 16GB USB thumb drive and use this tecnique to make a bootable USB drive:
Borrowed from Kappy,
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your external hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. After formatting is complete quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard being sure to select the external drive as the target.
Note that you will need a Snow Leopard DVD. The above will only work for you if you can boot your computer from a Snow Leopard DVD. If you have a new model that came with Lion pre-installed then the above will not work because a Snow Leopard retail DVD cannot boot your model.

Yosemite on internal HD and boot Snow Leopard from external HD clone

Hey Everyone,
I recently cloned my Snow Leopard 10.6.8 internal HD to an external FW800 HD which I can boot off. I have backup of everything, both Time Machine and straight backups.
I am thinking of upgrading to Yosemite and am wondering will I still be able to boot into Snow Leopard from the Clone?
I had heard somewhere that Yosemite makes some changes to the logic board which makes it troublesome but I am not up to scratch on this stuff.
My System is an iMac 2011, identifier 12,1 with 2.5GHz i5 and 4Gb Ram(soon to be upgraded to 16Gb)
Many thanks in advance
J

Hello. I have a similar question. I recently purchased a new iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013, 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3) running OS X 10.10.2 Yosemite.
My issue: I have an external drive that I partitioned into two partitions, one is for all my music, pictures and videos. The other partition drive is Snow Leopard 10.6.3.
On my old iMAc (still set up and using it) which is a 2007 machine and running Mt. Lion, I was able to select which drive to start from, between Snow Leopard and Mt. Lion.
This allowed me to keep playing Sid Meier's Civilization III (the last version where you can build a palace).
Anyway, on the new iMac, when I choose the Snow Leopard disk as startup, and it reboots, I get a gray screen with the apple on it, and nothing happens.
Is there something else I need to do? Any idea why this does not work as easily as it did on the old machine?
Thanks.

Installing Snow Leopard from USB to MacBook

I managed to create a bootable USB pendrive of Snow Leopard from my Retail DVD, and I'd like to re-install it on my MacBook (not using the DVD). The pendrive is not recognized by the Mac at the boot (keeping option pressed), but Finder does. I also tryed to launch the installation process directly from Finder, but it doesn't work.

I just noticed your macbook is running 10.4.11. 10.4 does not support usb booting out of the box. Follow these steps HERE .
How did you clone a 10.6 on your macbook if you are running 10.4?

How can I remove Snow leopard from my Mac, it crash all important programs

Please tell me how I can remove Snow Leopard from my machine & revert back to Leopard 10.5.8
Since I loaded Snow leopard, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Quark & Mail all quit over & over again. I never had ANY of these issues before loading snow leopard. I rely daily on the programs I listed. I am not saying once in a while, but constantly; opening the programs, exporting, placing graphics, emailing, you name it, it quits the program I am in. I keep sending apple the crash reports, but I am afraid I have reached my end. (Apple must have a folder fu;l of crashes with my email address in it by now.)
To maintain my sanity PLEASE tell me there is a way to do this without risking loosing any of my data.
I do have time machine hooked up.
Please be a life saver (sanity saver) and tell me how to get Snow Leopard off my machine!!!!!

First, Welcome to the Discussions,
Second, there is no way to successfully degrade an OS to a previous version. You would have to install anew a previous OS, thereby erasing all your data. Then you would take that version up as far as you want to go.
Of course if you've been using Time Machine you can recover to the prior system and retain your files using that.
Best of all would be to have a firewire external drive and use an app like this to make a clone on. No worries then if one wants to go back before any major changes very precisely.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Good luck.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html
Message was edited by: Samsara

Can I install Snow Leopard from my MacBook?

I've got two computers, an IMac (Dual Core, around 4 year old) with Leopard and a MacBook Pro (less than 2 years old) with Snow Leopard. I will be buying a new IMac in a few months but in the meanwhile I was wondering if I could install Snow Leopard from the MacBook Pro to avoid all the incompatibility issues that are starting to surface.
I'm not upgrading my MacBook to Montain Lion because I don't want to miss the chance of updaiting my old IMac (surely it won't be compatible with Montain Lion).
Thanks!

You should be able to use the MBP's install disc to update the iMac. Give it a shot and let us know. Do know that Lion and ML will render all of your PPC apps useless, so consider whether or not a new machine is a smart move.

Can the new Mac Mini boot Snow Leopard from an external hard drive?

I currently boot my 2009 Mac Mini from a FW800 external drive with 10.6.8. If I just plug my external drive into a new 2011 Mac Mini, will it boot into Snow Leopard if I set it as the startup disk or will I get a kernel panic?

I bought a 2011 Mac Mini, which came with Lion installed. I thought maybe I could repartition it and have a Snow Leopard partition. So I repartitioned it (500gb split into two 250gb partitions). I named the new partition "SnowLeopard" just to make it easy for me to tell the difference.
I attached the external DVD and put in a Snow Leopard installer disc, holding down the C key so it would boot and install from that, but it just spun for awhile. Doesn't appear to work.
Then I read somewhere else that someone had managed to clone a copy of Snow Leopard onto an external drive and boot from that. In their situation they were talking about a MacBook, but the principle seemed sane.
So I rebooted, holding down the T key to put the Mac Mini into Target hard disk mode, and attached it via Firewire to another MacMini (circa 2008 or so, not sure of year, but it was upgraded last year to Snow Leopard and has been upgraded along and along). Then I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy Snow Leopard (that is, the entire hard disk-- System and all applications and data) to my newer Mac Mini's "snow leopard" partition.
For yucks, when it was done cloning, I restarted the older Mac Mini, and had it boot from the newer Mac Mini's snow leopard partition--- it worked! To make it easy to tell the difference, I changed the desktop background to something completely different. I think I tried booting from Lion but I can't remember if that worked.
Then I rebooted the newer Mac Mini, which booted up in Lion, of course. Going into System Settings, I changed the startup disk to the "snow leopard" partition, and rebooted, and it booted up in Snow Leopard.
I have yet to test the applications on the Snow Leopard partition. Another problem has arisen.
Because with both of the Mac MInis being active on the network, they both had the same computer and user name. So I renamed the newer Mac Mini to something completely different, and changed the password.
Unfortunately, now I cannot change any other setting in the System Settings that requires a password. While the newer Snow Leopard lets me log in with the new user and new password, whenever I try to click the "lock" icon to change something, I'm prompted for a username and password. Apparently this is some different username and password than either the new or old username/password.
I've tried various combinations of both: new user/old password, old user/new password, old user/old password, etc.
So if you do what I've done, be careful about changing the username and password on your cloned computer. I think it may be wiser to create a new user and then delete the old cloned users. I may just have to re-clone the old Mac Mini to the new one again.
If anyone has any ideas about this password conundrum, please pass along!

Cannot boot Snow Leopard from external FireWire drive

I use a Western Digital My Passport Studio 500 GB external drive to back up my MacBook Pro with Time Machine. I had created a 30 GB Leopard boot partition with various utilities and tools; since the small drive goes wherever the laptop goes, I figured it might come in handy to be able to boot the computer in the event something went wrong with its internal 250 GB drive.
Over the weekend, I upgraded the external drive to Snow Leopard, and now it can no longer be used to boot the laptop. The symptoms are truly weird. Holding down the Option key while rebooting does not show the external drive unless I disconnect and reconnect the FireWire cable. The drive then shows up. I select it, and it appears to begin to boot, then it just sits on the gray screen with the little round thingie turning for a long time (five to ten minutes). Eventually, the system boots from its internal drive. This happens regardless of whether I'm connected by means of FireWire 400 or 800.
After spending a lot of time looking at the usual suspects (cables, permissions, PRAM, etc.) I reinstalled Sand Leopard (OK, 10.5) and lo and behold, the drive boots again (though for some reason I still have to go through the disconnect/reconnect routine). Clearly, something in the OS has changed with respect to the way booting from external drives is handled.
On the positive side, I have none of the symptoms described in other threads: Time Machine works flawlessly, and both the boot partition and the Time Machine partition appear on the Snow Leopard desktop every time I connect the drive.
Does anyone have the same issues? Does anyone know of a workaround?
Thanks,
Daniel

Hi,
Working from a MacBook Pro 2.4 (Santa Rosa) with 4gb ram, running OS 10.5.7-
(All external HDs are 7200 rpm)
Shortly after our fresh install of Snow Leopard onto a new but already tested External 1.5 Seagate Barracuda (with the most current firmware), in an OWC Mercury Elite enclosure-
We installed Snow Leopard smoothly to that external HD without any issues, and it booted up from that 1.5T external HD, and worked fine.
Then, still working from the MacBook Pro, I turned on and booted another external HD (a Newertech Guardian Maximus RAID running 10.4.11 via FW800, daisy chained to the 1.5T External with Snow Leopard newly installed.
Again that's MacBook Pro <FW800> Snowy external HD <FW800> 10.4.11 RAID (booted & working from the RAID).
But when I tried to bootup up Snow Leopard, after doing the work on the 10.4.11 RAID-
It would not boot up.
Though Snowy would appear as an available Start Up disk, each time it was selected as the Boot drive,
the Internal HD OS 10.5.7 booted instead.
I changed around the cables and tried repeatedly.
Same result, no Snowy boot.
Even after the OS 10.4.11 external RAID was power down, and disconnected.
After some looking around, I found this forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136208&tstart=0
Got me thinking.
I tried the USB, and it booted !
I tried the FW400, and it booted !
And mysteriously, at this point- I tried the FW800, and it booted !
And then, the MBP boots seemed to reliably boot from that external, via FW800.
Bizarre.
Snow Cat needs to be taught originally how to find FW800 from the bottom up ?
Turns out, Snow Leopard doesn't like booting,
if the preceding boot was on the 10.4.11 RAID, and work was done with programs there.
So, once again, I repeated this process:
After working with programs on the 10.4.11 external HD,
the MBP would not boot the Snow Leopard external HD,
it defaulted to booting from the MBP internal HD OS 10.5 via FW800.
even though Snowy was selected for Start Up.
This was the case repeatedly.
(It would also boot from the 10.4.11 external RAID, if it were selected for Start Up.)
(In each of these tests below, I only rebooted the computer at each test. I did no work with programs on the various HDs.)
SO, once again, at this point of the process:
I plugged in that Snowy external HD via FW400,
and it booted up fine !
Then I booted up from the Internal 10.5, and tried to boot Snowy via FW800 again.
It worked !
Then I turned on the 10.4.11 RAID external HD, and tried to reboot from the Snowy external HD.
It worked too !
Then I booted from the 10.4.11 RAID, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Snowy, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Internal HD 10.5, it came up fine.
Then booted from Snowy again, it came up fine.
Then I turned off the 10.4.11 HD, booted from Snowy, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Internal, it came up fine.
Then tried Snowy one last time, it came up fine.
Anyway, the issue is:
It works fine-
Except when I do work within the programs on the 10.4.11 external RAID.
Then I have to use FW400 or USB to get it to boot once again . . .
Regardless of whether the other external HD is removed from the system.
It's some sort of flaw, and totally repeatable in testing.
Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.
Howard

Help wanted! Can't boot Snow Leopard, neither from HD nor disc!

Hi.
I tried to install Windows in Bootcamp on my wife's MacBook Pro 15" 2.4Ghz (with OSX SL), but something went wrong in the process and I now want to start all over by erasing the Bootcamp partition entirely.
But, as I try to start up in MacOSX it just stops at the start sound over and over again.
Can't shortcut by force starting it from MacOSX (command-X), from disc (command-C) or as a firewire disc (command-T).
I also can't eject the Snow Leopard DVD from the drive bay.
All it does is trying to boot and making the start up sound over and over and over and....
Help is VERY much appreciated, please!

Try starting in Safeboot and see if you get any further. To eject the DVD hold the left mouse button of a wired mouse on startup.

Can't boot Snow Leopard from USB drive made in Yosemite

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