Installing old 10.6 on a partitioned volume on high sierra hard drive

[Ehblah]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone is able to help me. I have 2011 macbook pro. It got real slow so i put a solid state hard drive in it and put the old hd in an external case.
The new hd has high sierra as its base OS X as i installed that onto it before installing it in the mac.
I was using the old hd with 10.6 through usb to run pro tools 9 but that hd died and i'm unable to use pro tools any more.

I purchased an original dvd of OS X 10.6 snow leopard which is what this laptop originally had and is compatible with PT9. Just wondering if its possible to install it?

Im currently on 10.13.6 high sierra and i've created a seperate volume so i can (hopefully) have snow leopard on that volume and that can be my pro tools rig.

It wont let me install it using high sierra, is there any way i can install it onto that new volume i've created?

Any help or info would be greatly appreciated thanks.

 

[DeltaMac]

Your 2011 MacBook Pro came with Snow Leopard, as you already know.
However, it came with at least version 10.6.6
You can't boot to the Snow Leopard installer, because that will be, at the most, version 10.6.3 -- too old for your MacBook Pro.
I think there are methods to create a hybrid installer on a USB volume that will both boot, and allow you to install an updated Snow Leopard on those Macs that need that. I searched a bit, but missed finding anything about that.

The usual method is to use a slightly older Mac that can both boot and install any Snow Leopard version, and use THAT Mac to install Snow Leopard on your internal drive. Works very nicely -- but you need to have an older Mac.

 

[Ehblah]

Your 2011 MacBook Pro came with Snow Leopard, as you already know.
However, it came with at least version 10.6.6
You can't boot to the Snow Leopard installer, because that will be, at the most, version 10.6.3 -- too old for your MacBook Pro.
I think there are methods to create a hybrid installer on a USB volume that will both boot, and allow you to install an updated Snow Leopard on those Macs that need that. I searched a bit, but missed finding anything about that.

The usual method is to use a slightly older Mac that can both boot and install any Snow Leopard version, and use THAT Mac to install Snow Leopard on your internal drive. Works very nicely -- but you need to have an older Mac.

Thanks so much. My friend has a 2009 macbook which might still work. How would i install snow leopard onto my internal hardrive from her laptop? Is there a cable to join them which will allow me to select where to install it?

 

[DeltaMac]

Easiest would be a Firewire cable to connect the two laptops, then boot the 2011 to Target boot mode. The drive will appear as a device on the 2009. Boot the 2009 to the Snow Leopard installer. The 2011 drive will be available as a destination for the install, and you can continue with the install to that drive. Continue with the install, updating to current 10.6.8 version to complete the install.
If the older MacBook is a Late 2009, it won't have Firewire, so the install would be a little more involved, and you would remove the 2011 hard drive. Put that drive in an external USB enclosure, and again, boot to the Snow Leopard installer, and again, choose the external drive as the destination for the install.
Or, you could also remove the hard drive from the 2009, replacing with the drive from the 2011. And, install Snow Leopard, using the now-internal drive as the destination for the system install. When the install plus updates is complete, move the hard drive back to the 2011. This method doesn't require external cases or cables, just some tools and time, and you will not need to find a Firewire cable (those are getting harder to find these days.)
So, there's several methods to get Snow Leopard installed. Any will do the job.

 

[Brian33]

Im currently on 10.13.6 high sierra and i've created a seperate volume so i can (hopefully) have snow leopard on that volume and that can be my pro tools rig.

By my understanding, if you are running High Sierra on an internal APFS-formatted drive, and just create another volume, that will just be another volume within the APFS container. You won't be able to install Snow Leopard onto that volume because it doesn't "understand" APFS containers.

I think what you need to do is create a separate partition on the internal device (in Disk Utility make sure to select View-->Show All Devices), and then that partition should be able to have a volume formatted as hfs+ (while the other partition remains APFS). Make sure you have good backups before adding the partition!

 

[Ehblah]

Thanks so much guys, Definitely given me some good info there. I'll give some things a go and let you know, thanks!