Should I install Snow Leopard?

I have been looking at the forums on and off all day. I see that there are a lot of problems. It doesn't seem that the same problems are affecting everyone that install SL. I have school in about a week, it's online, so I can't have my computer not working. I want to install the new OS. So my question is should I install it? Do you think that most of the problems will be fixed by then? Any advice will help. Thanks.
Message was edited by: Mr. Dakota Brower

Get a bootable, external HD (preferably FireWire, since it's 40-50% faster than USB 2 and designed for data transfers), make a bootable backup/clone before updating/upgrading, and ensure that it's bootable and works like the original. That allows you to revert to the previous good state without having to reinstall anything. See these for details:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106941
http://www.macmaps.com/upgradefaq.html
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/installswupdates.html
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/backuprecovery.html
If you only have a Time Machine backup, insure that you can reliably restore it to another disk/volume/partition before updating/upgrading.
Doing this will allow you to do exactly as Larc's doing.

Similar Messages

Can I install Snow Leopard over Lion to install old software after hard drive crashed?

My hard drive crashed and I lost everything. I have a new hard drive, but when the repair shop installed my operating system, they installed Lion and I no longer have my prior updates. My computer had been updated a few times. I have a lot of software that only can be installed up to 10.7 such as Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, Office Mac 2011, etc. I was wondering if I installed Snow Leopard over Lion, would I lose Lion? Should I install Snow Leopard and then Lion again? I don't want to damage my like new computer and I don't want to have to go out and buy all new software. Is there a solution? Thanks in advance!

Sounds complicated! If I repartition the drive and install Snow Leopard onto the blank volume, will Lion still be there? Or, will the computer basically have two operating systems that I have to go back and forth from. Is this something a novice like myself can do?

I am having trouble installing Snow Leopard on my MacBook -it just quits midway through. I have one GB of memory which I think should be enough. Any advice

I am having trouble installing Snow Leopard on my MacBook. It's around 4 years old and has 1GB Memory. The installation just quits around 20 minutes into the process without any error message. My current OS is Leopard.

but it didn't have Mac OS installed, the previous owner was a Windows 7 user, so that was the only OS installed in my Mac.
The previous owner should have given you the discs that originally came with the computer.
Replacement System Discs can be obtained from Apple's Customer Support - US (800) 767-2775 for a nominal fee. You'll need to have the model and serial number of your Mac available.
If you're not in the US, you may need to go through the regional Apple Store that serves your location to find the contact number - http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/intlstoreroutingpage.html

I have new hard drive, should I use migration assistant before I install Snow Leopard or install Snow Leopard first?

I just had a new hard drive installed after a hard drive failure. I need to install Snow Leopard, Lion and VMware Fusion. Should I use migration assistant to reinstall my old files and applications first or should I install the new Operating Systems first? Some of the old files do have corrupt data and I will have to pick and choose what back-up files I re-install.

Pondini wrote:
memalyn wrote:
Some files were backed up on another external drive but not all.
How was that done? Drag & drop? An app like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper?
Initially files were backed up on the iMac with Time Machine. I purchased a My Book external hard drive and after doing a full back up on it, I began doing all of my incremental back ups on it using Time Machine. Sometime later, I purchased a Western Digital external hard drive that included back up software on it called "WD Back-up" so I could use it to store all of my Music and Audiobooks on to keep my iMac and My Book free of those file types. The WD Backup software allowed me to pick and choose what files I wanted to back-up. I don't think I had been backing up Music and Audiobooks on the Mac anyway or maybe I was, I don't remember if I can selectively pick and choose files with Time Machine - I have not checked as I have not yet plugged it into my new hard drive. Once The My Book drive became full with regular back ups, around June or so I had to switch over to the WD Back up drive. I recall that I was very concerned that I could not do a full back up on the WD drive because if I did, I would have to reformat the drive and I did not want to do that, so I think I was able to selectively back up some additional files from my iMac but again, I do not know for sure since I have not looked at what is on the drive. I do know that if I was able to back up additional files I had to do it with WD Back up and not Time Machine, if that matters.
I know that the files in the partitioned drive and files associated with VMware Fusion are damaged. If I do a full restore, it will restore the VMware Fusion app and partioned drive
We need some clarification:
Do you mean there were 2 partitions on your internal HD? If so, how was the second one formatted? Was it backed-up?
No, there was only one partitioned drive. The way I understand it is the VMware Fusion software does the partitioning and the app resides on the Mac. After that was done, I then installed the Windows software on the partitioned drive. There is a critical file on the Mac under a Folder called Virtual Machines and in the Virtual Machines folder, the "Windows Bundle" or some such thing keeps locking each time the software crashes due to the problem files somewhere within the files in the VMware Fusion software that (I think resides) in the Windows environment that I cannot access. The Virtual Machine file on the Mac gets backed up so the Windows Bundles files get backed up and that includes all the screen shots (essentially backups) of the Windows environment. The Windows environment includes some of the apps and their data in Windows such as Quicken. Theoretically, the partitioned drive does not get backed up but in reality if the screen shots do, some of the partitioned drive does - corrupt or not. If you have a Quicken file open and a drop down screen in Quicken frozen when the system crashes, that is what gets backed up and there is no way you can get back into Windows or Quicken.
               If I do a full restore, it will restore the VMware Fusion app
If you restore an OSX volume, yes, that will restore all apps, but that's not necessarily bad. If necessary or desired, you can always delete or reinstall a suspect app. That way, all your other apps will be ok. For most users, reinstalling all apps is a considerable project. See Transferring Applications for an explanation.
Well, that is true. To reinstall VMware Fusion, Windows and Quicken would much, much easier than all of the Mac software I have. Plus, the VMware Fusion version I have is not compatible with Lion and my goal is to install Lion, so I will have to upgrade VMware Fusion no matter what. Further, I'm so aggravated with the dual operating system, I've been looking at products to replace Quicken, so if anyone knows of a good home, small business and home rental financial product they can recommend, I'm all ears!
               If I do a full restore, it will restore . . . and partioned drive
If there are 2 partitons, a full restore only restores the OSX partition. If a non-OSX partition was backed-up, it must be restored separately.
               Now that I've said I only have 1 partitioned drive, does that mean it will restore the partitioned drive? I would prefer it did not. It seems now that it would be much cleaner to restore the OSX drive. Would I be able to do that?
So, depending on the exact circumstances, your best be may be to restore the most recent OSX partition, then restore/copy those files that were backed-up on another drive; reinstall VMware if necessary; restore the other partition.
So . . . things may be a bit more complex than we though, but perhaps less dire.
More detail on the various partitions and backups should clarify things.

About to Erase and Re-Install Snow Leopard. Anything I should know?

I'm about to erase and re-install Snow Leopard on my 2009 21.5' iMac. Something got snarled up during the migration process from my old 2006 iMac to this new one and things have been steadily getting more and more "weird" over time, so it's time for a clean slate.
I have a few specific questions and would be grateful for any other tips you may have regarding this operation as I've done it on Windoze computers many times but never done it on a Mac for obvious reasons
My specific questions are as follows:
1. If I archive my various Mail inboxes, can I just put them back after the re-install and have all my messages back again?
2. Does anyone know how to save Firefox Bookmarks, as it doesn't have an export option like Safari.
3. Any other things I should be aware of.
Your help and suggestions will be much appreciated

After what you want to do, you'll still get the same permissions repair report. Ignore it as detailed in http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448 (which doesn't include the recent JavaVM warnings).
Your bootstraps solution doesn't hold water. OK. Since the issue is specific to your original user account, you can proceed in two ways. One is to log into your test account, make a list of the preference files (plists) located in /username/Library/Preferences/, including any in the ByHost subfolder, log back into the original account, move everything on that other account's list from the original account's Preferences folder into a newly created folder on the Desktop, log out and back in, and see if the problem goes away. If so, you can copy the ones in the Desktop folder (one at time) back into /Preferences/, restart, and see if the problem returns. If so, you've identified the corrupt/conflicting one. Continue with all of them until isolating the bad ones. That'll save you the trouble of resetting preferences.
The second way is much more detailed and I'll not burden you with the steps unless the above doesn't fix the issue.

Leopard quite sluggish, should I fresh-install snow leopard?

I have an iMac 3.06 GHz core 2 Duo bought new in June '08 with 4GB RAM and 500 GB internal drive.
Internal drive holds OS (10.5.8) and has 108 GB free out of 465 real GB (190 GB of that is an aperture vault).
My home drive is on an external 2TB WD firewire 800 drive that is half full (914 GB used, 978 available).
I also usually have one or two other firewire 400 drives connected also (1TB or less).
I use the machine mostly for photo editing (Aperture mostly, but also trialing Lightroom now since Aperture doesn't support my new D300s yet), and a couple XP apps running under VMware Fusion 2 (also have Parallels 3 or 4).
Lately the machine has been getting sluggish, and I can't find anything obvious as the cause of the problem.
I was thinking a fresh OS install might be worth all the hassle. But if I am doing that I thought I might as well go to snow leopard at the same time.
-Can I download a full snow leopard version that is not just an upgrade (for the upgrade fee)?
-Is this a good idea?
-Is Snow Leopard fairly stable now? (Sounds like it is not too bad, although I use PS CS3, which I think last I heard had some issues).
-Finally, any other ideas to try to speed up my sluggish machine before a more drastic step like a fresh OS install? (The one idea I recall from other "slow imac" threads is a disk permissions check/repair.)
Regards,
Strathglass

You cannot download Snow Leopard. You must purchase the retail installer DVD for $29.95 or the SL Bundle for $169.00 (SL, iLife '09 and iWork '09, plus Leopard.)
I would consider erasing the drive and install Snow Leopard. I would also reconsider keeping your Home folder on an external drive. OS X will operate faster with the Home folder on the startup volume where it is installed originally. You can certainly choose to move your data to the external drive.
I did not see you mention backup. With all this data you have I hope you have a backup strategy implemented.
Snow Leopard is fine although one might ask if you really need to upgrade because if you don't then you may be better off with what is now working especially if this is a work-related computer.
As for improving your computer's performance you might consider performing some maintenance as well as moving as much data as you can to your fastest drives - the internal drive and FW800 externals.
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.1 or higher are Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. Versions 1.5.1 or later are Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts had been significantly reduced in Tiger and Leopard.
OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. MimMac (Commercial)
11. CloneTool Hatchery (Shareware)
12. Clone X (Commercial)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X 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 Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) 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. Now restart normally.
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.

How do I install Snow Leopard while keeping files, applications, and settings

I need to update my system, I realized that I need Snow Leopard (quiet late) before Maverick. My question is, how can I install it keeping files and all the data. I found this on Internet, does it work?
Install Snow Leopard while keeping files, applications, and settings
If you follow these steps, the installer will replace your operating system if one is already present, but will preserve your account information and personal files. You may have to reinstall some applications, however.
Insert the install disc (or the first install disc if you have more than one) into your disc drive. Restart your computer while holding down the c key. This causes your computer to start up from the install disc rather than your hard drive. When you see the gray Apple insignia, release c .
The Mac OS X installer should open automatically. Follow the on-screen prompts to read and accept the license agreement and begin the installation. When prompted to choose a destination disk, select your preferred location and click Install.
When the Mac OS X installation finishes with the disc, restart your computer. After the installation completes, a configuration program may begin automatically if you are installing for the first time. You will need to supply basic setup information for your computer.
Update your system software to ensure that you have the most recent operating system components. From the Apple menu, select Software Update... , and then follow the instructions on the screen. Often, you will have to restart your computer, and you may have to run Software Update multiple times before it can completely update your system.

That's why you need to back it up. You won't need to restore the backup immediately afterwards unless something goes wrong during the upgrade, but you'll need it later; the drive will eventually fail.
(105428)

I want to save important files/programs on an external hard drive, delete EVERYTHING on my computer, install snow leopard, and reload everything i saved on to a clean slate. Is this possible/practical?

I was just thinking that it would be better to wipe the entire hard drive clean and reinstall some programs rather than go through and move certain things to the trash. Basically rebuild my software and file collection from the ground up, omitting what is unnecessary. Then again, I have no idea what i'm doing.
My macbook was purchased in late 2008. 2gb RAM. OS X 10.5.6. It's been going very slow lately so i decided i would look up how to improve. Snow leopard was recommended as well as changing my RAM. And so here I am.
I don't have an external hard drive so i was going to just compress all my files and save them to my emac via ethernet. would they be harmed?
also, i have alot of projects in ableton (a music recording/writing program). Would saving and transferring them be just as simple as finding the song? or are other components of a certain song saved in other locations?
sorry this is so lengthy. i should probably stick with something simple but i just want things to run as smoothly as possible for as long as possible
thanks very much

Here's some info that may be helpful.
Installing Snow Leopard: What you need to know
http://www.macworld.com/article/1142454/install_snow_leopard.html.
You should get a Firewire connected hard drive and backup your MB's HD to it. That way, if something goes wrong during the installation, you can recover your current sytem, apps and files. After the SL install, you can use the external HD for frequent backups.
 Cheers, Tom

How to install Snow Leopard on a 2009 Mac Pro which has Mountain Lion?

The 2009 Mac Pro that I just bought has Mountain Lion. For many reasons, I do not want to have Mountain Lion on my machine. I have been using Snow Leopard for years and I like it fine. I have my Snow Leopard install DVDs. I cannot get this machine to accept Snow Leopard, which must be just another undesirable aspect of Mountain Lion, bacause this machine must have shipped with some variant of Leopard/ Snow Leopard to begin with. Here's what happens when I put the Snow Leopard Install DVD in the Superdrive:
1) First, I held down the "C" key at startup to start from a disc. It showed me a window which said "Mac OS X can't be installed on this computer".
2) Then I started it with Mountain Lion and then put in the Snow Leopard DVD. Got a window which said "The disc you inserted was not readable by this computer". It also had 3 buttons to choose from: "Initialize", "Ignore" and "Eject". So I clicked on "Initialize" and Disc Utility opened on the First Aid page. I assume I'm supposed to erase the startup disc, but I thought maybe I should ask the experts here before I do that.
This machine has two 2TB HDDs that the previous owner has configured as a level 1 RAID. If I am to erase the startup disc do I erase both drives of the RAID set? If I'm not supposed to erase the startup drive, what do I need to do to get back to Snow Leopard? Thanks and thanks again!

The built-in checks will keep you from clobbering 10.8 Mountain Lion by Installing Snow Leopard over it (literally, 10.6 Snow Leopard Installer will see a later version in place, and knows it cannot install over a later version). So it says "Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer..." and leaves off "... "in its current state."
You will need to Install on a 10.6 Snow Leopard-erased drive. Mac OS X Erase function proceeds to install a Partition scheme and a default Volume after erasing, because a truly blank drive is useless for most Users.
When you boot to the Installer DVD, you are running off the DVD, so all Hard Drives are available to be erased if that is your choice. All data on them will be discarded. If you erase one drive in a mirrored RAID set, normally the other drive would survive and the set would be degraded. But a new version of RAID was introduced right AFTER 10.6, and it is likely that 10.6 cannot read that RAID at all under any circumstances.

Since installing snow leopard on my macbook itunes won't work

Since I installed snow leopard my itunes wont open it comes up with an error message The fiel "iTuneslibrary.itl" cannot read because it was created by a newer version of iTunes,
Can someone help me through this. Its very frustrating, I was forced to install snow leopard in order to download itunes 10, so that it would recongize my iphone.

Nothing should happen to the old content. Still, you should make a backup first because once a month somebody claims something horrible did happen during an update and now they have lost all their music, their dog died, their car crashed, and they got a C- in English literature. Oh, and it is all Apple's fault for not telling them they had to back up.

Installing Snow Leopard on Mac Mini Server

I recently purchased a 1Tb 4Gb Mac Mini Server, running Snow Leopard Server. I want to use it as a central repository for my other macs: storing music, movies, backup, screen sharing (it's hooked up to my 32-inch TV) but I also want to be able to run Logic Pro, Ableton Live, etc. I also have a Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard Client, which contains all of my programs, plugins, data, etc. I realize that Snow Leopard Server does not have migration assistant, so I have tried to install a retail copy of Snow Leopard onto the secondary drive, but when it gets to the restart stage it crashes every time. I think this is a firmware issue, because the Mac Mini has a different hardware configuration to other macs. I do not have access to the mid-2010 Snow Leopard Client for Mac Mini which would allow me to install Client and use migration assistant from there. What I would like to know is:
1/ Can I manually migrate my plugins/settings/programs to the server? If so, how? What is most crucial (and what I don't understand) is copying my audio units and audio programs (e.g. Logic Pro, Pro Tools). Because of the firmware issue, it seems more difficult than cloning my MacBook Pro to a time machine HDD and running from there... I would really like to purely clone my MacBook Pro, because I am very happy with the way it is set up.
2/ Should I just wait for OSX Lion (July/August) which seems to be a combined server/client os, install that on both machines and run migration assistant from there?
3/ Is there another method I can use? Something I am overlooking?
Thanks in Advance.

Thanks for your reply. I talked to the Apple Support again and they told me the server edition could only be used on that OS and if I wanted to use it as something else I could chose not to use the server applications, or buy a regular Mac mini. And that was all they said. Interesting since it was one of their sales persons who told me I could install Snow Leopard.
Anyway, I got hold of a client disc and it all worked like a charm.

How do you erase mountain lion to install snow leopard?

Hi, My mother now has a new to her late 09 mini that originally shipped with snow leopard. When she bought it it came with mountain lion preinstalled from a private seller. We were thinking that to be on the safe side that it might be better to erase and install what's on it just to be sure it is secure. I tried to erase and install snow leopard from a disk but it says that the installer is not compatible with this version of osx(mountain lion). Question: How do I erase mountain lion and install snow leopard?
I've read here that there is possibly a built in recovery disk that I can use to erase and reinstall mountain lion. Q: Is there a built in recovery disk available in my situation? and if so should I use it or be even safer by installing snow leopard instead?
Thank you,

I think I found the answer (from sl install disk use disk utility to erase then install sl). Thanks for looking.

Can I install Snow Leopard on the latest Macbook Pros? (the ones pre-loaded with Lion)

The problem and solution is pretty simple, I just want to know if anyone has tried this before. I have a brand new Macbook Pro that I bought more or less for the sole purpose of having a more powerful machine to run AVID Media Composer on. AVID is only compatible up to OS version 10.6.7 at the moment, and the machine I got was pre-loaded with Lion, 10.7....So I look at the support documentation Apple provides, and notice that in the nifty little chart they have, the latest line of Macbook Pros out there (early 2011) originally had version 10.6.6, so I'm assuming that's the previous version I can't downgrade past.
To revert back to Snow Leopard, however, I need to install it from the DVD which has version 10.6.3 on it, and then upgrade to any version between Snow Leopard 10.6.6 and Lion 10.7. In theory this could work, the only problem being that for a brief time between installing Snow Leopard and updating to the version of it that I need, the computer will have version 10.6.3 on it.
Now I'm pretty sure if the only thing I do on the computer is immediately update to a safe-to-use version, there will be no problems. However, if the machine's hardware is so terribly non-backwards compatible with the Snow Leopard OS, I may do all this backing up and reverting and not even be able to start the computer once I get the old install on it. Before I just go ahead and try this for myself, I was wondering if anyone else has, and more importantly, have you had any success?

Hi r,
EDIT: disregard my post. Waiting for that disc is a far better option.
I hope w won't mind if I add a thought here:
rmo348 wrote:
Now I don't mind if some drivers are messed up and resolution is all funky when I install 10.6.3 on it, I just need to know if it'll be functional to the point where I can run the 10.6.6 update dmg. Once I update to 10.6.6 everything should work fine.
Or could I install 10.6.3, have the 10.6.6 update burned to a disc, and boot straight from that? This is my first Mac so I'm not sure what little tricks work or not.
Your first idea may work; the only way to know for sure is to try it. If you do, make sure you download and run the Combo update for 10.6.7 or 10.6.8. There can be different versions of a point update, those which are available for download, and those which ship on Macs, so you want to install one beyond that which shipped with some of the new MBPs.
If the MBP won't boot to 10.6.3, something else to try is installing it to an external HD, then installing the 10.6.7 update on it, clone it to the MPB's internal HD, and run the 10.6.7 or 10.6.8 Combo update on it.

Can I install Snow Leopard on a new partition on a Macbook Pro (Late 2011)?

I need to get Pro Tools 9 up and running again after I migrated from PC to Mac, but I know that Pro Tools 9 doesnt work with Lion.. I dont have the money to upgrade to PT10 so my thought was to go downgrade to Snow Leopard to get it working. But I dont want to leave Lion, so my question is if I can make a new partition and install Snow Leopard on the new partition and have both OSs bootable?
The guy in the store I bought my mac from said Snow Leopard probably wouldnt play nice with the mac since its adapted to Lion but I dont trust people that get money for preaching about the constant need for "the latest". So I thought I'd ask the experts instead, so here I am! What do you guys think?

theoretically, it should work - but the guy at the Apple Store is correct....computers that ship with the latest operating system do not support being downgraded.
You might not get past the spinning beach ball & gray screen if you try to boot from the Snow Leopard install disc.
It's worth a shot though if you want to try it. Just don't try to 'downgrade' the current Lion installation back to Snow Leopard. Try instead to create a new partition specifically for Snow Leopard. Disk Utility - select the top HD (probably reads Hitachi something)...select it, click on the Partition tab. Select the top partition, and you should then be able to see the + so you can add a new partition. I would probably make it about 20GB give or take depending on how much space you think you will need - but i believe the Snow Leopard installation by itself takes up around 8-10GB.
Once this partition is created, insert your Snow Leopard installation disc, restart the computer and hold the C key down to start from the install disc. When it walks you through the steps for installation, select the newly created Snow Leopard partition. Install. Be sure to go through all the Software Updates (numerous times) after the installation is done.
You can select which startup disc you want to boot from by holding the Option button down at startup until you see the gray startup manager that shows your Lion partition, Recovery Disc partiton, and your Snow Leopard partition.
If for whatever reason this doesn't work, simply just erase the partition. It likely will not work but you should be able to just erase that newly created partition without any other problems.

Can i install snow leopard on Macbook without using Time Machine?

Hi, I've backed up my files using SuperDuper and made 2 copies of my data on 2 usb sticks. Do I also need to use Time Machine to back up my files aswell, in order to update osx and install snow leopard?? If I've already got my 2 copies of my files on usb sticks, isn't that enough backing up? Any suggestions will be appreciated thanks!

aprilsviv wrote:
Thanks for answering, so did you manage to upgrade your mac with snow leopard without using time machine? I'd just like to make sure I'm doing the right thing.
To clear up some possible confusion, you don't need any backups (Time Machine or otherwise) to upgrade a Mac from an earlier OS version to Snow Leopard. To do that, just follow Apple's instructions to launch the "Install OS X" app on the Snow Leopard DVD, which upgrades the OS to Snow Leopard without changing your user settings, erasing or changing your user files, & so on. It is an easy process & generally works quite well.
The backup(s) are in case something goes wrong, which is unlikely but not impossible. You should regularly be backing up at least your important user files to an external device whether or not you upgrade ("important" meaning anything you can't afford to lose) since hard drives can fail without warning or other calamities might destroy some or all of the data on them.
At upgrade time, bootable clones like SuperDuper! makes are especially good insurance against any unforeseen upgrade problems: if something goes wrong you can just clone back to the internal drive & return to the pre-upgrade state, without having to hassle with installing anything.

Should I install Snow Leopard?

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