417      iPhone_iPad_Mac_apple

Age of OS versions & Multiple Partitions

I have a Mac Pro (2012) with two partitions. OS 10.6.8 on one of them, and OS 10.8.5 on the other.  This arrangement has been working fine until recently.  I don't use this computer for email or banking or buying things, but I do use it for youtube.

I want to keep Snow Leopard 10.6.8 as-is, and update the Mountain Lion partition to Yosemite or Sierra; is this possible?  I suspect that there is a limit to the age difference when two operating systems are on the same machine.  Am I wrong?  Can I run two very different operating systems on different partitions?

Thanks for any insight on this.

Greg

You can run on any OS, as long as it doesn't pre-date the original OS your Mac shipped with. So, yes you can update your Mountain Lion to Sierra (Yosemite is no longer available from the AppStore).

There isn’t an age limit, but if a future upgrade changes the format of the volume, older OSes may not be able to read it. You may also find that the Spotlight indexes get rebuilt each time you switch.

After upgrading, you may need to restart with the Option key held down instead of using System Preferences to switch to the newer OS.

(153232)

Hello Greg Reyna,

It is possible to dual-boot Mac OS X 10.6 with macOS Sierra. However, you can only dual-boot them if Mac OS X 10.6 is or was installed on the separate partition before macOS Sierra is installed on the other partition.

As far as your Mac Pro's age that should only be a consideration as to which versions of OS X or macOS can run on it. Having two separate partitions with different versions of OS X shouldn't matter.

The other thing to take into consideration is the recovery partition. These are unique to the version of OS X. You should review your Mac's internal drive with the diskutil list command in Terminal to see what it is currently configured as.

Hello Greg,

Yes, you can, but you have to be careful. Don't try to share any user home directories between the two. Don't try to share any iCloud accounts on both.

I suggest installing a fresh OS version on the partition you want to upgrade and then upgrade. Don't use Time Machine or any kind of clone to duplicate. Those will work for one machine to take over another, but you will have odd problems with both machines continue to run. Some of the tokens used by Continuity, Handoff, Messages, etc. will get confused.

Ideally, use FileVault or /etc/fstab to hide each boot partition from the other. Maybe keep a 3rd partition for copying data.

最後更新：2017-08-30 05:28:47

  上一篇： install old OS version on an external drive

  下一篇： unwanted emails