I have a 2010 iMac running Snow Leopard. I'd like to upgrade to Mavericks or Yosemite, but I want to maintain Snow Leopard as an option so that I can continue to run older software. My original plan was to partition my hard drive and use boot camp. But today, a sales person at the computer store said I should try Parallels instead. I am more than willing to do that, but what should I do first? Should I purchase and install Parallels on my Snow Leopard Machine? If so, how then can I upgrade to Mavericks (or Yosemite) without losing Snow Leopard? Any help would be much appreciated.
The salesperson idea would be to run Snow Leopard as a VM under mavericks. However, running OS X as a VM, whatever is the version, comes at the expense of performance, specifically because there isn't any graphic hardware acceleration. Bootcamp is for installing Windows as a separate partition on the Mac alongside OS X, it is not for installing different versions of OS X. For that you will have to do it manually.
Snow Leopard is not supported as a Guest OS in Parallels Desktop for Mac because it is prohibited by Apple's EULA. http://kb.parallels.com/en/112323
Partitioning your hard drive and dual booting Snow Leopard and Mavericks (or Yosemite) is the only option available (see my previous post).
*sigh* Snow Leopard SERVER is allowed as guest OS, Apple EULA specifically allows it. And your previous post says boot camp. And don't think you know what boot camp is. Anyway, since you aren't clealry open to to learn or be clarified. Good luck!
I know Snow Leopard Server can be virtualized, but the original poster did not not mention Server. And I didn't mention Boot Camp in my replies, so I don't know to what you are refering.
Ah, I mistaken you for the original poster, ok, because you said look at previous post, anyway, your reasoning seems to be that because snow leopard cannot be virtualised the only option is to partition, which, 1st is not correct because SL Server can (works exactly like SL + server features), secondly, that's what I had said initially. The reason to dual boot is more of a performance reason, Unfortunately, without the original user having ever replied I can only assume he lost interest, so no point in discussing further without it.
Hi, Specimen I had a problem installing Snow Leopard Server into a new Parallels 10 Virtual Machine created in a Yosemite partition. I actually posted a question about it but appear to have hit the wrong button and posted in the Windows Guest threads. I will repeat my question below, before I repost it to the correct Mac thread, in hopes that your expertise will have a quick answer, or you can direct me to one, or tell me to make a new post to this thread or to another thread. Much appreciated. ORIGINAL POST Snow Leopard Server install in Parallels 10 on Yosemite Everything about the Parallels installation and creation of a new virtual machine works fine, and the machine can see the DVD drive and the 10.6.8 Server Installation Disk in it. But when it attempts to boot the Installer Disk in the virtual machine, I get -- almost too briefly to catch it -- this error message: Boot Failed. EFI Hard Drive | Boot Failed. EFI DVD/CDROM | PXE DHCP. Machine is a MacBook Pro 2012 with a clean new partition and clean new installation of Yosemite without any problems. Very frustrating. (FWIW, I can't get this to work in the latest Virtual Box, either. I have not tried VMWare Fusion; I have only an old version of it used for a Windows install elsewhere.) TIA
Yes, thanks, that worked, although it wasn't quite as straightforward as you made it seem. The Boot Order panel in Hardware did not have an option for EFI disks. I wound up having to go back to an earlier and more primitive (almost, but not quite, command line level) to find the EFI option). Worked fine, Snow Leopard Server is working fine in a Parallels 10 VM on Yosemite, and most software works. However [and I'll post about this separately if I don't find an answer myself; I don't see a Eudora thread in Guest forum] ... however, I cannot get the Eudora 6.2.4 installer to run on the Snow. It's not missing Rosetta; that's installed. Weird error message in Console Log dealing with QuickTime bits not being right architecture. Anyway, thanks again, you're pretty helpful.
Hi guys, I'm waiting on a delivery for a new MacBook pro 15 late (2014), need to set up and run snow leopard for some design software, from a new machine point of view what order and how would I go about setting this up? it has the 256gb drive, I have snow leapard server on disc and retail versions of snow leapard os, Never tried this before so would welcome some pointers, thanks
Hi, please could you tell me in simple terms how to enable the EFI disk option as you did? as I cannot see it as an option also? thanks in advance Dave
Ditto Dave. neo_con can you please tell us what you did as I can't see the EFI option either - and an EFI terminal command I entered from another thread hasn't worked either.
Guys, the command line instructions you need to do the EFI fix are here: http://kb.parallels.com/en/122932
