Q: Unable to install 10.6 retail to new hard drive
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May 23, 2014 7:07 AMby The hatter,If you lost OEM disk or even if it never came with those as happened after a point, they can still be ordered from Apple by phone, any and all 2010/2012 Mac Pro 5,1's can run 10.6.5+ UNLESS you have upgraded graphics beyond 5770 to something newer.
By the same token, untested guessing here, but using an older GPU than the 5770 (GT120 for instance) might get you booted.
The retail DVD sold now is 10.6.3 and might just might get passed to get updated to 10.6.8. I would put Mountain Lion on another one of your drives though even if you are going to stay with and use Snow Leopard.
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May 23, 2014 7:30 AMby FatMac>MacPro,The 5,1 designation applies to both the 2010 and 2012 Mac Pro's. The 2010 came with Snow Leopard but its install DVD's are 10.6.4, so the 10.6.3 retail version won't work. The 2012 came with 10.7.3; there are long discussions on this forum about if and/or how it can be made to work with Snow Leopard.
Since it appears you have the 2010 Mac Pro, one thing you might try is to again boot from the 10.6.8 boot drive, run the installer, reboot from the working 10.6.8 partition and run the 10.6.8 combo updater with the fresh install as the target.
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May 23, 2014 7:28 PMby pmiles,Thanks to all who replied Yes, it is a 2010 MacPro.
I ended up using the MacPro Install/Recoverydiscs. I thought installing an OS on a secondary drive would be simpler with the retail disc but that obviously wasn't the case. Retail disc only stated that it was 10.6, I didn't realize that it was, in essence, hardware locked to older systems. Live and learn I guess.
LOL, my next task is to format the other drive in preparation for Mavericks.
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May 23, 2014 7:58 PMby Grant Bennet-Alder,A disc that says 10.6 contains 10.6.0. That is too old for your Mac to install directly.
A Mac can generally run Mac OS X no older than the version it originally shipped with:
.
#Mac Pro Date introduced
Original Mac OS X included
(see Tips 1 and 3)Later Mac OS X included
(see Tip 1)Mac OS X Build(s)
(see Tip 2)Mac Pro (Late 2013) Dec 2013 10.9 10.9.2 13A4023, 13C64 Mac Pro (Mid 2012) Jun 2012 10.7.3 10.8, 10.8.3 11D2001, 12A269, 12D78 Mac Pro (Mid 2010) Aug 2010 10.6.4 10.7, 10.7.2, 10.7.3 10F2521, 10F2554, 11A511a, 11C74, 11D2001 Mac Pro with Mac OS X Server (Mid 2010) Aug 2010 10.6.4 10.7, 10.7.2, 10.7.3 (Server) 10F2522, 11A511a, 11C74, 11D2001 (Server) Mac Pro (Early 2009) Mar 2009 10.5.6 10.6 9G3553, 10A432 Mac Pro (Early 2008) Jan 2008
10.5.1
10.5.2, 10.5.4
9B2117, 9C2031, 9E25 Mac Pro Aug 2006
10.4.7
10.4.8, 10.4.9, 10.4.10, 10.5
8K1079, 8N1430, 8N1250, 8K1124, 8P4037, 8R3032, 8R3041, 9A581, 9A3129 .
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May 24, 2014 7:51 AMby kahjot,I can tell you from personal experience that a 2010 Mac Pro can be booted from a retail Snow leopard install disk. Mine came with Mountain Lion, and my first task was getting Snow Leopard onto it. After getting no useful info from first-tier support people, I was told by an Applecare support person who seemed to really know his stuff that even the 10.6.0 DVD would work, and it did. I have also used the 10.6.3 DVD. Like you, I was installing onto a new, freshly formatted drive, in my case a 2TB HGST.
So I'm not sure why you are running into a problem. How long did you give it to get past the point where it seems to hang?
Also, even though it's a new hard drive, it might be a good idea to run some diagnostics on it.
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May 24, 2014 10:31 AMby kahjot,FatMac\>MacPro wrote:
kahjot wrote:
...How long did you give it to get past the point where it seems to hang?...Since I have a 2010 Mac Pro and the 10.6.3 retail DVD and the two didn't get along, how long did you have to wait before the retail DVD began to cooperate?
I wish I could tell you: but my memory isn't that good. I did the first installation of Snow Leopard, from the only Snow Leopard install DVD that we had lying about then, which was plain 10.6, in January 2012. I don't recall anything odd happening. I know that I then ran the 10.6.8 updater and sometime after that migrated some stuff. I did another clean install of Snow Leopard on a third internal drive sometime after that (not recently), from a retail 10.6.3 DVD that I had bought in the meantime.
Is there any sign of damage to your SL DVD?
I have seen some pretty significant lags in booting after installing an OS or update, while various tasks are apparently being carried out. Is the little grey wheel spinning in the screen you see?
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May 24, 2014 10:41 AMby FatMac>MacPro,I was just curious about the delay. The 5,1 Mac Pro came with a special 10.6.4 DVD and in the beginning I used that, but I remember back then trying the retail DVD just to see if it would work and it didn't. The retail DVD did work properly on a 1,1 Mac Pro so the disk itself is OK.
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May 24, 2014 4:57 PMby pmiles,The 10.6 disc is fine... works on other machines (that are older than my MacPro).
Basically I inserted the DVD, rebooted while holding the option key, available devices would appear and I selected the 10.6 DVD. The Apple logo appeared, the disc drive spinned for a while, then nothing but the Apple logo. No hard drive activity, no DVD drive activity, no spinning beach ball, no indication whatsoever that it was doing anything at all. I waited a few minutes then force rebooted the machine.
Tried installing directly to the drive while booted into another drive. It would get to the point of rebooting to continue the process but would reboot back into the current drive without doing a thing. Tried holding the option key as well during the reboot to see if it just didn't switch drives, got the 10.6 DVD icon, selected it, same result as in the first paragraph.
I just erased my old snow leopard drive and downloaded Mavericks. It's installer did what I was expecting the 10.6 DVD to do. Went without a hitch. The 10.6 experience was way too slow by comparison. Like go brew a cup of coffee and read the paper sort of slow and still no joy.
Hardware restore discs is the way to go as far as I can see.
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May 24, 2014 6:18 PMby Grant Bennet-Alder,You CAN use that 10.6 0 or 10.6.3 DVD to install on a Mac Pro 5,1, but you must also have an older Mac available that can boot directly from that disc. (The Mac Pro 5,1 will NOT boot driectly from that disc -- it requires at least 10.6.4.)
Connect the two Macs with FireWire Target Disk mode, or move the Mac Pro boot drive to an External enclosure on the older Mac. Install from the "Full Retail" DVD, using the older Mac as the operative one for the Install. Update to at least 10.6.4, and that drive can now be used to boot the Mac Por 5,1 directly.
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May 26, 2014 10:05 PMby kahjot,Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:
You CAN use that 10.6 0 or 10.6.3 DVD to install on a Mac Pro 5,1, but you must also have an older Mac available that can boot directly from that disc. (The Mac Pro 5,1 will NOT boot driectly from that disc -- it requires at least 10.6.4.)
Connect the two Macs with FireWire Target Disk mode, or move the Mac Pro boot drive to an External enclosure on the older Mac. Install from the "Full Retail" DVD, using the older Mac as the operative one for the Install. Update to at least 10.6.4, and that drive can now be used to boot the Mac Por 5,1 directly.
I know that I installed Snow Leopard from 10.6 and 10.6.3 retail discs back in January 2012 when I got my Mac Pro. I tried it again tonight, and confirmed that my 5,1 Mac Pro does really, truly boot from the retail 10.6.3 disc. I successfully installed 10.6.3 onto a spare drive, which then booted appropriately. I then installed the various available updates. The only issue I had was with a 10.6.8 combo updater that I had downloaded some time ago. It did not complete the update successfully. However, getting and installing the combo update through Software Update worked fine.
So it is obviously possible to use the retail DVD to install Snow Leopard on at least some 2010 Mac Pros.
I don't know why this isn't working for pmiles, unless it is an issue with that particular Western Digital drive.
