I have a MacBook Air (13-inch, Late 2010). It has the snow leopard installation thumb drive, how do I downgrade from Lion back to Snow Leopard? I like lion but I feel that is has more of ios than the regular Mac OS X. I know apple is trying to bring them both together.
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
Downgrade Lion to Snow Leopard
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard 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 Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.
This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard (see below.) I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.1.
If you have Snow Leopard Time Machine backups, do a full system restore per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. If you have subsequent backups from Lion, you can restore newer items selectively, via the "Star Wars" display, per #15 there, but be careful; some Snow Leopard apps may not work with the Lion files.
Snow Leopard didn't come on a thumb drive (Lion had an option on thumb drive), it came on DVD.
You will have to back up data files, wipe the drive, then re-install Snow Leopard and re-install applications and data files. Downgrading is nowhere near as easy as upgrading.
Limnos wrote:
Snow Leopard didn't come on a thumb drive (Lion had an option on thumb drive), it came on DVD.
It sure did on my 2010 MBA, which is the same as the OP's.
This is my drive, from my 2010. It's a little blurry (taken with Facetime Cam), but it reads v10.6
okay thanks.. well with the macbok air I got the Macbook Air Software install drive, and it came with Snow Leopard, and iLife 11. so i assumed that it was the snow leopard installation drive
Which it is. The USB version looks like the one SP Forsythe imaged. Otherwise, it would have come on a DVD.
How to downgrade Lion to Snow Leopard.
