Can I install Snow Leopard on the new Mac Mini

John, probably an unfair "personal" question, but...

What do you use your MBP, Mini, etc. and 24" AD for, mostly?

Reason of asking: I notice a "John Fair" out there in the world who does a lot of photography ("...by passion, not by employment...") and thought it might be you. If so, I have some useful high-end info and goodies for you, as part of my payback for your leadership in finding a path to Snow-Leopard salvation for all of us wandering Mini-pilgrims. Regards!

There are no unfair personal questions when your last name is Fair. 😉 It's a double edged sword!

You've most likely found me (a simple google search for John Fair Photography yields me as the #1 result!).

I am actually a software developer by profession and work provides me the MBP for my day-to-day work. When I get home I typically use the MBP to support our systems after-hours and use the 24" ACD to do that (plus some photo editing on the side 😉). The Mini is actually my media machine to watch movies/tv shows/netflix/etc on in my living room. It also streams content to my AppleTV/iPhones/iPads/etc.

I'm all for info and goodies! If you managed to find my personal site then you likely already know my email...it's easily found on my resume (or else if you can figure out my middle initial and add [at] gmail dot com to my full name with initial you've got it as well).

John, many thanks for your pioneering work on this challenge. I have just ordered a new 2011 Mini 2.7GHz, and while I don't fully comprehend the nuances of each step, I plan to attempt your process when it's delivered.

For a host I have access to an iMac Core 2 Duo that came with 10.5.4 but has been upgraded to 10.6.8 via the 10.6.3 retail disk. The latter is stock no. MC573Z/A and I'm not sure if that was a full OS install disk or just an upgrade - the packaging doesn't say. Since I would want to register SL on the Mini under my own name I'm intending to buy another fresh retail copy of 10.6.3. Does it matter that this would be installed via an iMac registered to someone else? Also, the Apple Store is still offering a 10.6.3 DVD for $29, but again they don't state whether it's a full version or upgrade - some vendors specifically say "upgrade". Does it matter?

Your method includes a "recovery disk", and I'm not sure what this is - the iMac came with just 10.5.4 install disks 1 & 2. Can you please explain?

I'm intending to partition the HDD before I attempt this - re-installing Lion on one volume, then installing SL on another. Does this make the most sense?

Your guidance will be most appreciated.

Hi Anglotexian,

A quick google of MC573Z/A looks like it's the 10.6.3 upgrade disk. I personally used the 10.6.0 upgrade, but this would work as well. I don't recall Apple selling a "full retail" Snow Leopard (meaning it didn't require Leopard already being installed), but perhaps someone else can correct me on that. The real point being that I used an "upgrade" disk. The point of calling it "Retail" meant that it is NOT a recovery disk (such as the install disks 1&2 that you mention). Recovery disks are not the same as the "retail" disk MC573Z/A and the like. As long as you have a copy of a SL similar to MC573Z/A you'll be fine.

Also, you might be in for a smoother experience with the Host machine you already have. You shouldn't have to swap out disks mid-way through the SL install. The host iMac you'll be using can successfully boot your SL disk of 10.6.3 without issue. As a result you shouldn't have to do the swap! That's great because it removes a lot of the complexity (and the issue that caused me the most headache) of the fallback. My biggest problem was that all of the Macs I have access to are too new (yeah I know, life is hard right? 😉).

So to sum up: Upgrade disk is fine, and you should not need the install (which are recovery) disks from the iMac for this process. Good luck!

Well John, had the chance to "downgrade tonight. Everything went perfectly! Thank you so much for figuring this out. The steps o page 1 should be everyone's bible when attempting this. Oh and PLEX seems to be working perfectly as well. Thanks again.

Just wanted to join those that are extremely grateful for your help. Needed to downgrade to SL while I wait for a Lion-compatible update for Pro Tools. Posting this from SL running on my new Mini Server!

Any of you guys that got this working (especiallyJordan with the same Mini Server as me), have a dual-monitor setup using one display through the Thunderbolt port?

What versions of the retail discs (and recovery if any) did you use and what host Mac model/year?

Not sure why I couldn't get mine working right with a 2009 MBP host using the 10.6.3 retail disc...

But my main issue was getting Adobe CS5 installed on Lion Server, and with a clean restore of LS I was able to do that...so I'm up and running on Lion Server, but more curious now on why my attempts at SL didn't pan out.

Unfortunately I use a single monitor plugged into the HDMI port, so I can't help you out there. I used a retail 10.6 disc that I picked up yesterday, I assume it's 10.6.0. I ran the initial install on my brother's 2010 MBP, using the retail disc and the 10.6.3 recovery disc that came with the MBP. For practical reasons I then switched to a 2010 iMac (also my brother's) to install the updates to get it to 10.6.8.

Compared to others, my Snow Leopard install hasn't been running that great for me. Under SL, the system seems to be choking on things that it should be more than capable of handling. For example, an HD movie that played flawlessly in Lion stuttered when played in SL, and a Pro Tools session that even my Acer laptop's dual core handled fine almost brought the system to its knees. I guess I'll have to try reinstalling. Anyone have an idea what the problem could be?

John, once again, a million thanks for working this thru!

I will try the downgrade tonight. But before I do, I have 2 questions that have been asked in this thread but not yet answered....

The first one is, does the host machine need to have Thunderbolt on it or at least MiniDisplay Port to get the right drivers working before I run the software update to get it, (the new 2011 mac mini), to 10.6.8?

The reason I ask is because I have an early 2009 iMac I plan to use as the host, but it DOES NOT have Thunderbolt NOR Minidisplay ports. Can I still use this as a host? Does this matter?

The second question is, when u mention that you must use the "store retail version of SL," do you mean specifically the 10.6.0 OR, the 10.6.3, which is what is currently selling in the apple store? Do I have to purchase a new copy of SL or can I just use the gray disc that came with my iMac back in 2009, which only says 10.6 on the front and a mysterious coded number of 2Z691-6539-A?

I have reason to believe this disc could be a 10.6.0 because I ordered the iMac back then just when SL had come out, so in theory it should be the first release of that particular OS. Or am I wrong in assuming that?

If that is the case, can we consider this disc as the "retail disc"?

Thanks a million in advance to your answers! You rock!

Hi iSight Frustrated,

Those questions have both been answered, but perhaps not in a clear way.

When you install from a retail version of OS X onto a target disk (USB,Firewire, etc) OS X installs a full set of drivers because it cannot determine the type of machine being targeted. The upside is that you've got a bunch of drivers for things like Mini Display and Thunderbolt. The down side is that the install itself is much larger (a minimum install of OS X ~3.5-3.75GB, however this install is closer to 7GB). So the answer to your question about using an iMac without MiniDisplay is: Probably. I can't say with 100% certainty because I haven't done it myself, but yes it should work just fine.

When I say "Apple Retail Disc" I mean the disk you had to purchase from Apple, NOT the gray recovery disks you got when you purchased your Mac. They are very different things at their core because your gray recovery disks only contain the drivers for the machine that they target (in your case iMac). Since you're trying to install SL onto a Mac Mini you must use a Retail copy of OS X (it shipped in a white box with a picture of a Snow Leopard on the cover). If you try to use the gray recovery disk it will fail, guaranteed. So to answer the second question: No we cannot consider that disk a "retail disk". That is a recovery disk. If you try restoring w/ that you will be wasting your time. :\ You can pick up a retail disk for ~$29 online still.

Best of luck!

isight -- when we say "retail disk" we mean the one that came in a box and has a picture of a snow leapard printed on it. The "restore disks" are the grey disks that came with a particular machine. For your purposes, the "restore disks" are the grey disks that came with your 2009 iMac.

The grey disks which came with your 2009 iMac certainly don't have thuderbolt drivers, not sure about displayport drivers.

The retail disks, which sometimes are 10.6.0 and other times 10.6.3 do not have thuderbolt drivers, but certainly DO have displayport drivers -- the retail disk contains every driver for every possible piece of hardware that runs that particular operating system.

The thunderbolt drivers are in the 10.6.7 update (or the 10.6.8 combo update.) 10.6.7 was what the first thunderbolt machines were shipped with.

What we do not know is whether those 10.6.7/10.6.8 thunderbolt drivers will drive the thunderbolt on the mac mini, or if they only work on a 2011 thunderbolt iMac. When Apple says that a machine will not work with an operating system lower than waht it shipped with, they mean that they didn't test the new machine with the old OS (old OSs plural) and so who knows what will happen? If those minis had come out before Lion was ready, then the development team would have had to have gotten the thunderbolt drivers to work correctly on them. There may have even had to have been a 10.6.9 to make them work.

What seems most likely is that most/all "old" features of the 2011 mini will work just fine with SL. The things most likely not to work would be the "new" stuff -- in other words, thunderbolt. We already know that it doesn't work for at least one person. But it may only be broken for certain thunderbolt devices, too, and others should work ok.

The painful conclusion is that if you MUST have an i5 or i7 processor and/or thunderbolt, and you MUST be able to run on 10.6, then your only guaranteed hardware choice is a 2011 iMac. For those of us dealing with size/space/heat constraints (i.e. we need to use this back in the server closet!) the iMac form factor is a problem. This exercise is useful, because we are, through experimenting with different hardwars, figuring out just which things will still work right on an i5/i7 mac mini running snow leopard, and which things are broken.

IMHO, Cathy, your posts are exceptionally incisive and inclusive. In other words, goooooood and useful, if sometimes a bit challenging to read. Nice work and thanks for the contributions here and elsewhere.

Since the 2011 Mini uses the full-boogie Light Ridge chipset to handle Thunderbolt, the same as the 2011 iMac, I have high hopes for the drivers in the recovery disks for the 2011 iMac, which I'll be using later today to flip my new Mini to Snow Leopard (and then to 10.6.8 version 1.1, the "fix" version). I'll know in a few hours --

A reminder: when bumping up to 10.6.8, it's important a good idea to use the Combo version of the updater to 10.6.8 v 1.1.

Well Icerabbit, sorry but have to say "you are wrong".

the answer is simple: any existing / older operating system release simply does not have the proper drivers to support the new hardware (motherboard, chipset, cpu, ...) It will panic.

Not true as the MacBookPro 15" early 2011 was delivered with SL 10.6.7 and has all the drivers needed for the Mac Mini Mid2011.

I just got a new Mac Mini A1347 (Mac mini 2.3 GHz / dual-core Intel Core i5 / 2 GB RAM / 500 GB HD / Intel HD Graphics 3000) in my hands.

I tested it with booting from a harddisk of a MBP 15" (early 2011, i7 quad 2.2GHz, Intel HD Graphics 3000, AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB) which was 10.6.7 and was updated to 10.6.8.

As the graphic drivers match it should work like a charm.

Test has been done using an external harddisk over Firewire 800 and as expected:

It works flawlessly !!!

Now to the hard facts:

Systemversion : Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K540)

Kernel-version: Darwin 10.8.0

64-bit-Kernel : yes

And if you read on you see even a post that explains how to install from a retail DVD... ;-)

Tried reinstalling this weekend, but still the same result (mouse cursor is screwy, system in general is slow). I thought to do a simple Geekbench comparison between SL and Lion. Here's the summary:

Lion:

Processor integer performance - 7220

Processor floating point performance - 13595

Memory performance - 5070

Memory bandwidth performance - 4410

Overall score - 8740

SL:

Processor integer performance - 2146

Processor floating point performance - 4026

Memory performance - 1823

Memory bandwidth performance - 2021

Overall score - 2726

Obviously, something is very wrong - it's as though my install of SL on the Mini doesn't have access to the system's full resources. It's weird that some are able to successfully install it with no problems, while it doesn't quite work out for others. I wonder if it has something to do with the other Mac that was used to complete the installation? In my case, it was a 2010 27-inch iMac.

I had a bash of installing SL on my Mini Server 2011 last week following the guide on this thread, worked like a charm and runs no problem, but there are definite graphics issues, the mouse would often change from say arrow to finger and not change back, then I tried to watch a 1440p HD video through YouTube as a test and it was a pixelated slideshow mess, through Lion it runs beautifully, and finally as Jordan Darcy mentioned, it doesn't feel as snappy, so I'm back on Lion, and just waiting patiently for any updates.