Questions & Answers for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

You shouldn't lose any information.

But, to make absolutely sure, and protect your data in case of power failure during installation, try the following:

1) With Disk Utility, create a new partition and format as "Mac OS Extended "Journaled".
2) Then use Disk Utility to RESTORE your current OS 10.6.8 partition to the new partition (this will make a clone of Snow Leopard and all your data). Test that you can actually start up from the new partition.
3) Now start up from the partition you wish to upgrade to Mountain Lion and do so.

After, Mountain Lion is installed, you should be able to start up from either partition: Mountain Lion or Snow Leopard.

Alternatively, you could back up all your data to an external drive or a partition before installing Mountain Lion, but I prefer to make a clone and have both OS systems available... Some of my printers and scanners do not have drivers for Mountain Lion, so when I need to use them, I start up from Snow Leopard.

• Answered by Ewald W from Vancouve
• Apr 11, 2013
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You just need the US$29 Snow Leopard installation DVD. The last I looked, the Apple Store was selling 10.6.3. After you install, go to the Apple Menu and select "Software Update" to bring Snow Leopard up to latest version (10.6.5).

Snow Leopard requires 1) Intel based Mac, 2) 1 GB RAM, 3) 5 GB hard drive space.

You can install on a freshly formatted partition and import your OS settings from your 10.5.8 partition. This way, you can start up from either partition. Most useful if you are not certain all your applications and drivers will work in Snow Leopard.

I upgraded from OS 10.4.11 to Snow Leopard. A number of my drivers did not work initially (I had to find updated versions), so it was nice to be able to "jump back" to Tiger while I figured out how to get everything to work in Snow Leopard.

• Answered by Ewald W from Vancouver
• Dec 30, 2010
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Speaking in terms of upgrading from Tiger to Snow Leopard Apple only meant Snow Leopard to be able to upgrade from Leopard installs, but from experience upgrading for tiger to snow leopard is possible. Apple did not recommend it because at the launch of Snow Leopard because a lot of the powerpc based applications out at the time that where designed to run on tiger either did not work or worked but had compatibility problems. You want to make sure that after you upgrade your OS you update all your commonly used applications (browsers, media applications, productivity applications, etc) that way you get a stable experience. Hope this helps!

• Answered by Ryan T from Naples
• May 13, 2013
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No. The space that you gain will be from trimming down the operating system itself. Your files remain untouched. That said, take it from a professional network administrator: I've never seen a backup cause data loss.

• Answered by Kevin M from Greenwood
• Oct 28, 2009
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A) Snow Leopard will work on your Mac. Buy Snow Leopard DVD through Apple Store (online or retail store). Install Snow Leopard and once installed, do software updates from under the Apple menu to update OS to OS 10.6.8.

Note: My preference is to install Snow Leopard to a separate partition from OS 10.4.11. During install, the installer program will search your Mac for other partitions with an OS, and ask if it can import OS settings, files and applications from that partition. Do this for a smooth transition to Snow Leopard. (I prefer to do upgrade this way, because it keeps my OS 10.4.11 intact in case something (like a power failure) should happen during the upgrade.) Afterwards you can either delete the OS 10.4.11 partition, or keep it and have a dual boot Mac (press option key during start up).

B) You need OS 10.6.8 installed in order to upgrade the OS further. I don't believe Lion is available anymore. So the latest OS is Mountain Lion. Depending on when your Mac was introduced will determine if Mountain Lion will work on your Mac. If you have OS 10.4.11, I assume you got your Mac before 2008, which would make it unlikely that Mountain Lion supports it. Search online for "System Requirements for Mountain Lion" to find out for sure.

• Answered by Ewald W from Vancouve
• Feb 23, 2013
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When I moved from Tiger (10.4.11) to Snow Leopard, I installed Snow Leopard to a separate empty partition from Tiger. I wanted to play safe, since I heard that Snow Leopard needs to update the formatting on the partition it is installed to. This also preserved all my data on the Tiger partition in case there was a power outage that interrupted the installation of Snow Leopard.

During install, the Snow Leopard installer asked if I wanted to import OS settings, files and/or applications from the Tiger partition. I said yes to all and ended up with everything copied over and ready to use on the Snow Leopard partition. The only difficulty was that I have some old printers and a scanner that do not have drivers specific for Snow Leopard. It took several weeks to figure out how to use these printers and scanner in Snow Leopard, so until I could, it was good to have the option to start up from the Tiger partition if I needed to use the scanner or a printer. (Simply press the Option key during Start Up to switch to Tiger, or use the Start Up Disk utility in System Preferences.)

Another suggestion: if you have an external drive partition with no data, use Disk Utility to "RESTORE" your Tiger partition to that partition on the external drive. This will be a clone. Make sure you can Start Up from the external partition. Then install Snow Leopard over your internal Tiger partition. Afterwards, you can Start Up from Tiger on the external hard drive if you need it for some reason.

• Answered by Ewald W from Vancouve
• Mar 12, 2013
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Your 2007 iMac should be able to run Snow Leopard 10.6.8 without any issues. Upgrading the RAM to 2GB or more would be beneficial, but isn't strictly necessary.

• Answered by Robert T from Chatham
• Feb 10, 2013
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You probably meant to say you need 10.6.8 or higher (10.8.2 is the highest available version of 10.8, so nothing can currently require 10.8.8). If so, just go to the Apple menu and select Software Update and your 10.6.6 will be updated to 10.6.8.

• Answered by Robert T from Chatham
• Mar 11, 2013
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