(Help) How To Save Mavericks Properly Before Installing Yosemite Beta

[Izis]

Hello,

I'd like to know what's the best way to save my OS X 10.8.4 before trying Yosemite beta.

I think it's Time Machine ? So I make a save on Time Machine, then if I want to go back to Mavericks from Yosemite what will I have to do ? Is it a fast & clean process ?

 

[maflynn]

A Cloned image is the best option. Get Carbon Copy Cloner, and then you can clone your recovery partition and main drive.

 

[mikecwest]

Hello,

I'd like to know what's the best way to save my OS X 10.8.4 before trying Yosemite beta.

I think it's Time Machine ? So I make a save on Time Machine, then if I want to go back to Mavericks from Yosemite what will I have to do ? Is it a fast & clean process ?

Just so that you know, 10.8.4 is *NOT* Mavericks, it is Mountain Lion or ML as some call it. An installation of Mavericks will be 10.9.X.

If you are trying to save 10.8.4 (Mountain Lion), the backup procedure would still be the same.

 

[zorinlynx]

My current recommendation if you want to play with Yosemite is to install it to an external USB drive.

This way you can leave your current system alone and not have to worry about breaking anything. Heck, if your main system drive is encrypted, you don't even have to give Yosemite access to it at all.

I've been doing this on my laptop, testing Yosemite running off a Sandisk Extreme USB 3.0 32GB flash drive. It actually runs nearly as fast as Mavericks from the internal SSD!

 

[Weaselboy]

I think it's Time Machine ? So I make a save on Time Machine, then if I want to go back to Mavericks from Yosemite what will I have to do ? Is it a fast & clean process ?

Time Machine will work just fine for this. Just make a good TM backup and set it aside. Then if you want to go back just option key boot to the TM disk and you will get a recovery screen. From there use Disk Util to erase the entire disk then click restore. Done.