As we know the bundled OS X DVD that came with your Mac is not going to work on ANY other Mac but the one that you have. That's something that at this point we all know pretty well. But I did, how? It can be somewhat complicated if you're not entirely sure you know what you're doing, but if you know how to use Disk Utility you're good. I just did this on my older MacBook, which died running Leopard and is resurrected under Snow Leopard. Is this legal/okay with Apple? Probably not, but OS X is $15 now, they don't get mad they compliment you on your computer skills.
You're gonna need two Macs to do this and probably a pretty good sized USB hard drive, like I'd say at least 15 Gb.
On the Mac which came with the install DVD, you're gonna need to make a new partition on the hard drive which can handle the operating system, I'd say 20 Gb is the best you can do since the different Mac OS's take up different amounts of hard drive space.
On that Mac, you're gonna want to use your bundled OS X install DVD now to install Mac OS X on that new partition, meaning that you'll have our latest operating system and the one your Mac came with. For me it was Mountain Lion, Lion, and then installing Snow Leopard on the new partition.
Great, Snow Leopard's installed on the new partition, now when you start up holding down Option you get all your operating systems, for me it was Mountain Lion, Recovery 10.8, Lion, Recovery HD, and Snow Leopard. After Snow Leopard is set up, boot back into your ORIGINAL operating system, for me I booted up back into Mountain Lion.
In Mountain Lion, go to Disk Utility, select Snow Leopard (or whatever partition had the DVD os installed), and click New Image. This will create a new disk image of Mac OS X where you can save it wherever you want, you probably either want to save it on the external drive or possibly network (Make sure the install DVD for the other computer can connect to a network, Tiger or less cannot).
Now you have the entire hard drive on an image. Take the old MacBook that you want to upgrade and stick in IT'S bundled OS X disc and boot up from it. Go to Utilities > Disk Utility > Click your hard drive > Restore > Destination: Hard drive. Source: Open the disk image. Let it restore and do what it needs to do.
20 minutes later, restart the older computer, and it's now booting up the operating system. It worked perfectly to get Snow Leopard on my older MacBook. Repair Disk Permissions and it works flawlessly. Please know what you're doing before you start!!
You're gonna need two Macs to do this and probably a pretty good sized USB hard drive, like I'd say at least 15 Gb.
On the Mac which came with the install DVD, you're gonna need to make a new partition on the hard drive which can handle the operating system, I'd say 20 Gb is the best you can do since the different Mac OS's take up different amounts of hard drive space.
On that Mac, you're gonna want to use your bundled OS X install DVD now to install Mac OS X on that new partition, meaning that you'll have our latest operating system and the one your Mac came with. For me it was Mountain Lion, Lion, and then installing Snow Leopard on the new partition.
Great, Snow Leopard's installed on the new partition, now when you start up holding down Option you get all your operating systems, for me it was Mountain Lion, Recovery 10.8, Lion, Recovery HD, and Snow Leopard. After Snow Leopard is set up, boot back into your ORIGINAL operating system, for me I booted up back into Mountain Lion.
In Mountain Lion, go to Disk Utility, select Snow Leopard (or whatever partition had the DVD os installed), and click New Image. This will create a new disk image of Mac OS X where you can save it wherever you want, you probably either want to save it on the external drive or possibly network (Make sure the install DVD for the other computer can connect to a network, Tiger or less cannot).
Now you have the entire hard drive on an image. Take the old MacBook that you want to upgrade and stick in IT'S bundled OS X disc and boot up from it. Go to Utilities > Disk Utility > Click your hard drive > Restore > Destination: Hard drive. Source: Open the disk image. Let it restore and do what it needs to do.
20 minutes later, restart the older computer, and it's now booting up the operating system. It worked perfectly to get Snow Leopard on my older MacBook. Repair Disk Permissions and it works flawlessly. Please know what you're doing before you start!!