Is it possible to install Snow Leopard on an external hard disk?

I was wondering if it is possible to install Snow Leopard on an external drive that I use as a backup start up disk. Can I then boot up off of either disk? I would like to test Snow Leopard with my applications before I install it on my internal drive.
Thanks

You can install from your install disk and migrate from your internal during Setup Assistant.
If all is well you can then use SuperDuper or CarbonCopy Cloner both free for cloning to clone the system on your external to your internal.
This is what I do when testing upgrades/updates.
-mj

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MBP 17" mid 2010 Snow Leopard Native: why not possible to install Snow Leopard in some new Hard disk?It appears "impossibile 'cause you have Mac OS X" 23.1.1."

Guys, I want to install SL in some hard disk. It's the native OS, the one came with the MBP. But after having installed Lion, my MBP doesn't allow me to install from the original dvd of Snow Leopard, telling me "impossible because you have Mac OS X” 23.1.1. istaller".
Someone can help me?

hey thank you for your answers. I've written that I want to install snow leopard in a new hard disk, not over the lion. In other words, I want a hard disk with the faster snow leopard, that was the native OSX of my MBP mid 2010. But using the last procedure you suggested me, the dvd doesn't appear. I repeat, there's something changed in the firmware that blocks snow leopard.
the comunication that appears when I insert the original dvd of SL is something like "impossible to install snow leopard because you have Mac OS X” 23.1.1. istaller".

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.

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.

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.)

Is it possible to Install SAP R3 in an External Hard Disk?

Experts,
is it possible to Install SAP R3 in an External Hard Disk?
Mohamed AR Rahaman

HI ,
yes You can....
Thanks
Shambhu

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 have a 15" MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion installed. I have partitioned the hard drive into two partitions. Is it possible to install Snow Leopard on the second partition? If so how do I do it?

I have a 15" MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion installed. I have partitioned the hard drive into two partitions. Is it possible to install Snow Leopard on the second partition? If so how do I do it?

If your MacBook Pro had Snow Leopard on it at one time then sure. (Early 2011 or earlier)
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
Obviously choose the second partition to install into. It has to be OS X Extended journaled formatted in Disk Utility (BootCamp software makes it a MSDOS/FAT32 formatted partition if you used that to partition with)
If it's a Early 2011 or Late 2011 that came with 10.7, it's possible, but it's not easy.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3264421?start=0&tstart=0
If you can't install Snow Leopard, there is a thread over at MacRumors how to run Snow Leopard in a virtual machine program under 10.7 or 10.8

Is it possible to install Snow Leopard on a PC and to run it with two Nvidia Quadro Cards and 8 Screens?

Is it possible to install Snow Leopard on a PC and to run it with two Nvidia Quadro Cards and 8 Screens?

Furthermore, all new Macs since 2006 have been able to have Windows or Linux installed on them natively with virtualization engines*:
http://www.macmaps.com/macosxnative.html#WINTEL
You may even want to consider a used Mac Pro*:
http://www.macmaps.com/usedrefurbished.html

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.

Is it possible to install Snow Leopard from Darwin?

I'm currently using Darwin 9.8.0, what is the latest version I can install install onto my mac, if any?

Welcome to Apple Discussions,
MacBook 4,1
You should be fine.
Whether or not you can run Snow Leopard depends only on your hardware, not on what you are currently running.
System Requirements
===
Mac computer with an Intel processor
1GB of memory
5GB of available disk space
You can use the current OS X 10.6.3 Snow Leopard $29 retail disc on any Mac that meets those requirements and which originally shipped with an earlier OS than 10.6.3, regardless of what it is now running. One installed, Snow Leopard can be updated via Software Updates to the latest version, currently OS X 10.6.7.
Message was edited by: jsd2

Why can't I install Snow Leopard on an external drive?

In order to open applications which have been rendered useless when I installed Lion, I have been trying to install Snow Leopard from the Install DVD on an external drive. For some reason, it either hangs up and stalls during the installation or, when it does finish the process, I am unable to boot from it. It hangs up and the gear rotates forever. Is it not possible to do what I am attempting to do, whih is to get some use out of my now useless applications, or is there some way to accomplish this with which I am unfamiliar?

I see.
BTW have you considered abandoning Quicken? I was a long time (at least 10 years) Quicken user however it's clear Intuit does not consider the OS X market an important one or not important enough to come out with a true Quicken replacement that will run on the most contemporary version of OS X. Personally I (along with thousands of others) decided the time was right to begin looking at alternatives to Quicken. I chose iBank for it's similarities to Quicken, it's ability to import my Quicken data and it's support. I began using it several months ago now and have been very happy. IMHO it's a better solution than what you're attempting and staying with "dead" software is simply postponing the innevitable which will only become more difficult the longer you postpone it.

Why can't I install Snow Leopard on my videos hard drive?

I have a Mac Pro with four hard drives. Lion is on the primary drive but I need Snow Leopard for a legacy app. My plan is to install Snow Leopard on a hard drive that I use for video projects, and then restart from that drive when I need to use the old app. The problem is that the Snow Leopard installation disk says that it can't install onto the videos hard drive unless I partition the hard drive, which will erase all the data. Why can't it install onto the videos hard drive? There's no operating system on that hard drive. The hard drive has folders for Final Cut Express Projects, iMovie Events, iMovie Projects, DVDs movies I've ripped, a folder of music, and an iDVD project. What do I need to remove to enable installing Snow Leopard?

If I understand what you are saying you have a drive with "stuff" already on it and you want to install a version of OSX on to it while still retaining that "stuff". If that's what you want to do you cannot do that mainly because there's already "stuff" on that drive.
The only way you can do this is to either of the following:
a. Copy the "stuff" off that drive to another drive. Install the OS. Copy the "stuff" back on to the newly created boot drive.
b. Copy the "stuff" off that drive on to another drive. Partition the drive into at least 2 partitions; one for the boot and one for the "stuff". Install the OS into one of the partitions. Copy the "stuff" back to the other partition.
Either way, if you want to use that disk for a boot disk, you got to get that "stuff" out of the way to do the OSX install on to that disk.

Problem installing Snow Leopard on an external drive

Having just treated myself to a shiny new iMac, I have had a change around of my supplementary drives. I wanted to create a bootable external drive for backups and emergencies. I have a 500GB internal drive leftover from my G5 Powermac, which I have put into a Macally caddy for SATA drives. I have formatted it in Disk Utility and it mounts successfully via the Firewire 800 cable. DU shows it as having the GUID Partition Table.
The problem came when I tried to install Snow Leopard. The installation starts correctly and shows the drive as being selectable. Once the installation proceeds the progress bar gets about 25% of the way across when the iMac restarts and gets no further than the grey screen. The only way I can free it is to do a PRAM reset.
I have tried a similar procedure with my Powermac and Leopard and the same thing happens, so it must be something to do with the drive and caddy. Can anyone suggest what to do next?

There is no way for the installer or the Startup Disk system preference to know if the firmware of an external drive does or doesn't support booting a Mac. In theory they all should; in reality a few do not for various reasons, generally having to do with some proprietary feature like power management or something else that isn't completely specified in USB or FireWire standards.
There is no absolutely reliable technical specification for determining this. As a rule, interfaces based on the Oxford FW chips will boot a Mac; others may or may not, depending on the chip model & revision. Unfortunately, this info is often not published by manufacturers, especially for integrated devices not intended for drive replacements, which may use proprietary interface & power management circuitry.

Is it possible to install Snow Leopard on an external hard disk?

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