Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Where are you installing El Capitan Beta?

  • Internal Drive (Main OS)

    Votes: 44 56.4%
  • Internal Drive (Separate Partition)

    Votes: 18 23.1%
  • External Drive

    Votes: 16 20.5%

  • Total voters
    78

SgtPepper23

macrumors regular
Oct 13, 2010
167
38
Los Angeles, California
i've got it on a USB drive. Slow, but i'm sure my personal data will be fine. Plus it lets me try it out on various Macs i've got around me! a 2007 and 2012 iMac and a 2010 macbook pro and a 2013 retina macbook pro
 

amcan12

macrumors member
Jul 10, 2008
36
0
Where are you installing El Capitan Beta?

I always install all betas on the separate Thunderbolt connected SSD - currently I am still testing latest release of 10.10.4 in addition to El Capitan, each on separate external SSD.
 

redheeler

macrumors G3
Oct 17, 2014
8,423
8,845
Colorado, USA
Updated from 10.10.4 as the main OS on my secondary/main portable Mac. It got Yosemite betas last year, so no regrets so far with 10.11.
 

Maetzle

macrumors 6502
Jun 2, 2014
254
331
Internal SSD - its a risk but so far works pretty well apart from some issues with Safari which I can live with.
 

Apple_Robert

Contributor
Sep 21, 2012
34,540
50,145
In the middle of several books.
I am using it as my daily. I have complete backups of Yosemite with TimeMachine and CCC, should I need to revert. At this point, I am not loading the system with everything that was on before. I am keeping lean with apps and files.
 

g-7

macrumors 6502
Feb 14, 2006
403
100
Poland
External drive, of course.

To all of you "Internal Drive (Main OS)" folks: I admire your bravery.
 

bmac89

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 3, 2014
1,388
467
I would install it on the internal drive (separate partition) if I had enough space... which I never do! So it will go on an external drive when the public beta arrives.
 
Last edited:

delta77thegreat

macrumors member
Jul 23, 2014
41
3
Just curious what would your opinion be on installing the El Capitan beta on a Thunderbolt 1 external mechanical hard drive. What kind of performance would I get out of it booting from that?

I'm tempted to do my initial testing there and then once I am satisfied that all my core apps are working I will upgrade my iMac. The only reason I wouldn't install El Capitan in a virtual machine is that I find Mac OS X performance to be terrible virtualized compared to Windows. Mouse lag left and right even with half of my iMac's graphics power directed towards it.
 

batting1000

macrumors 604
Sep 4, 2011
7,451
1,840
Florida
Got it on a partition alongside my main OS. I save my stuff periodically so I'm fine with doing a clean install of El Cap once it's out.
 

hellfried

macrumors regular
May 3, 2008
127
14
Penang, Malaysia
I have it installed on a USB 3.0 external hard drive and it is surprisingly sprightly. Will wait for the public beta before I move it to my main drive.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.