I want to upgrade my Imac from Snow Leopard to Yosemite, but only have 1Gb RAM. Can I add RAM, then upgrade?

I want to upgrade from Snow Leopard to Yosemite, but can't because I only have 1Gb Memory. Can I add more memory, then do the upgrade? What should I buy?

gwd440 wrote:
Its older than I realised. Purchased in 2009, but is an early 2008 model.
So I'm possibly aiming a bit high by going for Yosemite? Would an earlier o/s be a more realistic option?
On the RAM issue, I fully agree with what Etresoft has written. I have just visited various sites, including OWC, Mactracker and iFixit and your Mac seems to have the Penryn processor. It will address 6GB of RAM which is more than enough for your use.
Where I differ from him, is Lion. The last big cat which I liked was probably Snow Leopard, and thereafter now Yosemite. There has been a lot of successes with your generation migrating to Yosemite, but with 6GB of RAM. Admittedly there were also problems for some, but I have observed even more successes even after initial problems. Mostly these problems were caused by adware or crapware installations. (Thank you Etresoft for a wonderful utility!)
Your iMac also has a SATA interface for a 3GB SSD, which is good enough. We have a Mac here with the same interface, still with a normal conventional stock HD running Yosemite, but only 4GB of RAM and it is running fine.
Of course the newer technology processors, faster RAM, PCI SSD, greater bandwidth on the newer Macs perform much better. But as I am on the older side, (ha ha), some of the 'vintage' Macs are still my favourites to use for certain tasks. Like using 9.09 for doing certain things and then converting the results afterwards for completion!
But, once again, it is your decision and only you can decide as you yourself knows your own circumstances better. Weigh up the options, considering what Etresoft has pointed out vs what Yosemite offers ito continuous support, security and features. There are a lot of your type of iMacs out there, and some of the users spoke about feeling like having a new Mac. There were others, who were wailing though. You could of course, also follow the advice of a test installation on an external and testdrive it, or wait for the release of 10.10.2 which I read somewhere is eminently close?
Have fun
Leo

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I just update my Mac operating system from Snow Leopard to Yosemite and now have to upgrade my Epson Printer WF3540 so that it will be able to scan. Will Adobe be compatible with these softwares?

I just update my Mac operating system from Snow Leopard to Yosemite and now have to upgrade my Epson Printer WF3540 so that it will be able to scan. Will Adobe be compatible with these softwares?

Hi spiritentrep,
What Adobe software are you referring to? Are you using Acrobat? You should have no problems running Acrobat XI on Yosemite, and as along as you have compatible scanner drivers for your Epson, you should be fine there as well.
Best,
Sara

I want to upgrade from snow leopard to Mavericks, but only Yosemite is available!!

How do I upgrade snow leopard to Mavericks on one of my older macbooks? I note that Mavericks is no longer available via the App store, only Yosemite, and I do not want the latter. My latest macbooks all have Mavericks pre-installed, and I want parity on all.

OS X 10.9 Mavericks is no longer an available, downloadable OS version.
You can choose to decide and download the free OS X 10.10 Yosemite OR pay to download either OS X 10.7 Lion or OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
Before embarking on a major OS upgrade, it would be wise, advisable and very prudent if you backup your current system to an external connected and Mac formatted Flash drive OR externally connected USB, Thunderbolt or FireWire 800, Mac formatted hard drive. Then, use either OS X Time Machine app to backup your entire system to the external drive OR purchase, install and use a data cloning app, like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, to make an exact and bootable copy (clone) of your entire Mac's internal hard drive. This step is really needed in case something goes wrong with the install of the new OS or you simply do not like the new OS, you have a very easy way/procedure to return your Mac to its former working state.
Then, determine if your Mac meets ALL minimum system install requirements.
OS X 10.7 Lion system requirements
Purchased emailed download code here.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion
To use OS X 10.7 Lion, make sure your computer has the following:
An Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
Mac OS X v10.6.6 or later to install via the Mac App Store (v10.6.8 recommended)
7 GB of available disk space
2 GB of RAM
To install OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.9 Mavericks (free upgrade, but currently unavailable) or OS X 10.10 Yosemite (currently available free upgrade) you need one of these Macs:
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion purchased emailed download code here.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6377Z/A/os-x-mountain-lion
iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later),
MacBook Pro (15-inch or 17-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or later)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
Xserve (Early 2009)
Your Mac also needs:
OS X Mountain Lion, Lion, or Snow Leopard v10.6.8 already installed
2 GB or more of memory (I strongly advise, at least, 4 GBs of RAM or more)
8 GB or more of available space
Next,
If you run any older Mac software from the earlier PowerPC Macs, then none of this software will work with the newer OS X versions (10.7 and onward). OS X Snow Leopard had a magical and invisible PowerPC emulation application, called Rosetta, that worked seamlessly in the background that still allowed older PowerPC coded software to still operate in a Intel CPU Mac.
The use of Rosetta ended with OS X Snow Leopard as the Rosetta application was licensed to Apple, from a software company called Transitive, which got bought out, I believe, by IBM and Appe could no longer secure their rights to continue to use Rosetta in later versions of OS X.
So, you would need to check to see if you have software on your Mac that maybe older than, say, 2006 or older.
Also, check for app compatibilty here.
http://roaringapps.com/
If you have any commercial antivirus installed and/or hard drive cleaning apps installed on your Mac, like MacKeeper, CleanMyMac, TuneUpMyMac, MacCleanse, etc. now would be a good time to completely uninstall these apps by doing a Google search to learn how to properly uninstall these types of apps.
These types of apps will only cause your Mac issues later after the install of the new OS X version and you will have to completely uninstall these types of apps later.
Once you have determined all of this, you should be able to find the latest versions of OS X by clicking on the Mac App Store icon in the OS X Dock and then login to the Mac App Store using your Apple ID and password and if you purchased a download code, input that code.
You can then begin the download and installation process of installing the newer versions of OS X from the Mac App Store.
Good Luck!

I want to upgrade from 10.6 to 10.7 but only have 1gb what can i do

I want to upgrade from 10.6.8 to 10.7 but it saying I need 2GB of memory I have a Mac book from Setpember 2007 I have already bought 10.7 is there any thing i can do to get 2GB?

Get more RAM, some of which can be found here for your model (667MHz 204-pin DDR2 RAM: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/MacBook/DDR2/)

Hi i want to upgrade my iMac from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to OS X Mavericks or OS X Yosemite. My software update menu dosnn´t find any updates available. Help please, what can i do to upgrade to OS X Mavericks or newer version?

Hi i want to upgrade my iMac from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to OS X Mavericks or OS X Yosemite. My software update menu dosnn´t find any updates available. Help please, what can i do to upgrade to OS X Mavericks or newer version?

Open the Mac App Store and try downloading Yosemite. If you get told it's incompatible, the computer's also incompatible with Mountain Lion and Mavericks; if desired, choose About this Mac from the Apple menu, check if the computer has at least a Xeon or Core 2 Duo(not Core Duo) CPU and 2GB of RAM, and if it does, click here and order a download code for Lion 10.7.
Back up your data and check your applications for compatibility before upgrading. In particular, Mac OS X 10.7 and newer don't support PowerPC programs such as versions of Microsoft Office prior to 2008.
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I want to upgrade from snow leopard to Yosemite all at one time. is this a good idea on my imac 8.1 using OS X 10.6.8?

I am using snow leopard on a mac 8.1 can I up grade in one step to Yosemite or should I up grade to an earlier OS first?

Yes, you can jump to Yosemite directly. Before you do be sure your computer is compatible:
Upgrading to Yosemite
You can upgrade to Yosemite from Lion or directly from Snow Leopard. Yosemite can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for FREE.
Upgrading to Yosemite
To upgrade to Yosemite you must have Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or Lion installed. Download Yosemite from the App Store. Sign in using your Apple ID. Yosemite is free. The file is quite large, over 5 GBs, so allow some time to download. It would be preferable to use Ethernet because it is nearly four times faster than wireless.
    OS X Mavericks/Yosemite- System Requirements
    Macs that can be upgraded to OS X Yosemite
         1. iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 7,1 or later
         2. MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 5,1 or later
         3. MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         4. MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 2,1 or later
         5. Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         6. Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         7. Xserve (Early 2009) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
To find the model identifier open System Profiler in the Utilities folder. It's displayed in the panel on the right.
     Are my applications compatible?
         See App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps.
I would also suggest you do the following before installing the upgrade:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

Problem activating Facetime on iMac: I recently upgraded my iMac from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. Since the upgrade, when I try to sign on with my valid Apple ID

Problem activating Facetime on iMac: I recently upgraded my iMac from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion.
Since the upgrade, when I try to sign on with my valid Apple ID & password I get this message "The server encountered an error processing registration. Please try again later."
I have tried (again later) repeatedly without success. PLEASE HELP!

When attempting to upgrade my iMac from Snow Leopard to Mavericks, I receive the message "This disk is used for Time Machine Backups" when I try to select the lone available hard drive.

When attempting to upgrade my iMac from Snow Leopard to Mavericks, I receive the message "This disk is used for Time Machine Backups" when I try to select the lone available hard drive. I have ensured that Time Machine is turned off. Upon some Google research, some who reported this problem were told to delete the folder backup.backupdb, but I do not have this folder on my Mac. Any suggestions?

The folder would be at the root of your hard drive. Double-click Macintosh HD and look there.
If it isn’t there, I’m not sure what it is seeing.

I am new to mac's and have upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion but......

I am new to mac's and have upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion but not all my application will work. Is it save to reinstall using original snow leopard dvd and does it wipe all my other application like apature? I am in a panic over this, any help!!
I came across this online and i want to know is it safe to do this:
Backup your User folders to an external drive. This should preserve your documents, photos, music, etc. If you store those things in locations not in the User folder, make sure to copy those over too.
Insert the Snow Leopard disc. Restart your Mac and hold down C to boot to your DVD drive.
Go to Utilities in the menu bar once the installer pops up and select “Disk Utility.”
Find the drive in the sidebar where Lion is installed, select it and navigate to the Partition tab.
Click on the drop down menu under Partition Layout and select “1 Partition.” Hit Apply.
Now navigate to the Erase tab and make sure “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” is selected, then hit Erase to delete all data on the drive.
Quit Disk Utility to get back to the Snow Leopard installer and proceed with the install.
Restore your User folder and documents from your backup.
Run Software Update to get everything current, install your apps from your original install media and update those as well.
if any one can help me that would be great, thanks Mike

Before you do that why not do this first:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Lion Recovery HD. When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
To boot from the Recovery HD restart the computer. After the chime hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
If this doesn't help, then you can proceed to reinstall Snow Leopard as follows:
Downgrade Lion to Snow Leopard
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, 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. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.
This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard. I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.1.
This will erase the drive so be sure to backup your files before doing this.

Upgrading from Snow Leopard to Yosemite

Hello,
Long-time user of the forums, first-time poster (such a fantastic wealth of knowledge here!).
One question prior to installing Yosemite:
Does anyone have any experience installing from Snow Leopard to Yosemite - ideally with a Macbook Pro 15-inch mid 2009?
The second question is more closely related to what I do after I make the install, which I plan to do to a test partition first:
If I install to a partioned drive, will I still have the option to install onto my original drive (and then I would delete the test partion - I presume this is the best way to do it) if I like Yosemite and wish to go ahead with it? Will I just be able to use my Mac log in again?
If I don't like Yosemite, or it is incompatible with my mac, will I be able to easily remove the newly partioned test-drive, with Yosemite on it?
Lastly, Will I need to reinstall Microsoft Word for Mac 2011? As I don't have the boot disks I just wanted to check this.
I plan to run the usual diagnostic precautions (Time Machine Back-up, Verify/repair Disc permissions,make sure all software up to date) Many thanks all,
Much appreciated.
Below are my specs:
Macbook Pro 15-inch mid 2009
HDD: 250 GB
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,4
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.53 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 8 GB (I upgraded to this about 18 months ago)
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Mac.user2014 wrote:
Hi Kahjot,
Wow - fantastic this is so useful! So I would partition the external HDD first? And then clone my current OS to both of those partitions? And I would need to run the whole of the OS off my external drive - I would need to keep it in at all times...?
If possible can you please describe the process of cloning it back on to my internal drive - will this remove all my existing apps etc that I have modified over the course of the month?
Many thanks again,
Hugo
You would really only have to keep the external attached when you want to fool around with the clone that you updated to Yosemite. You could either run off the external for Snow Leopard, or from your internal drive. I'd pick one and stick with it. Let's say it's the Snow Leopard internal drive. You would clone it to your external Snow Leopard partition from time to time to keep that clone up to date. If you decide that you really want Yosemite on your internal drive (you may not!), you could make a final clone of your internal drive to the Snow Leopard partition, to make sure that you still have it and can go back to it when you need to, and then you would clone the Yosemite drive onto your internal. That would, of course, completely erase what is on your internal drive and replace it with the Yosemite system. Or you could just run the Yosemite installer (that you wisely saved) to update your internal drive that way.
I am thinking in terms of cloning with software such as SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner: I've never used Time machine. I can't advise you on how reliable Time Machine is, or how easy it is to restore a system with it. You might do some research here on that. SOme users have reported missing files in their Time Machine backups: http://www.macintouch.com/
One "gotcha" with Carbon Copy Cloner, which I prefer because it clones the recovery partition, is that you will need version 4 to clone Yosemite onto anything, and an earlier version (3.5.7) to use within Snow Leopard.
When you download the Yosemite Install app, it will launch itself. Don't run it immediately. Quit the Install app, and option-drag a copy of the installer to a safe location (not in your Applications Folder!). The Apple OS installers starting with Lion have the annoying habit of deleting themselves from the Applications folder after the installation is finished, so if you allow that to happen and need to install it again, you have to download it from the App Store again.
One snag is that Yosemite volumes are not seen by Snow Leopard's Startup Disk pref, so you will have to switch from Snow Leopard to Yosemite by rebooting with the option key held down.

Steps required to upgrade OS from snow leopard to yosemite

What are the steps required to upgrade from Snow Leopard to Yosemite

Upgrading to Yosemite
You can upgrade to Yosemite from Lion or directly from Snow Leopard. Yosemite can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for FREE.
Upgrading to Yosemite
To upgrade to Yosemite you must have Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or Lion installed. Download Yosemite from the App Store. Sign in using your Apple ID. Yosemite is free. The file is quite large, over 5 GBs, so allow some time to download. It would be preferable to use Ethernet because it is nearly four times faster than wireless.
    OS X Mavericks/Yosemite - System Requirements
    Macs that can be upgraded to OS X Yosemite
         1. iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 7,1 or later
         2. MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 5,1 or later
         3. MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         4. MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 2,1 or later
         5. Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         6. Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         7. Xserve (Early 2009) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
To find the model identifier open System Profiler in the Utilities folder. It's displayed in the panel on the right.
     Are my applications compatible?
         See App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps.

Cannot upgrade from Snow Leopard to Yosemite

I have a MacBook from late 2009 with 4 GB memory and plenty of hard disk space. When I attempt to upgrade to Yosemite via the App store it says "This version of OS X 10.10 cannot be installed on this computer". Even though the computer was purchased new at the end of 2009, is it possible it does not meet the hardware specs somehow? Am I doing something wrong? Thanks in advance.

I'm having a similar (related?) problem with a 2009 MacBook. The upgrade from Snow Leopard to Yosemite started off normally, but the installation is not working - progress bar gets about halfway and then stops...for days.
A guy at the Genius Bar told me that happens sometimes if there's a blip in the internet connection during the process. Apparently, the resolution is to wipe the drive and reinstall. Unfortunately, I didn't back up the drive prior to the installation thinking this was just one of those upgrades that the OS or various apps (e.g. iTunes, iPhoto, etc.) always want me to install, which I do, never having had a problem.
Although, the Genius tested the drive and found it to be in perfect condition, I was told that I need to go to an external company to have the data recovered because Apple doesn't do data recovery.
Is it true that I have to wipe the disc and start fresh? I have the original Snow Leopard disc, so can I simply reinstall Snow Leopard? When I hold down the option key on power up, it shows me two images - Macintosh HD and Recovery- 10.10. Should I try Recovery- 10.10?
I would appreciate any thoughts, suggestions, ideas, alternatives, etc.

Hi, having old macbook pro intending to upgrade my os from snow leopard to lion but negative reviews on lion just put me off..i have ms office and photo shop installed on my machine..my question is will upgrading to lion stop me using those application?

Hi, having old macbook pro intending to upgrade my os from snow leopard to lion but negative reviews on lion just put me off..i have ms office and photo shop installed on my machine..my question is will upgrading to lion stop me using those application? thank you.

htfromgrantown wrote:
Hi, having old macbook pro intending to upgrade my os from snow leopard to lion but negative reviews on lion just put me off..i have ms office and photo shop installed on my machine..my question is will upgrading to lion stop me using those application? thank you.
Negative reviews are common place here as it is a trouble shooting forum. If you want to read the advantages, improvements and new features then go to the Apple site. If you are running Word 2004, Early Adobe suite, etc which are PPC programs, then don't update. Go to Apple logo in upper left menu bar, open About this mac > More Info > Software >Applications and sort by 'Kind' and look what PPC programs you have installed. If you are not prepared to upgrade these programs, then do not update to Lion.
There are plenty of threads to read up on about this here. But remember that 99.9% of comments will be negative, even though the forums represent only a tiny fraction of the Millions of Lion Downloads purchased and installed with no issues at all. So basically it's your call.
Good Luck

How do I choose an App to upgrade from Snow Leopard to Yosemite?

How do I choose an App to upgrade from Snow Leopard to Yosemite?

Check to make sure your applications are compatible. PowerPC applications are no longer supported after 10.6.
Application Compatibility
Applications Compatibility (2)

Can i upgrade from snow leopard to yosemite?

Can I upgrade from Snow Leopard to Yosemite without having a lot of problems? Or do I have to upgrade to something else first? My browser is getting messages that I need to upgrade to work properly. This has never been a problem until now.

melodymrh wrote:
I have snow leopard and one day it asked to download Yosemite which was an Upgrade to 10X so I did, now everything is messed up printer doesn't print, IPHOTO has a circle around it with a slash through it. HELP PLEASE.
For future reference: You don't have to install an upgrade, just because Apple would like you to do so. Never install a major upgrade without first checking to see what problems people are having, and what software will be incompatible. You lose nothing by waiting a while.
You can restore your Snow Leopard system from your most recent complete system backup before upgrading. If you have no backup, you will have to try to back up now, and then you will have to re-install Snow leopard from the system disks that came with your computer. You will have to boot from the Install disk, and erase your drive, and re-install Snow Leopard, then apply the various Snow Leopard updates to get back to 10.6.8. After that, you can try to bring back some of the critical files from your Yosemite backup, but some of it may not survive the transition.

I want to upgrade my Imac from Snow Leopard to Yosemite, but only have 1Gb RAM. Can I add RAM, then upgrade?

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