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Why won't my Mac Pro 5,1 boot Snow Leopard?

My old Mac Pro 1,1 died. I replaced it with a new Mac Pro 5,1. (dual Westmere quad core) Apple told me it would run Snow Leopard. The new machine recognizes my old Snow Leopard hard drives as start-up disks but does not boot past the gray screen apple logo. I was very good about keeping the operating systems up to date. I am pretty sure that I have OS 10.6.8 installed... I have two Snow Leopard disks that won't boot and a Leopard disk that also shows up as a start-up disk that does not boot either. All stall at the gray screen Apple logo.

What gives????

I am pretty disappointed. I need Rosetta back!

Mike

Mac Pro

Posted on Dec 1, 2011 1:04 AM

19 replies

Feb 26, 2014 9:32 PM in response to daveseeley

I think your chart explains why my retail disk didn't boot it. It was 10.6.3, and my Mac was 10.6.4.

It's even a little worse than that. The 10.6.4 shipped with that Mac is a customized version.

Feb 26, 2014 9:35 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Meaning that even if the retail disk is 10.6.4 or later, it wouldn't boot my Mac?

Feb 26, 2014 9:48 PM in response to daveseeley

You still miss, but by a little more: The last "Full Retail" DVD for Snow Leopard contains 10.6.3.

Oct 21, 2015 11:25 AM in response to Michael Sciascia

Hi Mike,

I'm sure you've solved this by now for a long time but just in case anyone else comes wandering in wondering about Snow Leopard. You can't install retail Snow Leopard on your Mac Pro 5,1 as it's 10.6.3, but you can install and update retail Snow Leopard on another compatible Mac (including any old Mac Mini, we have two or three in our cupboard), then clone that disk out onto an SSD and just pop it into your Mac Pro 5,1.

I even keep a vanilla Snow Leopard install like that handy to save me the long install process from USB key.

These old towers are fantastic machines. One can buy a reasonably equipped Mac Pro 1,1 in good condition for €300 for those of us who still like Snow Leopard. Performance apart from really graphics intense processing (think games or Davinci Resolve 12 which you wouldn't be running on Snow Leopard anyway) is great. With SSD's on board and a Nvidia GT 7300, MacPros are almost completely silent (quieter than my MBP 15" 2011 or my MBP 17" 2008, a tiny bit louder than my MBA 2011). Silence is golden when photo processing and listening to classical music.

No cloud, no broken mail, no broken Address Book. Just snowy bliss.

Alec Kinnear

Why won't my Mac Pro 5,1 boot Snow Leopard?