Testing Lion on Macbook

Discussion in 'MacBook' started by riko, Apr 3, 2012.

Most Liked Posts
  1. riko, Apr 3, 2012

    riko macrumors regular

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2006
    Location:
    Glasgow area, Scotland
    #1
    Hi Guys

    I am thinking of upgrading to Lion but I am worried about the performace hit I would get on my Early 2008 2.4 Ghz Macbook. I have 4 gigs of RAM already installed but I was wondering if I could test lion on a spare HDD that I have.

    What I would want to do is remove my current HDD and install my spare, install Lion from CD or USB and test out the speed. If I didnt like the performance I would just put my old drive with SL back in.

    Would the above cause any issues?

    Thanks for any help
     
    share
    + Quote Reply
  2. MR.BUTTON, Apr 3, 2012

    MR.BUTTON macrumors member

    Joined:
    Apr 2, 2012
    Location:
    Vancouver,Canada and Shanghai,China
    #2
    Reply

    Sure,it will cause a little bit of problem, you definitely will loose some of the performance, but if you don't have a lot of things going on, it's ok. If you want to upgrade to lion, I recommend you to use this as your secondary computer. Hope this helps.
     
    share
    + Quote Reply
  3. riko, Apr 3, 2012

    riko thread starter macrumors regular

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2006
    Location:
    Glasgow area, Scotland
    #3
    Thanks for the info but what I meant was would swapping HDD's cause any problems? I just want to test lion on my spare drive before installing it on my main one. Does Lion alter the firmware or anything?

    cheers
     
    share
    + Quote Reply
  4. MR.BUTTON, Apr 3, 2012

    MR.BUTTON macrumors member

    Joined:
    Apr 2, 2012
    Location:
    Vancouver,Canada and Shanghai,China
    #4
    reply

    sorry for misunderstanding. oh, that won't cause an issue. but apple seems have an firmware update for lion... check your manual, it should be okay.:)

    mid-2010 macbook 5GB RAM:cool::apple:
     
    share
    + Quote Reply
  5. AcesHigh87, Apr 3, 2012

    AcesHigh87 macrumors 6502a

    AcesHigh87

    Joined:
    Jan 11, 2009
    Location:
    New Brunswick, Canada
    #5
    I have the same model macbook but with only 2GB of RAM. Lion doesn’t run AMAZINGLY well on it but it runs decent so I would imagine you’ll be fine with 4GB of RAM.

    Keep in mind though, you don’t gain a lot of the functionality from Lion. The Early 2008 macbook can’t use the new trackpad gestures or airdrop; among other things.

    I know it doesn’t answer your question about the harddrive swap but just thought I’d add my opinion on how it runs in case that’s why you want to test it.
     
    share
    + Quote Reply
  6. minifridge1138, Apr 4, 2012

    minifridge1138 macrumors 6502a

    Joined:
    Jun 26, 2010
    #6
    When I wanted to test Lion, I installed it onto a 16GB thumb drive.
    Then I booted off of the USB thumb drive.

    My 2007 MacBook only has 2 gigs of ram, and it actually runs Lion just fine from the usb drive. Which shocked me for 2 reasons:
    1) Lion is slower than Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro.
    2) I"M BOOTING OFF OF A USB THUMB DRIVE.

    I decided it wasn't worth updating my Snow Leopard partition just because the MacBook can't take advantage of the new gestures (which I don't want anyway).

    Just another way you could try it out.
     
    share
    + Quote Reply
  7. riko, Apr 5, 2012

    riko thread starter macrumors regular

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2006
    Location:
    Glasgow area, Scotland
    #7
    Cheers, that is weird that it ran so well from a USB drive. I do have a 16GB drive but I am using that as my lion install source so I think Ill stick with my spare HDD.

    I don't really want to upgrade to Lion but as Mobileme is ending soon I need to transition to icloud

    cheers
     
    share
    + Quote Reply
(You must log in or sign up to post here.)

Share This Page