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parbar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 18, 2011
17
0
Can I install Snow Leopard and Lion on my i7 Mac?
Do I need to segment the drive?
Can I do it without that?
 
You NEED TO partition the HDD to do so, you can't do it without, as the OS versions would interfere with each other due to the same file and folder structure.

I ran 10.6 and 10. on two partitions on my iMac with my home folder on a third partition and being accessed by both OSs. Though I deleted 10.7 after a month.
 
Can I install Snow Leopard and Lion on my i7 Mac?
Yes you can.

Do I need to segment the drive?
Yes since they are different operating systems they each need their own partition.

Can I do it without that?
No, unless you virtualize one of them using Parallels tools or VMWare fusion but I wouldn't recommend it as the experience will be very buggy and there will be a lot of lag.
 
Can I install Snow Leopard and Lion on my i7 Mac?
Yes you can.

Do I need to segment the drive?
Yes since they are different operating systems they each need their own partition.

Can I do it without that?
No, unless you virtualize one of them using Parallels tools or VMWare fusion but I wouldn't recommend it as the experience will be very buggy and there will be a lot of lag.
I've heard only good things about virtualizing Mac OS X on VMware Fusion. Have you personally tried it? Of course only the server version can be virtualized according to the EULA.
 
Keep in mind, if you have a newer computer (Late 2011 MacBook Pro or newer MB Air) you are unable to install Snow Leopard as the computers shipped with 10.7 and you can't install anything earlier than what came on it when it was new.
 
Can you use an external hard drive with Snow Leopard on it as a boot disk if you have Lion on your Mac?

You might, but there will be drivers missing for the MBA (new Thunderbolt chip) and MBP (I don't know, what is actually new besides the CPUs), thus you might not be able to boot.
 
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