Resolved Install Snow Leopard on 2009 MacMini

[Delmar]

I have the USB flash drive that came with my 2010 MBA that has Snow Leopard on it. When I attempted to use it to install Snow Leopard on my early 2009 MacMini it would not allow me to install it. Anyone have any ideas how to get this done?

 

[Dave Braine]

You'll need to buy a Snow Leopard disc from Apple. That USB version will only install on your MBA.
For the US:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard
and the UK:
http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard

 

[Delmar]

That's what I was guessing. Thanks for the links. It's time to order the install disk.

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Anyone know if its possible to create a install disk or USB drive from the USB install drive that came with my MBA?

 

[Alrescha]

Anyone know if its possible to create a install disk or USB drive from the USB install drive that came with my MBA?

The installer is not very bright, and I believe it was possible to tweak a file or two and install - you may have to do some extra searching. I thought that the 2009 Mac mini came with Snow Leopard on CD - not this time?

A.

 

[Delmar]

The installer is not very bright, and I believe it was possible to tweak a file or two and install - you may have to do some extra searching. I thought that the 2009 Mac mini came with Snow Leopard on CD - not this time?

A.

The early 2009 MacMini came with Loepard installed. I bought is used a couple years ago without the original install DVD.

 

[Delmar]

Another idea. I have use Carbon Copy Cloner for a long time to keep clones of my hard drives for backup. Would there be any issues cloning the 256 SSD on my MacBook Air then cloning that to my MacMini hard drive?

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote above:
[[ Would there be any issues cloning the 256 SSD on my MacBook Air then cloning that to my MacMini hard drive? ]]

Try this:
1. Clone from the MacBook Air to an external hard drive
2. Try booting the Mini from the external HD
Does it work?

If so, then clone from the external HD to the Mini internal drive.

 

[Delmar]

Update:

A few minutes after my previous post last night I cloned my MBA SSD using CCC onto a external HDD. The Mini booted from that so I wiped the Mini hard drive & cloned the MBA SSD to the Mini hard drive. Everything works well. It's very nice to have Snow Leopard back on my early 2009 Mac Mini. Ever since Lion & every OS X that followed I have wanted Snow Leopard back since it's really the last great OS X.

 

[AlecZ]

In general, you can always clone a Mac OS X startup disk to any other Mac's hard drive, and it'll run fine off of that as long as it supports that version of Mac OS X. Try that with Windows PCs (don't really).