Snow Leopard Install Disk - Problem

B

Burswood

Registered
Hi all.

I'm new here. I need help.

I have a Snow Leopard Install Disk for the 13-inch Macbook Pro model.

I also have a 21-inch iMac. I have OS X Lion installed on both. I have Snow Leopard installed as a partition on my Macbook Pro, which I installed via the install disk. I want to do the same thing for my iMac but I am unable due to (seemingly) my install disk is for a Macbook Pro and not for an iMac.

Does anyone know a way around this? Why won't this work? I was thinking I could change something in the package contents to alter it to allow it to work with an iMac?

I'm lost. Please help. I need to use Pro Tools 8 and that won't work on Lion.
 
Simple enough -
Connect both Macs with a Firewire cable. Boot the iMac into Target Disk Mode (boot while holding the T), boot to the Snow Leopard installer, and install, choosing a separate partition on the iMac's hard drive.
Of course, if the iMac came with Lion installed, or a later version of Snow Leopard, then, all you can try is a restore from your Snow Leopard partition on the MacBook Pro, to your added partition on the iMac, again, through the FireWire Target Disk Mode.
 
Hi DeltaMac.

Appreciate your reply!

The iMac is a Mid-2011 model and did indeed come with Lion installed.

How do I do a restore whilst in Target Disk Mode? Actually, how do I do a restore in general?
 
Restore (using Disk Utility):
Put one Mac into Target Disk Mode.
Boot the other Mac, run Disk Utility, choose the Restore tab.
The Source disk is your 10.6 partition, and the destination is the partition where you want to create another bootable partition.
After the restore, boot to your new partition, and your next step is to download and install the 10.6.8 combined updater. It's different hardware than the original install, and the combined updater should do a good job of cleaning up the OS X install for the change in hardware.

This is all assuming that Apple hasn't made some change to the logic board on your iMac, and dis-allowing the back-grade to Snow Leopard.
And, of course, there's always the possibility that you won't get the older ProTools to run properly, even if you get Snow Leopard to work.
You get to try it all out!
 
Wow. I sincerely appreciate this help DeltaMac!

I reckon this could indeed work! I know for a fact that Apple haven't altered the logic board because we use Mid-2011 21-inch iMac's in college and they run Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and they more than likely came with Lion.

It can't hurt to try! I've backed everything up with Time Machine so don't be worrying ;)

I'll definitely suggest this forum and yourself to people for any Mac Help kind of situations in the future.

Again, can't thank you enough!
 
Actually, the source disk (Snow Leopard on my MBP) is already is upgraded to 10.6.8, and the destination disk (the partition alongside Lion on my iMac) is just blank. There's no OS on the destination disk. Will this still work?

I have to go out and buy a firewire cable now :)
 
The Restore in Disk Utility essentially is a full bit-copy, and one method you can use to create a complete copy of a partition.
So, Restore that 10.6.8 disk to the destination, and you get an exact copy of the source - so should be a bootable partition. The ONLY Mac that you can be sure that partition will boot, is the MacBook Pro. If the partition fully works on your iMac, then that's a bonus! Reinstalling the Combined 10.6.8 updater will "tune & prune" the installed OS X system.
 
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