There is so much that I want to be able to do that is only available with Snow Leopard. Is it OK to partition the HD so that I can switch between Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard? If this is OK please tell me how.
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)
Yes, that is possible, but only if your computer can boot from Snow Leopard.
To resize the drive do the following:
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears.
After the main menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Select the hard drive's main entry then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
2. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired new volume's size. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed. (Note: You can only make a partition smaller in order to create new free space.)
4. Click on the [+] button below the sizing window to add a new partition in the gray space you freed up. Give the new volume a name, if you wish, then click on the Apply button. Wait until the process has completed.
You should now have a new volume on the drive.
It would be wise to have a backup of your current system as resizing is not necessarily free of risk for data loss. Your drive must have sufficient contiguous free space for this process to work.
Please provide some detail of all those thing that require Snow Leopard?
I found either update or replacement apps for everything that was dependent on Snow Leopard. Maybe if you tell us the apps, we might be able to offer alternatives.
The apps I want to use are all the original Photoshop Elements 8. I also want to use the Slick Stabilzer Tool, which will no longerun on Mountain Lion.
Thank you,
I don't know if my iMac 10.8.5 will allow me to boot from Snow Leopard, yet keep the Mountain Lion. In order to boot from Snow Leopard am I right in thinking I would partition the HD then, using the empty partition, use the install DVD for Snow Leopard. Problem is I read somewhere that you cannot install Snow Leopard on Macs that shipped with Mountain Lion.
Plaese advise me where to go from here.
I don't know if my iMac 10.8.5 will allow me to boot from Snow Leopard, yet keep the Mountain Lion. In order to boot from Snow Leopard am I right in thinking I would partition the HD then, using the empty partition, use the install DVD for Snow Leopard. Problem is I read somewhere that you cannot install Snow Leopard on Macs that shipped with Mountain Lion.
If you have newer Mac that came with Mountain Lion, then an older operating system will not know about the new hardware in the new Mac and will not be able to properly boot on the new Mac.
But you can get the Snow Leopard Server from Apple which can be run in a virtual machine (1-800-692-7753 part number MC588Z/A, $19.99 plus tax & shipping). Virtual Machine software sources are VMware Fusion, Parallels, VirtualBox (this one is free, just less feature rich).
Thanks for your reply,
I'll forget about this and try to persevere with running Photoshop Elements 8 on Mountain Lion (it does run but is not happy).
You can obtain Snow Leopard Server for $20 by calling Apple and asking for part number MC588Z/A and install that into Parallels and probably run Photoshop Elements 8 (I forget which version this is) there.
Here is Adobe Photoshop CS2 running in Snow Leopard Server installed in Parallels:
[click on image to enlarge]
Installing Snow Leopard Server into Parallels for DUMMIES:
Thanks again for your reply,
PSE 8 has been running perfectly on the iMac 10.8.5 since I removed certain items from the Library, such as the caches and other problem 'rubbish'!
Therefore, the only items that I actually need to install on the iMac are the Stabiliser and some other GeeThree Slick programs which will not run on mountain lion. Is there any reason why (because I have already bought and paid for the snow leopard DVDs) that I can't partition the iMac drive and install the Snow Leopard in the partition that I've created?
As BobHarris has already posted, you can't run an OS older than what the computer shipped with. See the Apple support article below. What OS did the computer have installed when you bought it? If Snow Leopard was the original OS, then you can partition the hard drive and install 10.6.
Running Snow Leopard AND Mountain Lion on the same MacHD
