Mac Pro Early 2008 Upgrading OS 10.6.8 to 10.11 on a new SSD

Question

Mac Pro Early 2008 Upgrading OS 10.6.8 to 10.11 on a new SSD

Hello everyone!

I want to upgrade the hard drive of my Mac Pro to an SSD with a new install of El Capitan, but I also want to continue to use Adobe CS3 (I can't afford a new version…>___<). I've read some people had a lot of issues after upgrading their OS, even when using the Java Legacy 6 for CS3.

Does anyone have any good step-by-step tutorials for installing a new OS onto an SSD? I do have the adapter for my Mac to use the SSD too. I'm just not *that* tech savvy, so I don't want to mess anything up! :\

Would it be possible to keep my current hard drive with Snow Leopard and run Parallels or Fusion for Adobe CS3 on my SSD? I've never used Parallels or Fusion (any preferences?), so where would I need the Snow Leopard OS to be? On a partition of the SSD or can it be on it's own hard drive (the one I'm currently using)?

Also not sure when I upgrade my OS, how do I tell my Mac to boot El Capitan and not Snow Leopard if I'm keeping the older OS on its own hard drive? Is it System Preferences -> Startup Disk? Is that how I can switch back and forth, if I need to?

Here are my specs:

Mac Pro Early 2008 (MacPro 3,1)

2.8 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

16GB RAM 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM

500GBx2 HDD (one is currently my Time Machine, I will use just as a backup for my pictures)

500GB SSD (not installed in my Mac yet)

4TB HDD (will have Time Machine on half)

Would El Capitan be really sluggish on my Mac Pro or should I go with Mavericks or Yosemite? I'm just trying to extend the life of my Mac as long as possible! 😀

I'm really sorry for all the questions! Thank you very much for any and all help!! ^____^

~Christina~

Posted on Sep 2, 2016 6:32 AM

Reply

Answer 1

lllaass

Level 10

210,519 points

Sep 28, 2016 5:34 AM in response to animeotaku0321

- Unless you previously "purchased" Mavericks or Yosemite is is not available for download.

- I would just download the El Capitan installer from the Mac App Store and run it and direct that EL Capitan be installed on the new SSD. YOu can then by pressing and holding the Option key during startup to select what OS version you want to boot from. You can set either as the default boot in System Preferences>Startup Disk.

- During setup you can use the Setup Assistant to migrate stuff from the SN disk. YO can also do that later using Migration Assistant but that created a new used with the migrated information.

- WIth 16 GB of RAM and an SSD El Capitan will be fine

Reply

Answer 2

Sep 12, 2016 7:43 AM in response to lllaass

Hi, thank you for your reply and all your help!!! ^____^ Sorry for the late response. I thought I would get email notifications from replies in the thread, but apparently when they updated the forums, they took that option away...? 😟

What about Adobe CS3? Would it be possible to attempt to run it on El Capitan? Or should I go the Parallels/Fusion route and keep it on my Snow Leopard drive?

Can I still access my Snow Leopard drive, once I install El Capitan on my SSD? I kind of wanted to keep El Capitan clean from my crap on the SL drive. I have some corrupted fonts that I can't seem to fix or find out which ones are messed up, I always get weird symbols or " " " " " in place of letters on Chrome…

Would just migrating over my apps be okay? I'd leave the fonts, pictures, documents and everything else on my SL drive and on my backup hard drive.

Thank you again for your help!! ^____^

Reply

Answer 3

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Sep 28, 2016 5:34 AM in response to animeotaku0321

you still have room for another HD, you could keep you previous OS intact and just have multiple boot instances (see enclosed image)

On my 5,1 I noticed Mavericks ran 'faster' than El Capitan and both were better than Yosemite.

After September 20 if you don't already have El Capitan in your App Store purchase history you may not be able to legally obtain it later.

CS3 is picky but most of it will run in OS's it was not intended to run it. The most finicky one in the bunch is Illustrator. If you run into issues you can try to remove the prefs files or boot to a new user account. While some of the problems can be circumvented there are issues that are unique to systems which do not duplicate and do not have ready fixes, and neither Apple or Adobe will ever intentionally rerelease a patch for CS3, as Adobe no longer distributes or supports CS6 at this point and it is well past any Mac OS version that it was built to be compatible with.

I'd say keep 10.6 on there and just boot off other drives. If your system supports older OS's (and yours does) this is the single best way to keep compatibility unless you have a ton of patience and can deal well with frustration. CS3 was designed for an OS which much of the framework has been replaced so it's stability can always be an issue that lacks a clear fix at times.

Reply

Answer 4

Sep 14, 2016 9:05 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT

Whew! Thank goodness you told me about El Capitan leaving the App Store. I had to clear out some stuff, but I downloaded it!! ^____^

So if I wanted to run CS3 (most of my work is done in Illustrator and Photoshop.. TT^TT ), would I be able to get Parallels and use it with El Capitan to run Snow Leopard and CS3? If that makes sense… :\

I just don't want to reboot my computer to SL every time I want to use anything with CS3… >___< It ***** that they won't ever release a patch for CS3, but I can't afford the Creative Cloud, that's like way too much money a year for an app you don't even get to own!! -___-

Also, I actually have 4 hard drives, I thought that was the most I could have in my Mac Pro? A 500GB, 500GB, 500GB SSD, and a 4TB - I was going to leave my 500GB SSD for OS's and apps only. Should I partition it and perhaps try to put maybe Mavericks on it? I see that they have a bootable flash drive of it on Amazon for like $12. Not sure how "legit" it is (not very, I'm assuming, lol) but I'd be willing to try it, since it's faster than El Capitan.

Thank you very much for your help! ^____^

Reply

Answer 5

lllaass

Level 10

210,519 points

Sep 14, 2016 9:23 AM in response to animeotaku0321

You asked:

So if I wanted to run CS3 (most of my work is done in Illustrator and Photoshop.. TT^TT ), would I be able to get Parallels and use it with El Capitan to run Snow Leopard and CS3? If that makes sense… :\

You can only do that if you purchased/installed Snow Leopard server. Regular Snow Leopard will not run in a virtual machine

Reply

Answer 6

MlchaelLAX

Level 4

2,293 points

Sep 14, 2016 1:39 PM in response to lllaass

lllaass wrote:

You can only do that if you purchased/installed Snow Leopard server. Regular Snow Leopard will not run in a virtual machine

Snow Leopard client will run in Parallels, if necessary, as was the case when Snow Leopard Server sold for $499+.

Snow Leopard Server is easier to install and maintain in a virtual machine, especially after Apple discounted its prices 95% to the same $20 as Snow Leopard client.

Reply