Downgrade without losing data

[brotakul]

Hello,

I found some other threads discussing similar topics, but they didn't answer this exact situation.

I have OS X 10.7.5 installed on my old Macbook 3.1 (2007). Because it runs slow, i'd want to downgrade it to OS X 10.6 that was installed before. I have no Time Machine backup to the old system so a fresh install is in order.

I have 2 partitions on my 500GB HDD. One is the Macbook system partition, the other is for data (music, personal files, basically everything i do not want to loose). I have to say i'm new with Macs and fresh installs so that's why i posted were before starting experimenting on the Mac and do something wrong.

I just want to erase the primary (system) partition and install OS X 10.6 on it, but keep the partition table and the other partition (with data) untouched.

Is it possible? And if so, how exactly?

PS: I don't have a spare HDD on hand right now for backup, that's why this is so critical and i want to make absolute sure it will work before geting to work.

Thank you.

 

[Gregg2]

I'm pretty sure that the data partition would be untouched, but you should wait for others to confirm that.

 

[Weaselboy]

I just want to erase the primary (system) partition and install OS X 10.6 on it, but keep the partition table and the other partition (with data) untouched.

Is it possible? And if so, how exactly?

That will work fine. When you go to do the OS install you will get to a screen where is asks where you want to install. Just point it to the current OS partition.

That said, you really should try and get a backup disk before you do this. Although the OS install will not overwrite the data partition, sometimes the stress of an OS install can push a borderline disk over the edge and kill it.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote above:
[[ PS: I don't have a spare HDD on hand right now for backup, that's why this is so critical and i want to make absolute sure it will work before geting to work. ]]

If you don't have ANY backup at all, you'd better GET one, and get it soon.

Is the data you have important to you?
If the current drive fails, that data will be.... "POOF!"

Backup is EASY.
Get an external drive, or
Get a "bare drive" and a USB3/SATA dock, and
Then use either CarbonCopyCloner, SuperDuper, or Time Machine to create some kind of backup.

Actually, you might consider setting up your backup drive as you have your internal drive -- that is, with two partitions:
1. Cloned copy of your boot partition
2. Cloned copy of your data partition.

I do that myself, makes backing up the data partition VERY quick -- 30 seconds, max.

 

[brotakul]

Thanks for the replies.

Currently i do not have a spare HDD for backup, as i said. Ironically, my HDD died recently and now i am running on the backup hdd. This is fairly new and doesn't seem to fail.

I will try backing up on different media and reinstall OS X after that.