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!

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About installing Lion over Snow Leopard from an external Hard Drive

I was just talking with an Apple Representative on the phone a bit earlier and he said that if I connected up to a computer with Lion on it already, booted it into recovery mode, then installed Lion onto an external HD that I could then attach the external HD with Lion on it to a Snow Leopard machine and boot off of the Lion Partition (on the external HD) and then I could upgrade my sno leopard machine from this lion "image" on my external Lion drive.
My question is that will this keep all of my files on my Snow Leopard machine in place (so basically will this perform an upgrade) or completely erase everything off of my Snow Leopard machine?

To boot from an external optical drive:
Boot Using OPTION key:
1. Restart the computer.
2. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the "OPTION" key.
3. Release the key when the boot manager appears.
4. Select the desired disk icon for the external optical drive. The DVD
should be in the optical drive before restarting the computer.
5. Click on the arrow button below the icon.

FreeHand MX on the new Mac Pro under Snow Leopard?

Just wondering if anybody is managing to successfully run Adobe (Macromedia) FreeHand on the new Mac Pro under Snow Leopard?
We often need to access a lot of archived FreeHand files and are wondering whether we should keep an old G4 tucked away just for this job when we next update our Macs.
Thanks,
Jona

Hi jona;
A quick Google search produced a number of sites such as this one that basically say that freehand doesn't do so well on Snow Leopard. You suggestion for maintaining an old G4 sounds like a good one to me.
Allan

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.

HT3777 I have a Window 7 HP laptop. I want to install Snow Leopard on an external hard drive as the memory space on my laptop is very less. I have the original snow leopard disc and I think it's a retail version . Please guide me through the installation.

I have a Window 7 HP laptop. I want to install Snow Leopard on an external hard drive as the memory space on my laptop is very less. I have the original snow leopard disc and I think it's a retail version . Please guide me through the installation in details. Can you also please let me know about this boot camp.

You cannot. From a legal standpoint, the license agreement for OS X mandates that you run OS X only on Apple hardware. HP is not (yet) owned by Apple.
From a technical standpoint, your HP laptop doesn't use EFI, but rather an early predecessor called a BIOS. Apple is the only vendor of consumer computer hardware that uses EFI; other vendors reserve EFI for use in servers.
Secondly, Apple's operating systems support a rather limited number of configurations of video hardware and mainboard chipsets directly since they need only support those systems that they manufacture. You cannot use Windows software or drivers on OS X, so prior to installation, you would need to write your own hardware drivers for your laptop, create an OS X drive image on a Mac, and then modify that image with your drivers before putting it in the HP.
It will be simpler (and legal), to simply purchase a used Mac. Apple's online store has refurbished MacBook Airs starting at $850 and Mac Minis for $700. If you go to e-bay or craigslist, you'll find used Macs for considerably less.

Can I install snow leopard on an external hard drive so I can run quicken 2006, and put snow leopard on my imac harddrive

Can I install snow leopard on an external hard drive in order to run my quicken 2006, and install lion on the hard drive of my imac?

You don't need to erase the drive and repartition from scratch. You may be able to add a second partition on the fly. The caveat here is that once you do that you cannot create a Windows partition using Boot Camp. Of course if you have no plans for Boot Camp then it isn't relevant.
To create a second partition on your existing startup volume:
To resize the drive do the following:
1. Open Disk Utility and select the drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list.
2. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. 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.
Now, you cannot add a new partition that exceeds the amount of contiguous free space at the end of the drive. Disk Utility will fail to add the partition if it cannot find sufficient contiguous free space. If that's the case then you will need to follow your state outline - backup, boot from clone, erase internal, repartition internal, restore backup to one of the partitions (or both in your case.)

Can anyone boot Leopard from an external hard drive on an iMacPPC?

Can anyone boot Leopard from an external hard drive on a G5 iMac PowerPC? How?

Allan's answer is irrelevant as he refers to Snow Leopard. He must have isread your post!
Yes, you can and I do. The proviso is that the external hard drive is connected by firewire, as a PPC Mac cannot boot via USB.

I have a 2007 Macbook Pro that is running 10.7.5 and I am trying to use a 10.6.3 DVD to install Snow Leopard to an external hard drive.

I have a 2007 Macbook Pro that is running 10.7.5 and I am trying to use a 10.6.3 DVD to install Snow Leopard to an external hard drive. I've followed every possible instruction on every which website. The problem is when I boot to Install disc, I am unable to choose which hard drive I'd like to install the OS on. It says that it is unable to Install and automatically takes me to Restore and suggests that I restore to Time Machine backups. Any and all help is appreciated.

lovinlife5959,
have you tried booting from the grey Mac OS X Install DVD that originally came in the box with your MacBook Pro? See if you can install its version of Mac OS X (either 10.4.9, 10.4.10, or 10.5.0, depending upon when it shipped from the factory) onto your external hard drive. If that works, boot from your external hard drive, run Software Update on it, and then try updating your external drive to 10.6.3 via the white Snow Leopard DVD.

Snow Leopard on an external hard drive; sign-in issues, Snow Leopard on an external hard drive; sign-in issues

I have an older (circa 2006) MacBook running Tiger. I've been able to install Snow Leopard on an external hard drive and when I restart, it seems to boot from the external drive. However, it asks for a user name and password and the combination I use in Tiger doesn't work. I don't get an option for an admin user/password.
Any suggestions?

If you did a fresh installation from the original installer disk, then unless you used Migration Utility as part of the installation then you would have been stepped through the process to set up a user acount. Without that there would be no account to log into. So either you don't remember, you didn't install on an empty drive, or you used Migration Utility.
In any case, boot from the original installer, select the external drive, and under the Utilities menu choose Password Reset.
Regards.

I've installed LION. Is it possible to put Snow Leopard on an external hard drive?

I've installed LION. Is it possible to put Snow Leopard on an external hard drive?

I was unaware of this change for usb support! However Babowa makes a good point in that you would probably not want to run SL via USB and rather Firewire.
Having said that, the 13" MacBooks do not have firewire.
But again as Babowa points out, that machine wouldn't be able to run Lion anyway.

Is it possible to boot windows solely from an external hard drive so that it does not affect the internal drive

Is it possible to boot windows solely from an external hard drive so that it does not affect the internal drive. I already know that you can partition the internal hard drive to do the very same. Idon't want to use any of the internal space to run windows so I'm asking if it is possible to use a flash drive or external drive through USB to run windows when it is plugged in.

Read https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5043762?start=0&tstart=0 to discover you can't do it.
Allan

Can the new Mac Mini run OSX 10.7.5?

I have the new 1.4GHz Mac Mini w/4GB Ram. I bought a Mediasonic external 4 bay drive. It's connected by USB 3.0. One of the drives in the enclosure is my old HD with Mac OSX 10.7.5 installed. I've tried booting up from that drive through the USB 3 connection with no luck. Is it an external drive issue or does the new Mac Mini not support that old of an OS? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks!

Not outside of a product such as VirtualBox, Parallels Desktop, or VMware Fusion; Mac OS X 10.7.5 doesn't contain the drivers needed to boot that Mac model.
(115966)

How do I boot Mac OS X Leopard from an external hard drive onto an eMac?

My eMac's internal hard drive died a while ago, and I was finally able to successfully able to install Mac OS X Leopard onto an external hard drive. However, my eMac still refuses to boot Leopard. I only keep being put on the OS Install/Upgrade screen. After install, I selected the Start-up Disk utility and chose my hard drive. Upon restart I find myself on the Install/Upgrade screen as I said earlier. I tried restarting again, but this time I pressed the option key to select a boot disk. However, only my Mac Install Disk shows up.

How is the external HD connected - USB or Firewire? Most Power PC Macs can't boot from a USB connected external HD.
 Cheers, Tom

Tiger and Snow Leopard on an external hard drive?

Hi,
I have a mini mac running tiger and I need to update my itunes and ipod touch which i cant currently do in tiger.
I dont want to upgrade my hard drive as most of my programs wont work with the update, eg. photoshop and dont want to buy a new photoshop package.
As i have a spare external hard drive, I was wondering if I could run leopard or snow leopard on that and update itunes that way, thus keeping tiger running on my mini mac, and have the option of which system to run. Is this possible?
Many Thanks.

Hi, yes you can, & with a big enough drive you could partition it for multiple bottable OSX Partitions.
Leopard requirements/10.5.x...
    * Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor
minimum system requirements
    * 512MB of memory (I say 1.5GB for PPC at least, 2-3GB minimum for IntelMacs)
    * DVD drive for installation
    * 9GB of available disk space (I say 30GB at least)
You have to call Apple & likely ask for a Product Specialist to get it, if they still have it! Helps to tell them you have an iPad/iPhone & you can't run 10.6.
List of Applications Not Compatible with Leopard...
http://guides.macrumors.com/List:Applications_Not_Compatible_with_Leopard
Snow Leopard/10.6.x Requirements...
General requirements
   * Mac computer with an Intel processor
    * 1GB of memory (I say 2GB at least)
    * 5GB of available disk space (I say 30GB at least)
    * DVD drive for installation
    * Some features require a compatible Internet service provider; fees may apply.
    * Some features require Apple’s MobileMe service; fees and terms apply.
Which apps work with Mac OS X 10.6?...
http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/
It looks like they might still have it...
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDAzOA
If it's a core Duo & not a Core2Duo, then it'll only run in 32 bit mode.

How do you reinsatll snow leopard from an external optical drive

Both my hard drive and superdrive crapped out. How do i reinstall from an external USB optical drive? I am having a complete brain **** at the moment!

If your replacing your internal hard drive, why not also get the Superdrive replaced?
The OS X install disk supposedly won't boot from a external optical drive, only the internal one.
To OS X onto your new internal drive, your going to need another Mac with optical drive to take 10.6 off the disk and place it onto a bootable USB. Any Mac should do, as the 10.6 installer isn't going to be booted .
http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html
Other methods, requires another compatible Mac.
If you have machine specific 10.6 disks and you have another exact model of Mac, you can use a SATA to USB adapter (or enclosure) to use boot the second Mac with the disk and install 10.6 on the "extenral" drive, then place it back inside the other Mac.
If you have the 10.6.3 white retail so called "upgrade disk" for 10.5 (it also has the full 10.6 on it) and you have another Intel Mac that it's OS X version originally came with anything 10.6.2 or earlier, then it will boot that disk to install on the "external" drive, then it can be placed back into the other Mac.
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
Another internal drive access method is to use Firewire Target Disk Mode
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
Also one can use a external drive to install the compatible OS X version onto, then option key boot the Mac with the new drive off the external, install Carbon Copy Cloner and clone the extenral to the newly formatted internal drive.
Most commonly used backup methods

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

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