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mrmadrid

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 3, 2014
6
0
Hello there

This is my first question ever.

Can we use one installation of macbook on another just replacing the disk?

Like windows I can prepare a universal installation for multiple motherboards. What's the possibility of os X any version for use at the same time in macbook, pro, o air?

If no please specify some reason and if yes simple disk copy or a straight backup of uefi partitions will work?

Thanks in advance for ur patience

Faisal
Madrid
 
Yes, as long as the version of OS X can run on the target hardware. I have a CCC cloned drive of my MBP. I can take that drive, plug it Into my wife's imac and boot from it and it's like I'm on a slower version of my MBP.
 
Thanks for the reply. I have tried one from macbook to macbook pro then comes the blinking folder icon just replaced the hdd instead of copying. The boot partition structure on both are different or same o it depends on the bios which is uefi I suppose?
thanks again
 
The OSX you are moving around may not neccessarily have drivers. The easiest way is to do an install of whatever OSX on a USB stick or similar.
 
This is an os X mevrick 10.9.2. The disk copying is much easier then any installation usb takes almost 1 hour
 
Any stock install of OS X that would run on the other machine if it were installed there will work fine.

You can install OS X to an external hard drive, and boot any Mac that supports that version from it. So any Mac that supports OS X Yosemite 10.10 can boot from any install of Yosemite 10.10. The only "line in the sand" is that older PowerPC Macs use a different hard drive scheme than Intel Macs, so you have to format the hard drive in a certain way for a single install of OS X 10.4 or 10.5 to boot both PowerPC and Intel. By default, 10.4 or 10.5 will be "boot PowerPC only" or "boot Intel only".

Of course, the other side is that if you have a machine that is newer than the OS installed, it won't boot. So you can't take a "just upgraded to Yosemite 10.10 and no updates applied" hard drive and boot a Retina iMac, since the Retina iMac needs newer drivers than the original release of Yosemite. But once 10.10.1 comes out, that will work.
 
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