So I signed up for the public beta test of Yosemite and got the email about a week ago saying I could download it. I'm just curious how people are using it? I wanna try it but I don't want to mess anything up. I back up my stuff to an external drive so my stuff is safe. I clone my drive so I could boot from my external if I need to. I had to on my old Mac years ago cause my internal drive died. I have a spare external drive. Could I load Yosemite onto that? If so how would I get the rest of my stuff onto it as well?? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
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Question for the public beta testers...
- Thread starter bigpoppamac31
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If you have room on your current HD, create a separate partion and install Yosemite on it. That's what I did on my Mini. Still make sure you backup your data first. You can also install on to a external HD.
Okay but how do I get my content onto that external drive once I have Yosemite loaded onto it? I use CCC to clone and backup my drive.
EDIT: So what happens if I downloaded the beta (therefore redeeming the code) and then deleted the download a while after? I've tossed away my chance of using the beta right?? Cause I can't re-download the beta.
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I installed it on my macbook, but I don't use it often, primarily when traveling. It seems solid, but the current release of VMWare Fusion doesn't work on it (you can download their 2014 Technology Preview), and the current Xbox Controller from http://tattiebogle.net doesn't work with it otherwise I might have installed it on my main machine.
It's tied to your Apple ID so just log back in to the beta login page and regenerate a new redemption code.
I've tried and it just gives me the same code each time and says that it's already been redeemed.
As always you can choose where you install the OS.
There's a thread in Yosemite about redeemed codes. I didn't have the problem.
Well I don't want to go through the hassle of getting new code. I don't want to have multiple Apple ID accounts.
EDIT: I found the Beta under my purchases tab in the Mac App Store. re-downloading now.
I haven't used it a whole lot yet. It's on a second partition on my old 2009 MBP. I did some web browsing after the install, but that was about it.
I first installed it on a separate partition, and then I thought what the hell, just instal it on your main partition. And what I've seen so far, but I guess that is different for everyone, is that the Beta is pretty stable! I can actually do all my normal day to day stuff. Word/Powerpoint/Surfing. Photoshop seems fine, and so do all my extra apps that I have to enhance my usage of the mac. So if you have everything backed up to an external, I think you should be fine installing it on your main. Then again this is my opinion, I'm not a dev just a fanatic 
user, so don't kill me for expressing my view!
user, so don't kill me for expressing my view!I first installed it on a separate partition, and then I thought what the hell, just instal it on your main partition. And what I've seen so far, but I guess that is different for everyone, is that the Beta is pretty stable! I can actually do all my normal day to day stuff. Word/Powerpoint/Surfing. Photoshop seems fine, and so do all my extra apps that I have to enhance my usage of the mac. So if you have everything backed up to an external, I think you should be fine installing it on your main. Then again this is my opinion, I'm not a dev just a fanatic
I put it on a separate external just to test it. It does seem to work pretty well though I don't have any of my content on the "Yosemite" external. My backup is on another external. So Yosemite is on a drive by itself with no content. I wouldn't mind installing it on my main drive cause I'd like to know how well it works with my SSD. Traditionally I've waited to install a new Mac OS until a few updates in. I didn't install Mavericks until it was 10.9.3. I really like the "dark mode" but some of the other UI elements will take getting used to.
I cloned my main mavericks system volume 3 times before I installed Yosemite onto my iMac's SSD.. I am surprised at how solid it is, no KPs, only a couple of apps are problematic...
Not to side-track the OP's question, but I'm running VMWare Fusion without any issues.
Really? Thats pretty strange. VMWare themselves say it is not supported and advise you to download the Technology Preview. When I look at the VMWare Fusion icon it has a red circle with a slash though it and when I try to run it, it says its not supported on this operating system. It doesn't appear in Launchpad either.
I installed Yosemite on my main computer, clean install, then copied all of my back up files, it's running great.
If you back up everything like you said, you have nothing to lose, just install Yosemite on your main computer, try it, if you don't like it or has many bugs, you can just install Mavericks again.
For a beta is pretty good, at least something major happens, I'm not going back to Mavericks.
Well maybe I'll do that. I have one Mavericks backup and now I'm doing a Time Machine backup also. Not sure why TM is taking 3 hours to complete. Maybe cause it's the initial round.
Time Machine takes quite a while to do a fresh backup.
I might be anal, but I would recommend keeping a Time Machine backup unattached from Yosemite for the time being, just in case..
So I just downloaded it and reinstalled and it does appear to be working. I don't think I bothered trying to reinstall it since VMWare says it didn't work and that they were looking for a hotfix. Maybe they released 6.0.4 after the posts I seen?
Fusion 6.0.4 is working fine for me on my laptop with Yosemite. Seems strange that it doesn't work for everybody.
Just updated today
Did you update onto your main drive or a separate drive?
6.0.4 appears to be working for me too. I never tried to reinstall it after updating my system using the public beta. I'm wondering if the problem was resolved in 6.0.4 and I was still running 6.0.3. I never seen anything saying the problem was resolved or fixed. Nothing in the 6.0.4 release notes mentions Yosemite at all.