HDD with Mavericks and Snow Leopard Partition

[astojazz1]

Hey everybody,
I installed a new 1Tb HDD and partitioned it 4 ways. On the first partition I added Mavericks 10.9.4. On the second partition I added Snow Leopard 10.6.8. The 3rd and 4th are still open. My questions are:
1) How do I choose which OS to boot into safe mode? I tried booting into safe mode and it automatically boots Mavericks into safe mode.
2) I know this may be weird but having both operating systems on here is affecting the boot chime sound, making it tons quieter, creating problems when troubleshooting arises. How do I solve this volume level issue? And what other common problems have been seen with dual OS X's on one HDD?
Thanks everybody and have a good one.

 

[Juub]

1. Very good question. I'll make a guess and say it safe boots to the OS installed on the first partition. Try to do a safe boot and tell me what you get.

2. Do a PRAM reset. It resets the startup tone.

 

[Fishrrman]

I'll second what juub wrote above.

Just a guess, but I'll reckon that when you try a "safe mode" boot, the Mac automatically looks for the first bootable volume it finds, and proceeds with that.

If Mavericks is "first up" in the partition map sequence, it will get the nod...

OP asks:
[[ And what other common problems have been seen with dual OS X's on one HDD? ]]

Not all that many, really, so long as you keep track of "which is which".

I've been doing it for years.

If you can't resolve the problems, you might consider going to "an external solution" for your second (or third) OS.

I've come to prefer USB3/SATA "docking stations" (instead of drives mounted in "drive enclosures") and "bare drives". Use a drive, when you need to use another, pop the first drive out and put the second drive in. You can boot from these, too.

 

[Weaselboy]

Hey everybody,
I installed a new 1Tb HDD and partitioned it 4 ways. On the first partition I added Mavericks 10.9.4. On the second partition I added Snow Leopard 10.6.8. The 3rd and 4th are still open. My questions are:
1) How do I choose which OS to boot into safe mode? I tried booting into safe mode and it automatically boots Mavericks into safe mode.
2) I know this may be weird but having both operating systems on here is affecting the boot chime sound, making it tons quieter, creating problems when troubleshooting arises. How do I solve this volume level issue? And what other common problems have been seen with dual OS X's on one HDD?
Thanks everybody and have a good one.

Can't answer #2, but for safe mode it will safe mode or normal mode boot to whatever disk you have selected in System Prefs Startup Disk as the boot drive. So go there and select the SL volume as the boot drive then it will boot and safe boot to SL for example.