Just a quick question about cloning and upgrading

[Toebex]

So Im going to keep a long story short here.

I have a late 2009 Mac Pro. Got a 3TB HD today, cloned my current Snow Leopard drive onto that drive. I want to now upgrade the new 3TB with Yosemite. My question is:

If I upgrade that drive while the other Snow Leopard drive is still in my Mac Pro (plugged in if you will), will it inadvertently upgrade both at the same time?

I need to keep my Snow Leopard drive as I have software that only runs on it.

Thanks again everyone!

-Rory

 

[McGiord]

The upgrade to Yosemite will take place only to the Volume that you select.

Before you go on with this new install, have you make a back up of your Snow Leopard?

 

[Toebex]

The upgrade to Yosemite will take place only to the Volume that you select.

Before you go on with this new install, have you make a back up of your Snow Leopard?

Good news. Yes, I have backed up using Time Machine. If I want to use time machine for my Yosemite drive, can I use the same external harddrive? Or will that then not work with Snow Leopard

 

[McGiord]

I think that yes you can use a single drive to backup with time machine both volumes (Snow Leopard and Yosemite).
But I am not using it like that. I prefer to have independent backups for each volume. I clone each volume with carbon copy cloner or disk utility and time machine only the documents and apps.To access a TimeMachine backup made with Yosemite from Snow Leopard (when you boot from it) it might not work, but I haven't tried so I am not sure. But from Yosemite you will be able to access the TimeMachine backup of your SnowLeopard volume.
One thing you can do for future is to get a virtual machine running Snow Leopard to run those no longer supported apps.

 

[cincygolfgrrl]

Partition the drive

…can I use the same external harddrive? Or will that then not work with Snow Leopard

You'll need to partition the external drive to keep two copies of Time Machine. Any other "solution" will just confuse the hell out of either Time Machine, the external drive, or both.

 

[GeoFan49]

Question: What if 2 Boot Drives and 2 Time Machine Backups were PAIRED but OOPS...

You'll need to partition the external drive to keep two copies of Time Machine. Any other "solution" will just confuse the hell out of either Time Machine, the external drive, or both.

Logically, yes, that seems reasonable. Keep a separate TIME MACHINE partition (or even better, separate DRIVES) for each version of the OS.

EACH boot drive, paired with its own Time Machine Backup drive... ideally...

But, would it be POSSIBLE to have ONE Time Machine partition and backup TWO different BOOT DRIVES? Either with the same OS version, or different OS versions?

Inquiring minds want to know... What if you had TWO boot drives, and two different BACKUP drives (all paired up) and got accidentally mixed up between the paired drives? What would occur? Disaster? Or, easy-peezy, no issues?

Time Machine seems to work really well, I wonder if it would function under these extremely rare circumstances? Expert advice needed. Thanks!

 

[GeoFan49]

. . . One thing you can do for future is to get a virtual machine running Snow Leopard to run those no longer supported apps.

I like this idea... what kind of Virtual Machine? VMWare Fusion? Bootcamp? Other? Please illuminate? Thanks!

What is the cheapest alternative (alter native LOL) that works for occasional booting into SL —— after upgrading to Yosemite? (Besides rebooting another partition for each OS version?)

 

[Mike Boreham]

You can back up more than one OS or computer to the same volume without partitioning the TM drive.

Each OS/Computer will make its own sparsebundle on the drive and only backup to it.

Of course two computers can only backup to the same drive if it is a network drive or Time Capsule, but two OS partitions on the same computer can backup to the same USB attached drive.

However one reason why partitioning is a good idea though, is if you ever want to start again with one and not the other. You would have to delete the sparse bundle with Finder which can take very many hours for a big backup. If you have them on separate partitions then you can just erase the appropriate partition.

Having the sparse bundles share the same drive without partitioning means the space can be used by each backup according to need.

EDIT If the wrong back up drive is attached at any time, Time Machine will report it can't find the disk. No danger of going ahead and backing up to the wrong one