Yosemite install strategy on multi-drive Mac Pro

Question

Yosemite install strategy on multi-drive Mac Pro

I've got an old Mac Pro (2009 version, so allegedly compatible and eligible for the Yosemite upgrade). It has been a rock-solid, wonderful machine, a real workhorse, it runs long hours every day and just keeps ticking - what a wonderful machine this has been, and remains. This Mac currently has 4 internal hard drives, plus a few more external FW drives. The primary (internal boot drive #1) is running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, which I love - I don't think Apple has ever released a better OS (I use them all regularly on work machines - I have Yosemite on multiple machines at work, and although it's generally OK, I find it does several REALLY annoying things, and I want to keep Snow Leopard as my day-to-day OS for a while, maybe a long while). But I do want to get Yosemite on this Mac since there are some things that won't work with creaky old (reliable, convenient) Snow Leopard.

So this old workhorse should be OK to install Yosemite - AFAIK it meets all the requirements. I'm not ready to commit this machine to Yosemite though, but I do have one of my internal 1TB HDs empty and ready for Yosemite. My question is about what's the best way to get Yosemite installed without risking it stepping on my workhorse boot drive running 10.6.8.

Drive #1 - the current boot drive - is running 10.6.8. It's got roughly 100 GB free space. I do NOT want Yosemite to install itself on this drive.

Drive #2 is an empty 1TB drive. It has no system on it, and oodles of room. This is where Yosemite needs to go.

If I click the "Get" button on the OS X Yosemite page in the Mac App store, I assume it's going to initiate a fairly large download (how large? a large download is OK, I have a fast connection, but I like to know how large before starting that). But I assume it'll download onto my boot drive into Downloads, and will then self-launch the installer. Correct?

Will I have the choice to select the destination drive for installation during the install? I assume I can not designate the drive I want to download Yosemite to - that is, it's just gonna start downloading to my boot drive's Downloads folder, without asking me where to save it - correct?

I just want to be 100% sure this is not going to overwrite the System on my primary drive.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Posted on May 24, 2015 7:54 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,914 points

May 24, 2015 8:00 PM in response to longtimemacuser666

5+ GB download

You can choose the install drive.

You ou can also clone your startup drive to the external, boot from that, and install Yosemite on the external. That way you can see how it works with your current software.

You can use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clobe your drive.

Reply

Answer 2

May 25, 2015 3:03 PM in response to Barney-15E

Help. This has gone sideways. 😠

Short version: I installed Yosemite on a secondary internal HD (we'll call this HD#2). That HD had nothing on it. I booted off my primary internal drive (we'll call this HD#1 - HD#1 has Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on it - along with critical files; it's working fine...well, it was until I booted into Yosemite...).

The computer now boots OK on HD#2 with the newly installed Yosemite. But now I can't get it to switch back to HD#1.

There are several things that look wrong to me...

1. I open up System Preferences > Startup Disk. HD#2 is currently set as the boot drive, as I would expect. HD#1 (with 10.6.8) does appear there in the list of available drives, but all other drives are greyed out. OK, I need to click the "lock" icon to make changes. I do. I get the authentication dialog. I'm prompted for username and password. I enter them. The credentials are rejected. ***? I know they are correct.

2. I go to System Preferences > Users & Groups. Current User lists my name, but it shows as a "Standard" user account, NOT an admin. Of course, if I click the lock icon to make changes to this account, I'm again prompted for the "Admin" (that's me) username and password. It rejects that, as described above.

3. If I restart the machine, and hold down the Option key, the Startup Manager appears. It lists several drives. But my primary internal drive (HD#1) is not listed.

So what has happened here? It appears that the default Yosemite installation has set itself up with a different admin account = my account is there, but it's NOT the admin - so it won't let me choose the boot drive.

Is there some default admin account with a default password that's created? If so, what is that?

Why has Yosemite de-blessed my perfectly good Snow Leopard drive and made it unavailable for startup?

I don't care about the installed Yosemite system on HD#2 - I can blow it away if needed. But I do need to get this machine booted back onto HD#1. How can I do that?

Thanks for any help.

Reply

Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,914 points

May 25, 2015 8:56 PM in response to longtimemacuser666

There isn't a default account, nor password.

Is there another account on the Yosemite drive?

You can reset the password from Recovery.

Open Terminal from the Utilities menu.

Type, resetpassword and hit return.

Follow ow the prompts to select hard drive and user, then reset the password.

However, if you are not an admin user on that OS, I'm not sure if that will help.

Reply