Dual booting OS 9 and Leopard

[ziggy29]

I have a question about this. I have a Digital Audio G4 upgraded to 1.467 GHz, so it can run Leopard. Right now it dual boots between 9.2.2 and Tiger 10.4.11, both in the same partition. (Being Tiger, I can also run Classic in Tiger.) This computer did, years ago, have Leopard 10.5.8 installed and worked fine. A stock G4/667 can't install Leopard, but this one can when the installer sees more than 867 MHz reported.)

I'm considering upgrading the Tiger install to Leopard. As long as I can still boot directly into OS 9, I'm not concerned about losing Classic in OS X as I know would happen with a Leopard install. My question is: If I upgrade the Tiger install with Leopard, understanding that I lose Classic in OS X, will I still be able to boot either OS 9 *or* Leopard? Or do I need to backup the drive, wipe it into two partitions, one for OS 9 and Tiger and one for Leopard, and do it that way?

I'd prefer the former (one partition) if it works; again, I'm not concerned about losing Classic as long as I can still boot directly into OS 9. But if not... I guess I'll get my copy of SuperDuper out and prepare multiple partitions.

 

[Intell]

You can upgrade to Leopard and keep OS 9 and Leopard on the same partition and boot between them.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Seconded. They can reside on the same drive and you can switch which one you boot using the System Disk Control Panel or System Preference pane.

Personally, I prefer to keep them on separate partitions, though, in case something goes wrong with one partition. It's easy to move Mac OS 9, too. You just copy the System Folder to the other partition! (Make sure when creating it to "Install Mac OS 9 Drivers," then for maximum chance of success, copy it while booted in to Mac OS 9.)

 

[ziggy29]

Thanks. I think I'm going to try "Plan C". Recently I copied my OS 9 + Tiger disk to an SSD. I've decided to try another plan: I will keep 9 and Tiger on my mechanical drive, and will install Leopard on my SSD. I've just installed both drives in the computer (earlier I took the mechanical drive out but reinstalled it as a slave), can see both and can boot from both. I figure Leopard will probably benefit more from an SSD than OS 9 will (I don't expect to boot much into Tiger since I'd only do that if I expected to need Classic, and if I don't plan to need 9, I'd boot Leopard.) Plus having two bootable volumes in the same computer, no external mumbo jumbo or Target Disk Mode required, will make it easier to set up.

 

[MysticCow]

If you can, partition your hard drive and double check that you're going to install the OS 9 drivers. If you don't install the OS 9 drivers, you'll be very sorry.

OS 9 is wonderfully small and you can devote a 10 GB partition to it on the Digital Audio. While you can use the universal install disc image, it's a lot easier to use the ditto command to send all of the necessary files over from a Mac already running 9.2.2.

 

[bunnspecial]

I'll add to the nodding heads here and say that Leopard and OS 9 can quite peacefully co-exist on the same drive and it's no problem to switch between them using using the Startup Disk option under System Preferences in Leopard, or the Startup Disk control panel in OS 9. I have several computers-primarily laptops-with this exact set-up.

I'll also second the preference for putting OS 9 on its own separate partition. The advantage of this is that you can use boot manager(hold the option key at startup) to select which OS you want to boot into. You can still use the Startup Disk control panel to select the boot OS 9, but this lets you change your mind without having to fully boot the computer. It also avoids getting you "stuck" if one install is corrupted(although you can force booting into OS X by holding down X during boot).

And, yes, by all means install the OS 9 drivers!

 

[ziggy29]

Just FYI, finally got around to doing it. I left Tiger and OS 9 on the mechanical drive that has been there for years, and installed Leopard on an SSD I just recently acquired. I originally copied Tiger and 9 from the old hard drive to the SSD with SuperDuper, but decided to put both back in and dedicate the SSD to Leopard and a partition for "shared storage". Working great so far! I like being able to have a lot of boot options; usually I intend to boot straight to Leopard but there will be times I will boot into OS 9. And on the off chance I want to use OS X but may need Classic, I can still boot Tiger.