Nervous about upgrade to El Capitan

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Level 1

8 points

Nervous about upgrade to El Capitan

Hi,

I am currently running OS X 10.8.5 on a Mid 2012 Mac Book Pro. I have a 500 GB HD and have 432 GB available. My processor is a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 and I have 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 memory.

My issue is my browser (Safari 6.2.8) is updated as far as it will go with Mountain Lion and my credit card company wants an updated browser to access their site and I'm sure there will be others to follow soon as well like Social Security, Healthcare.gov, etc. Also I've been seeing the spinning beach ball occasionally while surfing around. I can't use Google chrome either as the OS is too old for that as well. So unfortunately an upgrade is probably in order. I have never backed up my computer, I know my bad, but to tell you the truth it seems really complicated and unreliable. I have copied my spreadsheets, music and photos onto large flash drives. I am NOT super savvy, and mostly use my computer for web surfing, paying bills online and photos and music.

I have read several discussions here on backing up your computer and even from Level 1 users they all seem like they know their way around a hard drive but most of it seems greek to me. Archives or back up or cloning? really!! I've read the glowing reports for EC balanced with an equal % of horror stories. There are always haters with every new release but it still puts the fear in me. So here are my concerns/questions I hope someone will be willing to help me out with. I apologize ahead of time for the length, just trying to give as much info as possible. I hope this is the right forum for this.

1. Once I figured out external HD's were not really "disks" I checked a couple Mac ready ones out to use with TM, WD and Seagate being the most available. I don't really need an hour to hour backup of my computer because I don't change that much everyday and it seems like you have to leave this plugged in 24/7 which seems like a pain for a laptop, rendering it not so portable. Plus I've read you have to shut down your computer to remove the external HD safely. really? Can I just do a manual back up once a week or monthly?

2. Would it be better for me to use a cloning software so I can just make a copy (bootable?) of my current OS and files instead of hour by hour back ups with time machine? I'm not sure I'm wise enough to figure it all out. I've been to Super Duper website and they seem helpful but thats another $30 on top of $60 for a 1 TB HD.

3. I've read that you should have 2 copies of your back up. That means 2 external HD's right?

4. Do you need an internet connection to do back ups? I use my iPhone as a hotspot but go to my kids if I need longer term wi-fi although theirs is not super fast as its out in the sticks.

5. I don't have a ton of apps other than the ones the computer came with but the ones I have I really don't want to lose. Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, Family Tree Maker for Mac v. 2 being the main ones. Also my printer is old so I may have to replace that. I checked their compatibility from a link on this forum. Sounds like both of them will not work. I don't know how to check if my model printer will work with EC. Any simple work arounds? I hate to lose all that if I upgrade. For some apps you can't upgrade until you upgrade your OS but does that mean I'll lose all the old files?

6. Can you have 1 computer but have 2 OS's? El Capitan when I need to do web stuff and Mountain lion to use my other apps? Probably no simple matter. Or do I have to take out a loan and buy another computer and keep my old one for my out of date apps? 😟

7. If I have to do this (upgrade to EC) what should be my game plan be? Anything to make the transition more smooth? In simple terms for a dummy?

Anyway if anybody wants to help I'm appreciative!

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Sep 7, 2016 2:34 PM

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Answer 1

MichelPM

Level 10

81,541 points

Oct 6, 2016 10:09 PM in response to Spudgirl

If you do not want to upgrade your OS X version, the OS X Mountain Lion version of Apple Safari is no longer a secure web browser under OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and you should cease using that version of Safari.

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is no longer receiving any security updates and, I believe, shortly is no longer going to receive any new iTunes updates, either.

Same issue/problem with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox which both ended support for OS X 10.6-10.8.

Mozilla Firefox just ended its web browser support and its last full version, issued this past August (ver. 48.0.0), for OS X 10.6-10.8 can still be used for awhile longer.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/desktop/

OR

Mozilla is continuing security support (no more new web browser feature support) for the Firefox web browser through their Firefox ESR program, (which you CAN download, install and use) that will continue security only support for Firefox until next April 2017 for OS X 10.6-10.8.

You can use these ESR versions. Ignore the enterprise/educational support notes.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

OR

Look at SeaMonkey.

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

Good Luck!

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

685,293 points

Oct 6, 2016 10:08 PM in response to Spudgirl

1. You can attach the drive and backup when you feel like it. I'd back up at least weekly. You do not have to shut down the computer to detach the hard drive. Control - click on the drive in Finder's Sidebar and select eject.

2. Clones are another good way to backup and as you posted, that backup is bootable. SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner both have free trials.

Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)

Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested

Time Machine Versus Clones and Archives

Commonly Used Backup Methods

3. Yes.

4. You do not need an internet connection to back up. Hook the backup drive to the computer.

5. Office 2011 should work. If you upgrade an application, normally it will access older data file. Go to the print manufacturer's website to check for a driver.

6. You can run 2 OS versions on the same computer.

7. Backup before doing anything.

One option is to create a new partition (~30- 50 GB), install the new OS, and ‘test drive’ it. If you like/don’t like it it, you can then remove the partition. Do a backup before you do anything. By doing this, if you don’t like it you won’t have to go though the revert process.

Check to make sure your applications are compatible.

Application Compatibility

Applications Compatibility (2)

El Capitan 10.11 Compatibility information

Also check to make sure there is a compatible driver for your printer.

Open Disk Utility, select your hard drive (step 1), then the Partition tab (step 2), and select the partition. Using the /// at the bottom move it up (step 3) until the size box decrease by about 50 GB. Select the newly created space and hit the + button (step 4). Name it something and select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format (step 5). Then hit the Apply button(step 6). Download the installer from the App Store and when it starts, point it at the new partition. You might want to make a copy of the installer outside the Applications folder to avoid having to re-download it in the future. Once installed, restart with the option/alt key held down, select the new partition and reboot. Test away.

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Answer 3

Spudgirl Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 2, 2016 4:01 PM in response to Eric Root

Eric, I wanted to say thank you for your reply to my overly long post! I just bought a WD 1 TB My Passport for Mac that I hope to set up with Time machine tonight. I read and sort of got the gist about creating a partition but I'm nervous about doing that, even with your excellent instructions because if I get into trouble I'm out of luck as I'm fairly new to this area. My main concern is not losing my music and photos.

If I back up and use Time machine will it save my iTunes library and iPhoto? I know that El Capitan no longer uses iPhoto and will look different but I'll figure that out.to recover lost photos I accidentally deleted. I think thats the

Is there anything else I can do for a clean problem free install? I mentioned that I don't have many apps installed but I think the only thing that I may have downloaded once was a program to recover lost photos I accidentally deleted. Any suggestions (in dummy terms) would be appreciated!!

Thanks!

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Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

685,293 points

Oct 3, 2016 8:48 AM in response to Spudgirl

El Capitan is no longer available for you computer. Sierra replaced El Capitan on 20 Sep.

Time Machine will save your iTunes and iPhoto Libraries. I suggest having the programs closed when backing up.

You don't need to do a clean install on your existing system.

Check to make sure your applications are compatible. PowerPC applications are no longer supported after 10.6.

Application Compatibility

Applications Compatibility (2)

El Capitan 10.11 Compatibility information

macOS Sierra 10.12: Compatible Apps

Also check to make sure there is a compatible driver for your printer.

Do a backup before installing, preferable 2 backups on 2 different drives.

Creating a partition isn't hard. Restart with command - R held down and open Disk Utility.

Step 1 - select the top level hard drive.

Step 2 - select the Partition tab.

Step 3 - grab the //// to slide the partition up to make room for a new partition.

Step 4 - select the vacant space and hit the + sign.

Step 5- Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and add a name.

Step 5a, click and select GUID.

Then Apply.

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Answer 5

MichelPM

Level 10

81,541 points

Oct 4, 2016 12:02 AM in response to Spudgirl

I wasn't going to post again, but since your are still afraid to update, I gave you a perfectly easy way to just download, install and use a new web browser that would be up to date perfectly compatible with OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion.

You don't need to use Safari.

You can simply and easily download, install and use the Mozilla Firefox ESR web browser which is being kept up to date with the most important part of a web browser...security updates!

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

OR

Download and install the SeaMonkey web browser.

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

The SeaMonkey team doesn't update as often, but the team's last March update works fine and is very secure and their team is soon going to release another new update before the end this year.

This all you needed to do to get yourself an up to date, secure web browser with your current OS X Mountain Lion. instead of going through all the tedious difficulties of upgrading your Mac to a new OS X version, that you seem very uncomfortable in doing.

I am running OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion with the up to date security releases of the Mozilla Firefox ESR web browser with no issues.

Eventually, like next April 2017, I'll switch to SeaMonkey OR some other unforseen, new web browser that may become available that can run on OS X 10.6.8-10.8.5.

Some group created a useable and secure web browser for OS X 10.4 Tiger and OS X 10.5 Leopard which are nearly 10 years old OS X versions and run on really older Macs.

So, I am assumimg some group who still has a need for a secure web browser for 10.6-10.8 will pool their web development knowledge and maybe come up with another web browser application for all of us still using older Intel OS X versions.

You never know...

It's up to you, but I figured you would've taken the easier path of less resistance and difficulty...

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Answer 6

Spudgirl Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 4, 2016 1:53 PM in response to MichelPM

Hi Michelle, Thank you for your replies. I just hadn't done anything yet because I just was able to afford the external hard drive the other day and I have a husband dealing with stage 4 cancer so its been a bit hectic on the home front. I appreciate the link to Mozilla.

I do keep my phone updated all the time and have never had any issues so I'm probably just being paranoid. Just wondered why you haven't ever upgraded from Mountain Lion?

Karen

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Answer 7

Spudgirl Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 4, 2016 4:57 PM in response to Eric Root

Eric, Thanks again for the quick reply. The pictures made it so much more understandable! Just completed my backup with no issues. Noted that El Capitan is no longer available as a upgrade and will have to go with Sierra. I don't have an internet connection at home (I use my iPhone as a hotspot) but I read that you can do your update at the Apple store so I may just do that.

thanks for all your help!

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Answer 8

MichelPM

Level 10

81,541 points

Oct 4, 2016 7:43 PM in response to Spudgirl

Sorry to learn about your husband struggling with cancer.

I hope he and the doctor's can find a way to kill it and he recovers from it.

My own family history has had a lot of cancer and heart related illnesses.

My dad has a moderate form of skin cancer that has been treatable, so far.

Many of the women in my family, including my wife and my mom have dealt with uterine and breast cancer.

At 54 years of age, I have serious and progressive heart disease for the last six years and have been in and out of hospital care for the past 3 years.

My wife's and my hearfelt prayers will go out to you and for your husband.

I hope the doctors, with the help of God, can find a way to rid your husband of this insidious disease.

I just "upgraded" from OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard to OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion this past January 2016 because I have a lot of legacy software that I still use and can't financial afford to update to be compatible with newer OS X versions, like OS X Yosemite, El Capitán or macOS Sierra, since I only work part-time from home, now, and only take on work that won't add to my health issues or create undo stress.

So, that is the main reason I need to stay on OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion. I, actually, also have OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks on my iMac, as well, as I know this is the last version of OS X that will still completely support a good majority of all of my current, older software and still supports the latest iTunes and all of my current iDevices.

OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion is stable and as rock solid for all of my software and needs and is "almost" running as well as OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard.

Good luck & God Bless to you and your husband.

Michel

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Answer 9

Oct 5, 2016 5:59 AM in response to MichelPM

I have the same problem as the OP: I am still using Mountain Lion 10.7 and, not being too tech savvy, I am afraid to upgrade to El Cap (about which I have heard a lot of complaints). So, If I add Mozilla Firefox ESR can I just click on the link in a previous post or do I create a new partition for this? I would appreciate any help.

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Answer 10

MichelPM

Level 10

81,541 points

Oct 5, 2016 7:18 AM in response to seniordalite

OS X 10.7 is Lion NOT Mountain Lion.

OS X Mountain Lion is 10.8.

As far as your question about the Firefox ESR web browser, it's just a web browser, not an operating system.

Just click on my supplied link, ignore all the info about Firefox ESR being for enterprise/educational version, and simply click the download button, pick the version for your country and language and download, install and start using the Mozilla Firefox ESR web browser.

Mozilla has a planned schedule of security updates for Firefox that will be phased out for Firefox for OS X 10.6-10.8 by April 2017.

So, if you start using now, you'll have seven months of updates and perhaps can keep using after the phase out for another few months or so where you'll need to switch to something like the SeaMonkey web browser, assuming the SeaMonkey web browser developement team will stil have their web browser still supporting 10.6-10.8 (crossing my fingers as, once FF support ends in April, we will run the very strong possibility of no longer having a up to date, secure web browser to run on OS X 10.6-10.8.

I am really hoping that this doesn't happen.

Good Luck to You.

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Answer 11

Spudgirl Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 6, 2016 12:49 PM in response to Spudgirl

Checking out the partition on my MBP here is a screen shot of mine. It does not say "Mountain Lion", only Macintosh HD. Mountain Lion came preloaded on the computer, I never had a physical disk. It would not let me rename the top blue section and the option is grayed out. Don't know if this is an issue or not.

I understand creating the partition but how large should I make it? 50 GB. 75GB?

How do I go back and forth between the 2 OS's? Would I go into disk utility again and click on "Sierra" to start whatever operating system that I want to work with?

Just wondering if many people have different OS's on their computer? I can see the advantage because you can test drive the new one (Sierra) while being able to switch back to your old OS where perhaps certain applications work with and waiting for the new OS to work out all the bugs. My concern after reading reviews on Sierra is mail. I use Mail that came on my Mac and my internet account is a POP.

Thanks again for the hand holding.

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Answer 12

MichelPM

Level 10

81,541 points

Oct 6, 2016 1:15 PM in response to Spudgirl

Not sure who you are addressing, but I was replying to another Poster who was asking a similar question to yours.

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Answer 13

MichelPM

Level 10

81,541 points

Oct 6, 2016 1:38 PM in response to Spudgirl

As far as your situation,I really feel that this is a lot a complication for you right now with everything that is going on in your life, currently.

Since you have the external hard drive I would use OS X Disk Uitilty to format that external hard drive into, at least two partitions (one for a backup of your current operating system and one for macOS Sierra) format the drive as a Mac OS X extended (journaled) with GUID partition scheme.

Backup of your current system to the external using either OS X Time Machine app to backup your entire system to the external drive OR purchase, install and use a data cloning app, like Bombich Software CarbonCopyCloner or Shirt Pocket's SuperDuper, to make an exact and bootable copy (clone) of your entire Mac's internal hard drive. This step is really needed in case something goes wrong with the install of the new OS or you simply do not like the new OS, you have a very easy way/procedure to return your Mac to its former working state.

Then, install macOS Sierra to the other partition of the external hard drive.

I am not sure what kind of connection protocol your external hard drive is, but if you are using a USB style drive with the older USB 2.0 drive on your Mac, when you get done installing macOS Sierra onto the external hard drive and boot it and run macOS Sierra, it will run much slower from the external hard drive.

I would have recommended a FireWire 800 or Thunderbolt external hard drive as these are much faster for running an OS off of.

You can test drive it from the external hard drive instead of installing this onto your iMac right off the bat.

Then I strongly suggest you just install the Firefox ESR web browser on your current system and be done with this nonsense, for now.

The current Mozilla Firefox ESR versions are secure and will stay secure for another seven to eight months, at which time you can either decide to install macOS Sierra then, directly, onto your iMac OR just switch, again, to another secure web browser, which, hopefully, will still be the SeaMonkey web browser.

Do what you will, but simply installing an up to date web browser onto your current system seems to me to be the best and easiest solution to go for you.

You will be able to keep using OS X Mountain Lion with a secure web browser and no issues with your Mail.

You can backup your current system onto that external hard drive and just go ahead and install macOS Sierra onto that external hard drive, too, and simply play with it and test drive it for awhile when you can to make sure its something that you think will work for you.

You can re-install macOS Sierra over your existing system at some future later date.

Up to you.

Good Luck!

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Answer 14

Spudgirl Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 6, 2016 4:01 PM in response to MichelPM

Thanks Michael for your input and your kind thoughts regarding my husband. He has a super rare form of skin cancer called Merkel cell carcinoma which only has 1600 cases a year worldwide and is 3 times deadlier than Melanoma. bad s%$# but he has been on a clinical trial for 18 months and doing pretty good.

In regards to Seamonkey that is not in either my banks or credit card websites as a compatible browser and I'm even wondering if the Firefox ESR is considered a "development browser version" as stated below 3rd bullet point? It just seems to be a matter of time before I need to bite the bullet. See below:

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- Is NOT in Compatibility Mode (only applies to Internet Explorer).
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- Is NOT using third-party browser extensions or plug-ins.

The external HD I have for my time machine back ups is a WD 1 TB with a 3.0 USB, no option for firewire. The only problem I see with partitioning that and installing on it rather than my computer is the slightest little bump undocks it and I think it would cause a bunch of grief. I only have my laptop and it never hardly sits in 1 place except overnight. I haul it everywhere. So I have done one back up with no problems and then undocked it. I plan on doing backups once a week. I think what Eric was saying about partitioning my HD on my laptop and installing it there would still allow me to test run Sierra while keeping Mountain Lion for mail and incompatible apps if I understand all this correctly.

Clones have been mentioned and I have been to SuperCloners website and it appears for $40 I can have a bootable clone. More money on top of the external HD but I understand why its important. I thought doing a backup with TM would allow me to go back to Mt Lion if I needed to? If this isn't true it sounds like I need to spend the $40.

I am worried about Mail as my internet account is a POP and Sierra appears not to play well with that type. Anyway if you let me know if Firefox ESR is considered a development browser or not I'd appreciate it and then I can download it.

Thanks again for your generous time!

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Answer 15

MichelPM

Level 10

81,541 points

Oct 6, 2016 4:46 PM in response to Spudgirl

FIrefox is NOT new and certainly NOT in developement or a development browser.

It has been an active web browser (still being updated for OS X 10.9 and above) for over 10 years.

The ESR version of Firefox is simply a slightly older version ( vers, 45) that is being still active and updated for OS X 10.6-10.8 users and given ALL of the up to date security updates, that other newer featured Firefox versions are still getting, until sometime in April 2017.

The ESR (ver. 45.x.x) of Firefox is only getting up to date security features and not any new software, browser functionality features.

Firefox, whether current feature version or the ESR version get identical security updates and is secure for banking or any other website that use a secure connection and online security.

Firefox should work for all of your banking and your banking institutions.

I use Firefox for all of mine. I am using the ESR version on my iMac running OS X 10.8.5.

Firefox works fine on my bank's website.

Firefox should work.

The only way to know is to download, install and test it with your banking websites to see if it will work.

This is NOT difficult to do or try.

Try it!

Good Luck!

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