Can I still download Mavericks?

So sorry to pester with questions ...

The article indicates I should clone a copy to an external drive. I have four internal drives (1 terrabyte each) and was planning on having SL one one and Mavericks on another. Foolish idea?

I'll have to purchase another external drive otherwise. The one I'm using now is for my TimeMachine backups.

Thanks so much for your patience and wonderful wisdom.

It really doesn't matter where your clone is. The point is to have a copy so you can either go back, or move bits of data that you forgot you needed. I prefer externals because you can remove them & you do not risk installing to the wrong disk. Sometimes mistakes happen that can effect internal disks.

I don't think it is a good idea to erase a Time Machine backup to use as a clone. You lose all the history doing that (Time Machine keeps older copies - are you certain you don't need them?)

It difficult to have too many backups, but you can have not enough.

An internal drive is fine - so is a partition on a drive. Just make sure your clone is on a different drive than your regular system - if your HD fails, you'd lose both your system and your backup.

As others have noted, any int HD suffices. Just, as babowa stated, use a different HD. Although I have all of mine on one int HD, I do have backups on two other external FWHDs, but don't do Time Machine, not liking its requirement to be always on to be useful or the requirement to restore it to ensure that it works. A clone is viable and easy to check by just booting into it.

Thanks to all—I feel much more confident now in moving forward. Your help is GREATLY appreciated.

The results are in:

Very glad to report that I was successful in obtaining a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner, performing a clone of my OS 10.6.8 system disk to an external HD and verified that I'm able to boot off the clone and function "normally" on it.

Next step will be to install the OS upgrade and go from there.

Many thanks once again for all who helped.

Sounds great! Good luck with the next step.

I just found a possible work-around to get a copy of the Mavericks installer, since none of the tricks here show it to me in the Apple Store, even though I previously upgraded a computer from 10.6 to 10.9. I'm frustrated like everyone else here, since I just want to bring an old laptop up to the same OS as the others ones have.

I booted a that upgraded computer into recovery mode, then selected Disk Utility.

I was able to burn a DVD containing the "base system" image that was mounted while in recovery mode. The resulting disk seems to have a copy of the Mavericks installer application.

I just found a possible work-around to get a copy of the Mavericks installer, since none of the tricks here show it to me in the Apple Store, even though I previously upgraded a computer from 10.6 to 10.9.

If you've previously upgraded to mavericks, then all you need is to sign in with your older Mac and go to your Purchases and/or Update sections of the app store which is an app in your Applications folder (not the online apple store). Any previous purchase should show there and you can download it.

That will indeed create a copy of your current install, but you still shouldn't have to do that.

You mention that you "previously upgraded a computer from 10.6 to 10.9." The relevant word in that sentence being "a" computer, not necessarily the one you're talking about.

So if you mean you're not seeing your purchase of Mavericks on that computer, it could simply mean you're not logged into your App Store account, or you're not logged into the same one it was purchased under.

I used that specific computer that was upgraded from 10.6 to 10.9 and logged into my account on the App store. I still didn't see it.

Open the App Store. If it says you're logged in, log out anyway. Then log back in and check the Purchases tab.

Thanks - but every variant of logging in and out and I still don't see it.

Trying to install/upgrade booting from the DVD I mentioned burning above - I get partway and then when I sign in to the App store and it's going to start the install is errors out with a popup saying "This item is temporarily unavailable"

There have been quite a few people having this problem. I don't think anyone has really figured out why it happens. I can still see Mavericks in my purchases (I'm currently running Yosemite as my every day OS) and can download it.

Kurt Lang wrote:

There have been quite a few people having this problem. I don't think anyone has really figured out why it happens. I can still see Mavericks in my purchases (I'm currently running Yosemite as my every day OS) and can download it.

It's odd, I guess the store & the recovery boot may get the installer via different URLs?

Another option is that the OS is misconfigured with possibly bad/ poor DNS servers that are causing the App store version to fail. A recovery boot will use the default DNS server that the router provides.

I have seen posts recommending using Google DNS (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) & other posts suggesting to avoid Google DNS for fixing the App store downloads issues. The CDN may be part of the issue too.

It's possible to download via recovery mode & abort the installer, which allows you to keep a copy, useful when the store is being useless…

http://www.macworld.com/article/1165337/create_a_bootable_lion_install_drive_for _newer_macs.html