OS X Lion installed, want OS X Snow Leopard on External HD

I upgraded to OS X Lion (which I love), but I would like to install OS X Snow Leopard on an external hard drive. Unfortunately after inserting the Snow Leopard disk, I am receiving the message: "You cannot install this OS with the current OS you are running"
Would restarting the comp to boot from the Snow Leopard disk work?
If anyone can help, that would be great!

Install 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 the 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. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. When formatting is complete quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard. Be sure you select the external drive as the installation target.

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Graham Giles wrote:
Have you seen this type of problem before? I think it could be a serious issue for anyone in a similar position.
No; but then, I've not had occasion to use TDM. I've been using firerwire drives for over 10 years, both FW400 and FW800, with no issues except a bit of instability using a B&W G3 machine.
TDM should be safe. Using cautious, manual copying of files from the Target machine to the Host machine should not result in unexpected loss of files or damage to the Target drive's directories. It should behave exactly the same as if it were an external (to the Host) firewire drive.
• I don't suppose there is anything I can do to 'put back' lost items from a separate Time Machine drive which has an up to date backup on it.
There is probably a way to do that - seems to me that's one of the reasons for a Time Machine volume.
On the other hand, if the Time Machine volume is rigidly linked to the now-absent OS on the original drive, there may be no way to effectively access the files in the TM archive.
I know that using a cloned drive would work well in this instance.
I have no experience with Time Machine, so perhaps someone who has will chime in with suggestions.
With the machine in TDM with the other machine, have you tried running Disk Utility to see if you can effect repairs to the drive?

My MacBook Pro, 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo gives me an error message during Lion install. My Intel Duo Core is not an Intel Duo Core and cannot install Lion. I already have Snow Leopard what is the problem with Lion?

My MacBook Pro, 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo gives me an error message during Lion install. My Intel Duo Core is not an Intel Duo Core and cannot install Lion. I already have Snow Leopard what is the problem with Lion?

You need a "Core 2 Duo" for lion, and I'm guessing you only have a "Core Duo" My wife's macbook is also a "Core Duo" and has Snow Leapord, but cannot install Lion.....

How can I unistall Lion and go back to Snow Leopard?

I upgraded to Lion (stupidly and blindly) and now most of my programs are not compatible. What is the process to go back to Snow Leopard?

Given the lack of response to this particular discussion, and given all the various and sundry ideas on this topic, I have had a panic-stricken 48 or so hours since I asked my question. Here's what finally worked to get me back to normal:
1. First, I gritted my teeth and erased my hard drive, hoping and praying I'd be able to restore from Time Machine. I'd been backing up for quite some time, but never needed it before. HOWEVER:
Lion evidently left little gremlins all over my hard drive, because I simply could not get my hard drive restored properly, not from the Time Machine restore function on the SL disk NOR from a manual "Star Wars" pick and choose with my Time Machine. Therefore (and this is important):
I zeroed out my hard drive completely, after trying for an entire day to get things back to normal. What you have to do is start up from the Snow Leopard disk, and do a COMPLETE erase, by which I mean that when you use DU to erase your hard drive, you go into the "security" panel on th DU screen and do a 7-pass zero-initialization of your hard drive, i.e., write zeros all over everything on your hard drive seven times, leaving it truly free of that yucky Lion. THEN I reinstalled Snow Leopard, ran Software Update several times until it had updated everything it wanted to ad nauseum, and THEN was able to get Time Machine to work properly and bit by bit restored everything I wanted to restore. I am appalled at the lack of accurate documentation that comes with Time Machine, frankly. Anyway, when you get ready to restore your software AFTER you put the Snow Leopard system back on your hard drive and update it, you have to go back to a backup from BEFORE you installed Lion, though: this is important. Don't try to put anything associated with Lion back on your hard drive. For me, that backup was done was last Friday. It took ages, but....my hard drive is now purring like a kitten, and I have Snow Leopard and all my old software back. It was a mess, but it seems to be over. I learned from this disaster how important it is to completely wipe your hard drive clean before trying to reinstall an older operating system. As far as Lion goes, I will be extremely careful before I assume any new upgrade is a good upgrade. It isn't. I LIKE my elderly Adobe programs and my kid likes her games that need Rosetta, as does Word 2004. My Mac is much happier with Snow Leopard. For now. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Can I downgrade mail from Lion Mail(v.5) to Snow Leopard Mail(v.4)?

I just bought a new MacBook (13.3" running Lion OS 10.7.1). I -really- don't like the new format of mail and have problems with searching and other organization methods I worked out. I would like to downgrade from Lion Mail (v.5) to Snow Leopard Mail (v.4). I understand that some people have downgraded the whole operating system and saw those instructions in the discussion forums, but I would like to -only- downgrade mail. Any ideas?
Also, any recommendations on reducing my load times and delays in mail? I have over 100,000 emails over the past 4 years that are bogging down the system. I have tried archiving some older messages, but the system freezes and then downloads all the attachments from my oldest messages, filling up the entire hard disk. Thanks in advance!

There is a long thread about this -- https://discussions.apple.com/message/15733107#15733107 -- and the bottom line is that it is possible to install and run SL on a 2011 mini (with some rather wonky hacking...) BUT it doesn't work very well. Performance benchmarks of the same machine in SL and Lion show the SL as definitely slower.
Plus people are having problems with certain features on the machine not working.
I think that your performance issues sound like something else is wrong... The 2GB is a definite problem -- do you know that you can buy 8GB for the machine for $60, and getting it installed is a snap? But the first thing that I would do is to install applejack and boot into single-user mode and run disk repair (aka fsck.) Another question -- if you look on your console, do you see a voracious cpu-eating process called mds? It's the indexer for Spotlight, and there is nothing to be done about it than to just wait it out, and your machine will work much better when it is done. And Spotlight is not just a SL problem -- if you install SL it's going to want to index your disk, too...

Is there anyway I can get rid of Lion and get back to Snow Leopard?

Is there anyway I can get rid of Lion and get back to Snow Leopard?

Back to Snow Leopard from Lion install method
Read and print out these instructions, your computer is going to be offline and you wil be cutoff from help until your machine is restored.
Clear the Desktop, Downloads and Trash of anything you wish to keep by placing their files in the respective Documents, Music, Pictures, Movie folders.
Disconnect other drives except the sole backup drive.
Backup ALL your Users folders (Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music etc) manually (drag and drop methods) to a (not TimeMachine) external powered drive (HFS+ journaled formatted in Disk Utility) and disconnect, your going to be wiping the entire boot disk of ALL DATA.
(warning, everything will be gone and not recovered, OS, programs, files, Windows etc all gone.)
Note: You might want to hold c and boot off the 10.6 installer disk and use Disk Utility to format the new blank external drive instead of using OS X Lion if that's hosed. Then reboot into Lion and copy files, may be safer that way.
Here we go!
Hold c and boot off the 10.6 installer disk that comes with your computer and second screen in just STOP there, don't install OS X yet.
Look at the Utilities Menu for Disk Utility.
On the left is the name of your hard drive maker, click it and Erase (format HFS+ Journaled), give it the same drive name as before, and click Erase...
(note: if you want to "scrub" the drive of old files that haven't been overwritten yet, then use the Security Option > Zero Erase, takes a lot longer)
This should wipe the drive of ALL partitions (GUID, OS X and 10.7 Recovery, Windows if present)
When it's done, quit and install OS X 10.6. Then install all your programs from fresh sources and validate/update.
When you setup a first account, use the same user name as before, this way you can simply drag and drop the content of your previous Users folders from the external drive right back into the new Users folders and everything should work peachy. Links in iTunes to music, playlists and iPhoto links especially.
Update OS X to 10.6.8 using the Combo Update for best results.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399
(Note: If your original machine had 10.5 and you want the free iLife that comes with the disks with the computer, then you'll have to install 10.5 first using the same c boot/erase/format methods as above, then update to 10.6 via the disk, then Combo Update 10.6.8)
Final step optional but highly recommended.
A lot of people use a Carbon Copy Clone of their boot drive to a new HFS+Journaled external drive (used only for this purpose) as a "hold the option key" bootable backup in case something goes wrong with their boot drive or need to restore to a previous OS X version.. (in addition to TimeMachine drive for more immediate backups.)
It's not advised to have a Bootable Clone and a TimeMachine partition on the same external drive, as two drives gives hardware protection in case one fails.

Does Logic on Lion offer any advantages over Snow Leopard?

Does Logic on Lion offer any advantages over Snow Leopard? Which is more stable?

Thanks for your replies. I have a new Mac Pro and are about to make a brand new install of Logic. As this is a serious time commitiment, because of all my 3rd party plug-ins, software instruments, sample libraries and loops, I want to choose the right OS from the start so I don't have to re-do it again. I have 10.6.8 on my old machine and that has been working well.
My original plan was to wait for 10.8 and do it then. But now I've read a lot of posts saying people are having trouble on 10.7. For obvious reasons, I would prefer to be on the newest OS, but not at the expense of bugs and glitches. I'm also worried that some of my 3rd party stuff won't work on 10.8. Is there a compatibility list somewhere?
I've been with Logic for almost 20 years now, and my experience has always been that it's usually wise to stay behind at least one OS version, in order to get stability and full compatibility with 3rd party plug-ins and drivers.
Is there any advatage with 10.7 or 10.8 over 10.6 in the way assigning RAM to sample instruments is handled?

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.

How do I disable Lion and go back to snow leopard

I up graded to Lion. Now my wireless router can't connect because it doesn't support Lion. I don't want to have to buy a new router.
Can I disable lion and go back to snow leopard?
P.S. I am new at computers so be easy on the terminology please.

It would help if you gave some information on WHY the router isn't working. Start with the basics:
-What brand and model is the router? If you can get a version number, that is also sometimes helpful. This info is generally printed somewhere on the router, usually a label on the back or bottom.
-What do you mean by "doesn't support" - did you get this info from the manufacturer, or is this based on you not being able to connect? Routers use standard wireless protocols (called 802.11a/b, g, or n). The network cards in Mac computers also use these same protocols.I can't think of a reason why it shouldn't work.
-Does your router have a wired connection? If so, can you connect with an Ethernet cable? You may need to be able to connect to the router directly to change settings.
-How old is your router? And have you ever tried to upgrade the firmware settings on it?
-Can you connect to ANY wireless routers anywhere else with your Lion computer?
-Do you have any OTHER computers (Windows or Mac) that can successfully connect to your wireless router?

How do I remove Lion and go back to Snow Leopard OS?

How do I remove Lion and go back to Snow Leopard?

If you have the white upgrade disk (originally, you had Leopard and bought SL later), easy. I'm not sure if you have the grey disks (you bought the machine with SL).
If you have the white disk, the first thing you do is get a USB external HD. Format it to GUID with disk utility.
Insert the white SL disk and restart. Follow the instructions to install SL on the external disk.
Have a look here for a step by step tutorial for setting up the external HD: http://www.maciverse.com/installing-snow-leopard-onto-an-external-hard-drive.htm l
From here on in you have two choices:
1. You can run SL off the external disk and keep Lion and all your files/data on the internal disk.
This is the easiset thing to do. You can open files from your Internal Lion disk by navigating through to it in Finder when you're booted in to SL on your external disk. Practical if you have a desktop machine, maybe not if you have a laptop that you need to carry everywhere (you'd have carry the external HD with you all the time).
Any non-Lion only (i.e., not Safari, Preview, Terminal and Mail Lion upgrades) apps should also run off your Lion disk when you're booted into SL, but if you have any problems, just drag them from the Lion Apps folder to the SL apps folder.
2. Move everything over to the external disk if you plan to install SL back to your internal disk.
Start copying over all your apps and files manually by dragging them from the internal disk Apps and Folders to the external disk Apps and Folders. If you have Time Machine, you can also copy your files by navigating to Time Machine through the Finder rather than trying to use the Time machine interface.
You might spend some days doing this, but it's worth doing it manually. When you're done and sure you have everything, google 'Carbon Copy Cloner'. Download it (its free), and clone your external HD to your internal HD. SL restored!

I can't install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on my Mac mini!

Hi,
I have a Mac mini 2007, with OS X 10.5.8
I want to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard, but i can't. I erased the hard drive with the installation disc of leopard and then i tried boot snow leopard. After a few seconds it said: "You can't install on this computer. What can i do?
My Mac mini's details:
Model Name:          Mac mini
Model Identifier:          Macmini2,1
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          1.83 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          2 MB
Memory:          1 GB
Bus Speed:          667 MHz
Boot ROM Version:          MM21.009A.B00
SMC Version (system):          1.19f2
Please help!

Where did you obtain the Snow Leopard DVD? If it is aDVD from another computer, it will not work. You will need the retail version of the DVD as shown below.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard

I recently updated? to Lion from 10.6.8(snow leopard), and things seem to be running slower. Has anyone had similar problems? I have Feb 2011 Macbook pro 13" 2.3 Ghz.

I recently updated? to Lion from 10.6.8(snow leopard), and things seem to be running slower. Has anyone had similar problems? I have Feb 2011 Macbook pro 13" 2.3 Ghz.

As Shootist pointed out, the system uses more power.
However, initially it will reindex the hard drive for spotlight, which will slow things down temporarily.
It also must rebuild caches that eventually will speed things up.
If it has completed indexing the hard drive (no dot pulsing in the spyglass), then there might be something wrong.
Start by booting into the Recovery HD (a partition created with Lion that has Disk Utility and reinstallation options) by holding down cmd-r when you restart. You can let go when the gray screen appears.
When it boots, select Disk Utility and Repair the drive.
If that doesn't speed things up, try re-installing the OS from the same Recovery HD. It won't delete any of your files, but it has helped some people whose Macs ran slow after installing Lion.
Also, how much memory do you have? Lion needs RAM so maxing your Mac out might also help.

If I purchase a brand new I-mac today do I have to run OS Lion or can I load Snow leopard?

If I purchase a brand new I-mac today do I have to run OS Lion or can I load Snow leopard?

Just faced that question, and the answer should be that you can run SL on the latest iMac.
(Our scenario: Bought 3 iMacs in August. Was surprised -- and relieved! -- to see that they arrived with SL installed on them, and grey system restore disks. One of the machines was DOA. Futzed around with it for 6 weeks trying to get it to work, decided it was dead, drove it 4 hours to the nearest Apple Store. They gave us a new iMac, which when we got it back, turned out to have Lion on it. Popped in one of the three grey restore disks that had come in August, installed SL, it works without any problems.)

OS X Lion installed, want OS X Snow Leopard on External HD

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