Tuesday 19 March 2013

How to set up multiple OS X on a single Mac system?

Your Mac must be having a large hard drive space, so large that you can use it for another OS X installation. Here is a simple justification why you need to have 2 version of OS X. First, if you got Lion 10.7 and facing problems to run some applications then you must turn to Snow Leopard in order to get those apps running. Same can happen with the latest Mountain Lion 10.8, where you eagerly want to get Lion on the same machine. Now the question arises, how one must proceed in order to get dual OS up & running on Mac OS X. 

Initially, you must organize your hard drive to get as much free space as possible. This can be accomplished by traveling to the Utilities<<Application<<Disk Utility and lancing the utility to partition your HD effectively. Though, OS won’t need a large hard drive space you can further create another drive partition to install other applications or software. 

Note: Prior to any activity, the hardware specification of the Mac machine is to be matched with the OS X version to avoid any non-compatibility troubles. Once done you must proceed by: 




  1. Shut the Mac & start it again, press the key combination which is 'CMD & R' just after listening to the chime sound. The menu appears and brings in the Disk Utility in front of you. Locate the tab 'Partition' to perform the upcoming activities.
  2. The blue space of the hard drive indicates that it is already been occupied by an OS. Take the mouse over the right-cornered re-sizing feature and bring it upwards to minimize free spaces. Once done, you notice the GREY space below the re-sized Mac partition, which is available for a new partition.  
  3. Click '+' to add a new partition and supply with its name, format, and size.
  4. Time now to save the partition changes by hitting 'APPLY'. Partition is ready to serve your purpose of having different copy of OS X.
Start your Mac installation with the help of the Installation disk (Lion or Snow Leopard). Put the disk into the Mac and navigate to Disk utility to select the disk & restart to begin installing another OSX version. 

Must check-out the alternative way of running two OS X using Parallels, where no dual boot is required. http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/os-x/install-two-versions-of-os-x-on-one-mac-using-parallels/