How to make an Uber macOS multi-boot drive

[ZombiePhysicist]

Ok, so I'm on my 'great journey of tedium' and started things off as making the partitions on a 2TB drive. I have cribbed those above and went with 32GB partitions as follows:

So for 10.7-10.11 I made HFS+ partitions. Then for 10.12-13 I made 32GB containers each with an APFS volume in there. That leaves about 1.67TB free for 'future expansion' and I left that a big HFS+ partition as a work space and a place to put work files/utilities if I need. The thinking being that HFS+ will be more compatible with more OSs. At some point I may go back and put in earlier operating systems. Who knows all the way back to macOS 1!

Anyway, I also chose a SATA 2.5" drive. The reason is some of the NVMe drives, even plugged into USB do not come up on some of the older machines (for whatever reason) and this Sata drive is easy to attach via USB or even into old firewire enclosures if needed. So it's more flexible with older stuff but still works well enough with read/writes around 500MB/s.

Did I do something stupid here? would you guys have done something different with container/partition design?

Thanks for any feedback.

PS, by the way, does anyone know what is the last OS that is not 'signed by apple' meaning you dont have to download a 'fresh' version with a signature and you can use to install from an archived version you keep saved?

 

[theMarble]

Who knows all the way back to macOS 1!

System 1 won't run, it could only be run from a floppy disk and the USB wouldn't be invented for another 12 or so years. Puma (OS X 10.1) should install fine as you as you get a machine that natively supports USB booting. (So old enough to support Puma, new enough to not use the MPC106).

Make sure to use a seperate drive, not partition for the PowerPC versions as ~98% of PPC Macs won't boot off a GPT partition, rather they need the older APM (Apple Partition Map) and you cannot use two partition maps on a single physical disk. (This is different to partition type, eg: AFPS and HFS+ which can be done on one disk)

What systems have you got for the older versions so far ?

by the way, does anyone know what is the last OS that is not 'signed by apple' meaning you dont have to download a 'fresh' version with a signature and you can use to install from an archived version you keep saved?

I've never cared about signatures. When installing Mavericks through to El Capitan (or maybe Sierra), you will need to set the date back to when they were new. ML and earlier don't need anything to get installing.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

System 1 won't run, it could only be run from a floppy disk and the USB wouldn't be invented for another 12 or so years. Puma (OS X 10.1) should install fine as you as you get a machine that natively supports USB booting. (So old enough to support Puma, new enough to not use the MPC106).

Make sure to use a seperate drive, not partition for the PowerPC versions as ~98% of PPC Macs won't boot off a GPT partition, rather they need the older APM (Apple Partition Map) and you cannot use two partition maps on a single physical disk. (This is different to partition type, eg: AFPS and HFS+ which can be done on one disk)

What systems have you got for the older versions so far ?


I've never cared about signatures. When installing Mavericks through to El Capitan (or maybe Sierra), you will need to set the date back to when they were new. ML and earlier don't need anything to get installing.

Thanks! obviously you are right regarding the older tech. Will need some scsi adapter for most of them. And for the original non-hrs macs I guess floppies would be it.

I have the physical medium all the way back to beta preview of macOS 10.0. I don’t have server versions before that.

Also at one point apple released a bit of a “magic” OS cdrom. It had all macOS versions 1.0- something like system 7. I pray I can find that. System 8-9 I’m going to have to find. I have some Mac laptop cds but think they came with some versions of system 9, but I suspect there were a bunch of system 8-9 builds I’m oblivious to and don’t have

 

[theMarble]

I suspect there were a bunch of system 8-9 builds I’m oblivious to and don’t have

I would highly suggest getting both Mac OS 9.1 and 9.2.2 since older pre-G3 Macs didn't support 9.2+ without a patcher and newer G4 Macs won't work with 9.1.

 

[DeltaMac]

DU shot of my take on a multi-booter drive, Systems on High Sierra and later all share the same container space.
Not sure why I would put a Sierra system on APFS, as it is only APFS-aware, but doesn't set itself up with APFS as all later macOS versions do. Older systems are on 32GB HFS+ partitions, and HS and newer all share the 256GB space in the container. Also, on an SATA SSD, I do have a partial set of booting systems on an external NVME drive, and also had some "difficulties" in getting either booting, or mounting all partitions, so I have moved to later systems-only on that multi-boot drive.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

View attachment 2144780 DU shot of my take on a multi-booter drive, Systems on High Sierra and later all share the same container space.
Not sure why I would put a Sierra system on APFS, as it is only APFS-aware, but doesn't set itself up with APFS as all later macOS versions do. Older systems are on 32GB HFS+ partitions, and HS and newer all share the 256GB space in the container. Also, on an SATA SSD, I do have a partial set of booting systems on an external NVME drive, and also had some "difficulties" in getting either booting, or mounting all partitions, so I have moved to later systems-only on that multi-boot drive.

Aye, so Sierra should not be installed on APFS. UG! Double UG! I just went through this, installed Lion, all went well. Booted. Still well. Used for 3 seconds, not well. The boot drive ran out of room. 32GB is too tight for Lion, and I imagine will be too tight for later builds. You probably could squeak by with 64gb, but at this point, I just got a 4TB SATA SSD I had laying around, and am giving everythign 128GB.

So why the UG. You cannot go back and just 'resize' these partitions. You have to redo them from scratch! Luckily reformatting the 10.12 Sierra from APFS to HFS was just a reformat!

 

[DeltaMac]

Just as an example: My boot system with Lion is on a 32GB partition. It has only a very basic install. I have added a couple of disk maintenance tools, and an app or two. like OnyX, that I use for a very simple setup when booted to that system. The Lion install, fully updated, takes up just under 7GB. So, it actually has more than 24GB of space available.
Well, OK, not a lot of space, but I dont generally need a lot of space. These boot systems are just to find out if a particular Mac has problems when booting to a basic system, using a variety of systems that should boot without trouble. I don't really do anything that will fill a system. I wonder what it is that is filling your Lion drive while booted. Should be pretty easy to discover that.
I only have one boot system that takes up more than 16GB, and that happens to be Yosemite (because I tend to go that as a quick boot for many older Macs, so have a bit more stored on that - so, at the least, there is still more than 16GB free space regardless what system I boot from.
OK, if you want to change an APFS container to HFS+, that's pretty simple from Disk Utility. I was just doing that today.
From Disk Utility, choose the container holding the Sierra volume. You will be able to choose to erase as HFS+, which will remove that (and only that) container, leaving you with an HFS+ volume. Only takes a few seconds.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

So this helped me remember some important seminal/milestone versions of macOS

10.14 last macOS to support 32bit apps
10.13 first macOS to be able to be installed on APFS
10.12 first macOS to have support for APFS
10.7 last macOS that doesnt require digital signature update (others you can trick setting back date to time of the OS download), first macOS that has recovery partition
10.6 last macOS that had rosetta 1 for PPC emulation on intel machines (also had some interesting netboot/server abilities that started to get nuked after this version)
10.5 last macOS that could be run on PPC
10.4 first macOS to support intel processors, last macOS that had carbon/bluebox emulation so you could run classic/carbon MacOS9 apps inside OSX. (I'm not sure, but I'm guessing you could only run carbon macOS9 apps on a PPC machine or could you run it on an intel machine too?)

The above obviously ignores many important apps that may only run on apps earlier than macOS10. So looks I'm going to need to find a machine to help me get versions 10.4-10.6 installed.

I think after I get these images working on machines, I will try and image this and I'd to try running them virtualized. I'm guessing VMware would work for most of this up to maybe 10.4? But earlier than that, not sure if any emulators can run PPC versions of macOS? Anyone know?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

So I'm up to installing 10.11 and having problems. The install poops out. I think I might know what the problem is. I think maybe around 10.9 or so, didnt macOS start putting in recovery partitions?

I think each of these HFS based macOSs might be clobbering one another's recovery partitions.

Also, when I option-boot, I do not see all my drives. Instead, I see a lot of Installer drivers of some sort that do not seem to go away. However, if I boot to earlier macOS like 10.9 that is still listed, I can select later OS like 10.10 in the startup list.

Is there someway to install this without seeing "Installer" cruft volumes upon option-boot.

I have been lily pad hopping installs so far. I installed 10.7 via USB thumb drive. Then I used the 10.8 installer app on 10.7 to select the 10.8 drive and install on that. And once that was done, I did 10.9.

Would I avoid such problems doing all installs via the USB thumb drive method instead?

Anyway, as of right now, I cant seem to get beyond installing 10.10 on this multi partition uber drive.

Appreciate any thoughts.

 

[theMarble]

I think maybe around 10.9 or so, didnt macOS start putting in recovery partitions?

Recovery was added in Lion (10.7).

Would I avoid such problems doing all installs via the USB thumb drive method instead?

Yes, I would do it externally from a USB stick.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Recovery was added in Lion (10.7).


Yes, I would do it externally from a USB stick.

It wasn't working from the stick either until I turned WIFI off. For whatever reason that prevented it going through. Must do some network date check.

 

[theMarble]

Must do some network date check.

You need to set the date and time back to when the OS was new (or back to the current time if that does not work). This is done in Terminal.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

You need to set the date and time back to when the OS was new (or back to the current time if that does not work). This is done in Terminal.

I just do it in sys prefs. Seems to work. But for El Capitan in particular, it has kind of a 2 step upgrade process, it boots into kind of a recovery partition type view/app, and there it latches on to the network. Just turning the network off seemed to get it through the process.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Man, I'm finding out, the installer apps seem to be universal, however, unlike during PPC time, the install will only boot on intel or ASi, not on both. So you need to make 2 boot partitions from Big Sur macOS 11, on. ARG!

 

[MrCheeto]

Yessir, it looks like you’re finding out.

When I was doing Mac repair as a service I always had my handy drive with a bunch of installers. I think it went Leopard to Mavericks and I kept a Tiger installer on a DVD but also a 2-disc version on CD’s for those Macs that could run Tiger but didn’t have a DVD drive. (Not a myth, I’ve seen it! 👴🏻)

I still have that bare SATA drive now.

Interestingly we have a similar desire but mine is tempered with over a decade of foolery and humbling. I understand the nature of the (Californian) Beast and I deal with it.

So now I have an external drive that is completely bus powered and accepts both FireWire 800 and USB 3.0!

Limitation:

Only a few PowerPC Macs can boot from GUID. That means this drive should focus on Macs that can boot from APM mapped drives.

AFAIK APM drives are bootable up to at least 10.10 but I will have to see when I get to 10.9 (I don’t use 10.10 for anything, it is not a milestone OS, I honestly can’t remember it’s name)

I’ll report back.

APM has a hard limit of 2TB. If you have a 2TB drive mapped with APM, it will fail to add any more partitions than a single disk-wide partition.

Here’s the advantage:

Most PPC Macs do not boot via USB, some boot with a special spell, I think only the last ones boot USB natively.

However, AFAIK, every Mac that had FireWire could boot from it! FireWire is my gateway to most Macs from the second Clamshell iBook to Intel Macs up to about 2012.

Not every Mac has FireWire, such as the Air and the polycarb MacBook. That’s where USB comes in.

Then there the fact that it’s USB 3.0, so there’s an added advantage whenever the Mac is 2012 and later and has the faster standard.

It’s bus powered so it’s like carrying a large power cell or phone in my pocket. No power brick required.


I haven’t done this yet but I intend to throw a LOT of tools onto this drive. I have amassed a collection of Macs from the 68k, PowerPC, Intel and ARM eras. Since the two interim architectures are my most common and most often used/serviced they are the main target of my effort.

Obviously it’s a boon to service since I don’t have to open a system to pull the drive, or use two Macs in Target Disk Mode etc.

However, don’t you hate installing 10.5.6 and then having to go through the download and install and restart process to get 10.5.8 and all of the security and Java updates every single time you install it? I’ve probably done this process HUNDREDS of times for people and it got old the first time.

How about disabling display sleep, skipping the intro video and user setup, having apps installed and ready to test as soon as you boot? For instance, I always test how Halo CE runs on PPC Macs but I hate going through the setup etc. I want to open and resume where I left off.

That’s why I want to have installers AS WELL as fully configured boot partitions.

Imagine my drive is formatted with volumes like this:

10.4.3 Installer
10.4.11 complete system
10.5.6 Installer
10.5.8 complete system
10.6.2 Installer
10.6.8 complete system
Etc.

So if I want to just restore a disk and jump back in to a system I’ve already set up and am familiar with, say 10.4, I just boot into the 10.4 installer, open disk Utility, restore the 10.4.11 complete system to the internal hard drive of my new Mac and when I restart its exactly the way I want it, with temperature monitors, energy saver preferences, App Cleaner Utility and such exactly the way I want and I can launch Halo or CS3 right where I left off!

It also means I don’t even HAVE to install to test out the system and decide if I want to keep it etc. Boot right into an OS, see how it performs, no time wasted waiting and hoping.

I’ve already tested this with Leopard. It’s a success. I’m going to roll back to Tiger and begin testing next week.



I agree it’s frustrating but if you haven’t been doing this for long you are only beginning to see.

It sucks when you want to install Snow Leopard onto an old Mac but for some reason the only disc that seems to exist is 10.6.2 and some Macs require a later build than the DVD version. How many times do we have to go through setting up name and password and clicking away from all of the Mac OS Tours or tips?



I figure I’m fine as long as I have all of the practical milestones at hand: Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Mavericks, High Sierra.

Beyond that, I’m mostly doing it out of spite of the “server validation” jab and the fact that Apple is deleting old systems. I’m downloading and archiving a lot of milestone installers that suffer from horrid install processes (High Sierra, Catalina, Mojave, Monterey, Sonoma). Problem is, APFS makes it a dog to use the old “Disk Restore” method to drop a completely installed and configured system into a machine. Yet another hurdle for another device and another project.

Don’t get me started on how hard it even is for Apple to allow you to download an installer from them if they detect they you’re on a Mac that they would prefer not run a certain system 🤦🏼‍♀️

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

It would be cool to make an Uber drive like this. From macOS 1.0 all the way up to current, for each platform. All in some mega image that people could just use, and press off a mega drive like that...

Problem is, if anyone did do that, would be tough to trust it's not tampered with. And not to mention, apple would likely close it down 5 minutes later. :/

 

[MrCheeto]

I don’t really know of Apple pursuing anybody for sharing their OS explicitly. You can download systems 6-8 right from their server now for free. Anything older than that is of course obsolete.

Problem with a hard drive or image is just how much the capabilities have changed over time. You’d have to have a device that can handle multiple partition schemes while also being able to emulate different floppy formats.

It’s a pipe dream and that’s sad to say but it’s not to say there aren’t practical applications for something similar. While first Macs require the right floppy format with the right system, many later ones are quite capable of booting from several System Versions and from the same floppy format, so with perhaps five discs on-hand, you could boot the whole Classic world of Macs going back to before even System 1 (ie the 128k).

Once we move beyond the 80s, things get a lot easier. A single CD and floppy can boot the majority of systems.

Think 7.6.1 on a Floppy. That would boot the majority of Macs from 1990-1997!

A Mac OS 9.1 CD has you covered from the PowerPC Macs going back as far as at least 1995 up to 2001! Quite the overlap. Another milestone.

After 9, things get much much simpler because we haven’t really changed support for the APM scheme, HFS+ format and having either FireWire or USB. So from a single FireWire AND USB hard drive I think it would be possible to support Mac models from 2000-2015 if my assumption about 10.10 is correct! That does require many systems on one hard drive but how many? Well you’d have to count those milestones too.

If your head isn’t spinning I’ll just go from memory.

The first iBook FireWire supports 10.4.11 so it’s on the list.
I can’t think of any PowerPC Mac that requires Leopard. Every Intel Mac can boot to at MINIMUM Snow Leopard so 10.6.8 is required too.
El Capitan is the next big Culling. If you want to have the widest swath of support this should get you some Macs that shipped with Leopard originally up to about 2015! 10.11.6 is next on the list.
For me, the last stop is High Sierra 10.13.6. I stop caring at this point. Basically anything that can support it should use this over El Capitan. It can get you up to 2017 models.

So there you go. Four Operating Systems to go from 2000-2017 on one drive. I’m still not sure about the last two systems booting from an APM drive. You need somebody smarter and less uneducated to figure that one but tell me that’s not impressive.

Sorry I don’t care about anything after High Sierra. If I need to run any software that came after that it’s probably for the most clinical and practical purpose so having the latest Mac with whichever mostly stable release is good enough for me. I honestly don’t even know what difference there is or even what order they were released. Considering the new Mac Pro is out I figure next year will see the last Intel release of Mac OS but that’s about as far as I know. I’ll load whatever version it turns out to be on my 5,1 just to keep the x86 spirit alive beside the High Sierra volume.

 

[startergo]

Just to mention that not every mac will boot from SL retail version. Some of the Macs shipped with a specific recovery disks with SL and they will only boot from that particular version containing the necessary drivers.

 

[MrCheeto]

I’m happy to report that my 2011 MacBook Pro has successfully booted and run High Sierra from an APM drive.

This is happening 😎

 

[MrCheeto]

Delete. Let’s try again.

 

[DeltaMac]

Can you install a new system (such as El Capitan) on a blank APM drive, then setup from your boot drive that you already have installed on an SSD, migrating from that already-existing drive to the newly installed system (on the APM volume). Not really a clone, but simply a normal migration from an already installed drive to your fresh system install?

 

[MrCheeto]

Can you install a new system (such as El Capitan) on a blank APM drive, then setup from your boot drive that you already have installed on an SSD, migrating from that already-existing drive to the newly installed system (on the APM volume).

No. Yes.

You cannot install El Cap onto an APM drive. There are different ways the installer blocks you from doing anything of the sort onto an APM drive.

However, if you do as I did, this will be the process.

Create USB installer (official download is on Apple's site)
Install onto a GPT drive
Boot back into the Installer and open Terminal
Use Terminal to find the disk ID of the Recovery HD, then use diskutil eraseVolume to delete the Recovery HD (don't worry about merging or whatever, as long as it's blank)
Go to the Disk Utility
Restore the completed installation partition from the GPT drive to and APM drive.

The second part of your question took an hour or two to confirm but yes. You will have zero issue using Migration Assistant once you have the install on the APM drive!

I did the full write up in my own thread so have a look! Excited to see it all came together!