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macmesser

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 13, 2012
921
198
Long Island, NY USA
I would like to upgrade my '09 Mac Pro from 10.7.5 to Mavericks on a second boot partition or new drive, so I can be sure that I don't break anything vital. I need Filemaker Pro 11 Advanced, Extensis Portfolio 8.5 Standalone (I've been told by others that my CS6 apps won't be a problem) and also have some oldish hardware (printers, Wacom graphics tablet, bluetooth keyboard) for which obtaining decent Mavericks drivers may or may not be problematic. I would like to migrate to Mavericks with a safety net as I don't want to risk losing time just now tweaking or replacing things. To that end I have a few questions:

Is it possible to do the upgrade to a new boot partition or drive or would it need to be done to a working 10.7.5 boot drive? If the latter, can I simply clone my 10.7.5 system to a partition or drive and upgrade?

If I will need to clone, what is currently the best application for this
purpose? Is it compatible with both 10.7.5 and Mavericks?

Could there be any upgrade issues specifiic to 4,1 flashed to 5,1 Mac Pros?
 

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,035
15,412
California
Is it possible to do the upgrade to a new boot partition or drive or would it need to be done to a working 10.7.5 boot drive?

You can do either one.

If the latter, can I simply clone my 10.7.5 system to a partition or drive and upgrade?

Yes... that would let you upgrade and see how things go. If things go badly you can just clone the 10.7.5 disk back and carry on.

If I will need to clone, what is currently the best application for this
purpose? Is it compatible with both 10.7.5 and Mavericks?

You can just use Disk Utility. Open the Restore tab and drag the Macintosh HD source into "source" then the target partition into "destination" and click restore.

Could there be any upgrade issues specifiic to 4,1 flashed to 5,1 Mac Pros?

Sorry... not familiar with that one.
 

macmesser

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 13, 2012
921
198
Long Island, NY USA
You can do either one.



Yes... that would let you upgrade and see how things go. If things go badly you can just clone the 10.7.5 disk back and carry on.



You can just use Disk Utility. Open the Restore tab and drag the Macintosh HD source into "source" then the target partition into "destination" and click restore.



Sorry... not familiar with that one.

Thanks!
 
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