Q: How do I downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard?
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Mar 20, 2016 9:29 AMby Limnos,If you are fortunate you made a bootable clone backup of the drive before you upgraded. Clone back to the internal drive. If you did not you will have to copy data files to another drive, erase your internal and start from scratch. There isn't any simple downgrade route for most of Apple software.
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Mar 20, 2016 10:10 AMby Time.Traveller,Thanks Limnos, well, you probably won't be surprised when I say I didn't clone my drive first (I did backup my personal files just not the drive).
The installation disks I have are, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Tiger, and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I know I'll need to use one of these install disks to go backwards and I know it will restore my mac to a "new" machine but so be it. I want rid of Lion. Which disk should I use? Obviously SL won't work but do I need to go back to the grey OS X installation disks or can I start from Tiger?
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Mar 20, 2016 12:33 PMby Time.Traveller,Thanks MichelPM. I have looked into this theory but it appears not. If I try to install from the disks or from the Adobe download page, the same thing happens. They are no longer compatible with OS 10.7 or later. In fact the disks are obsolete anyway as "due to a technical glitch" Adobe no longer supports their activation, existing customers can download CS2 if necessary but it's not the full premium version which is slightly annoying when you've spent a small fortune buying it in the first place!
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Mar 20, 2016 6:49 PMby Limnos,Is this a retail version of SL or is it one that came with another Mac? It isn't clear from your statement which ones are grey. Grey discs tend to be machine-specific. Was Tiger the original OS with this computer? If so, retail (white) SL should work. Some of the details of what has to be done for various model Macs can be found at: Linc Davis Feb. 2016 post on restoring computer to new condition -
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Mar 21, 2016 4:52 AMby Limnos,I have never used Time Machine but my understanding is it does not back up the system files, just user data and settings. You use it in conjunction with system installer discs (or software on newer Macs) to reconstruct your computer. A clone backs up everything and in most cases the backup can be used to run the computer just like the original drive.
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Mar 21, 2016 9:12 PMby LACAllen,Then you are back to being dependent on discs.
I would strongly advise setting up Time Machine going forward. Extremely powerful and easy to use.
Are these links of any help?
http://blog.macsales.com/30918-os-x-reversion-downgrading-from-yosemite-to-snow- leopard
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Mar 22, 2016 2:19 PMby MlchaelLAX,Time.Traveller wrote:
Both my Tiger and Snow Leopard are retail upgrade disks.
Use your Snow Leopard Install DVD:
Then either partition your hard drive or add an external drive and install Lion there. You can then use the 'dual-boot" method to choose which version of OS X you want to boot into and run, depending upon your circumstances.
