Install Snow Leopard in a Lion partition

I'm about to undertake this on a new 21" iMac that shipped with Lion. I use it for work and am needing some critical software, specifically FileMaker and Quicken, that aren't yet supported. I bought a refurb. iMac (originally May, '11) in hopes it would ship with Snow Leopard -- no luck. Apple, are you listening? I've been a Mac user since a MacII WAAaaaay back when. . . it's never been quite this difficult. You're Microsofting me to death, here!

I'll post updates when / if I get this working. Thanks to all for the very thorough tips and explanations.

Thank you t-bowl for the detailed desciption, it helps greatly!

I have tried SL install via Firewire 800 9-pin to the new MBP, from the old MBP, with great success.

However,

I can view a correctly functioning snow leopard partition through firewire, from the old MBP (mid - 2009).

When I disconnect the new MBP from the Firewire and restart, I get get the black screen of death.

I followed t-bowl's description to the letter, I don't understand what is happening.

Yep, I got it to work! I had one trial and failure, then re-started from the beginning (I didn't re-partition the drive, just re-started from the beginning of the install process) and it worked. Again, the key really seems to be to make sure to run Software Update to update to 10.6.8 in order to make the Snow Leopard partition a bootable drive.

Thanks to t-bowl and others for the very concise explanations - grateful!

I have a new iMac 27" that came pre-installed with Lion.

As my main focus is using it for working with music I NEED Snow Leopard available as few Audio Plug-Ins supports Lion yet.

I also want Bootcamp installed so I can run Windows 7 for playing PC games.

I discovered the hard way that one can NOT have Bootcamp, Lion and Snow Leopard on different partions on the internal harddisc.

As a matter of fact I screwed up the Windows/Bootcamp installation when trying to add a Snow Leopard partion and had to reinstall Bootcamp/Windows again.

I installed Snow Leopard on an external FW drive via an older Mac and updated it to the latest versions of everything.

Now I can run Snow Leopard on my new computer booting up Snow Leopard from the FW drive.

As others pointed out it ONLY works with the latest version of Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

Have you updated the SL system to the latest version?

It will not work with older verions of SL it seems.

Question. After Partitioning the Hard Drive and doing so succesfully, I have but one problem.

15 in Macbook Pro. I Tried this on a 13in no problems what so ever. On the 15in Once i try and restart my computer to install the OS on the New partition it (Now keep in mind I went to system Prefrences and selected the CD as the startup disk) will not go past the Apple Logo startup screen. If anyone has any information that could possibly help me I would very much aprreciate it. Thanks, Garrett.

Garrett,

Maybe I'm not understanding your steps correctly, but it's been my experience that you cannot install Snow Leopard from the drive that physically exists on the machine you've partitioned. You need to run the SL install disc from a second machine that is cabled to the machine onto which you're trying to install SL, and which is running in target disc mode. Do that, then run Software Update to update your copy of SL that you just installed on the partitioned drive to 10.6.8 which will make the SL partition bootable. When it's all done, restart the machine with the partitioned drive while holding down the "c" key and when the option comes up, choose the partition with SL installed as the boot drive.

Like others that have posted here, lion came pre-installed on my new macbook pro, effectively rendering my perfectly good power pc software obsolete. except for mail, cruising the net, etc here's a new computer that is for me effectively useless without a considerable new software investment. frustrating.

i've tried doing t-bowl's clever Leopard install off a disc running on a second mac, transfering the OS into a partition in the Lion mac hard drive. i hit the following snag. the installer (10.6.3) seems to think everything went OK, and the second mac restarts. I update as described and relaunch the Lion mac to boot off Snow Leopard. The first time I did this the problem was that the Snow Leopard partition was not seen as a bootable drive. I have attempted to repeat the install, and one of two things happens. First, Software Update says there are no updates available for the Snow Leopard drive. Second, upon restart after installation the second mac makes an alarm sound and does not reboot.

If I look at what the installer puts inside the snow leopard partition there is a file named "Mac OSX install data" containing files with the "box" icon and .pkg extensions.

Any ideas or advice? Thanks in advance.

Hi Jeffrey74,

It sounds to me that the update installation did not went well. The beeping suggests that the update is not installed. Is it possible that the update was downloaded, but not installed? And where do you start the update, is that when running SL from the second mac?

Thanks t-bowl! I just got a new Macbook pro yesterday and needed to run SL because I edit on final cut 7. You're solution seems to be working for me, I partitioned my 750 gb drive with lion and SL following T-bowls steps. I really hope Apple is paying attention to this thread, there is a growing group of disgruntled "Pro" application users out there. I have been using Apple computers for a decade now and don't want to switch, but if Apple keeps trying to lock me out of applications I payed for and make a living off of... I'm going to go to Adobe or Avid and get a PC.

It sounds to me that the update installation did not went well. The beeping suggests that the update is not installed. Is it possible that the update was downloaded, but not installed?

Yeah, something definitely went wrong. In the first place, the install of 10.6.3 in the SL partition must have had problems, since everthing was still in the installer .pkg files. On the Lion computer, I ran the installation of all the files in the "Mac OSX install data" folder, specifying the Leopard partition. I dont know if that is a viable way to do it or not, but it seemed to go OK.

Here's a screenshot.

And where do you start the update, is that when running SL from the second mac?

Yes, it was using the second mac. I suspect I am doing something wrong when it comes to your previous step 7.

7. Once the installer is finished, run "Software Update" to update to 10.6.8. This is still with the Lion machine in Target Disk mode! If you're unsure, you can always check Finder to see your other drives.

Once the install into the Leopard partition is done, am I to restart the second computer with the Lion Mac still in transfer mode, look for the Leopard partition as a bootable drive, launch, and then run software update? I may give it one more try tonight, but my wife is getting nervous about me using her computer to get this to go. If I can't get it to work, the mac guy in my university's computer services will try his hand at it tomorrow.

Thanks

You should all know that you normally can not install a lower OS than what came on the Mac. This may be the one time that is not true, but...

if you are going to try and install a lower OS than what came with the new MBP, then at least try 10.6.8. Since your Mac was probably made within 2 weeks of your purchase, it otherwise would have come with 10.6.8, not 10.6.3. In fact, you probably can not install 10.6.7 on it, at least that is how it used to be.

Hi Jeffrey,

I have the same problem. Could it be that your second computer is an early 2011 macbook pro shipped with 10.6.x?

My current suspicion is that after preparing the install of 10.6.3 on the target disk, the setup tries to reboot to the new SL disk, after which it is supposed to install the .pkg files and complete the process. But this is where it fails.

The problem is that an early 2011 macbook pro won't run with 10.6.3, even if it was shipped with Snow Leopard (a later version than 10.6.3 obviously), since 10.6.3 lacks support for thunderbolt and other new hardware. So when rebooting your second computer in 10.6.3 in order to complete the install, it will stop and beep, indicating that it can't run from 10.6.3.

What I am trying now is to clone the system of my second computer, the snow leopard macbook pro (already upgraded to 10.6.8) to the second partition of the lion computer (in target disk mode) with Carbon Copy Cloner. Now working.. let's hope this fixes it.

Best