Model iMac 24 - purchased new April 2007
IGb RAM
250 Gb HD - Used 60Gb - Free 170Gb
OS 10.4.11 (Tiger)
Also running USB external 150Gb free. (less small space for Snow Leopard)
Running on the External is a bootable 10.6? Snow Leopard OS
1 GB of RAM is not enough memory for satisfactory performance. According to MacTracker that iMac is capable of running 6GB of RAM (officially only 4GB but it will handle 6). A 4GB upgrade would run $55 to $60 and going all the way to 6GB a little more than twice that much from
Other World Computing. With that much RAM his iMac is capable of running Yosemite (OS X 10.10) which would be a FREE upgrade.
Concept / Objective. To Partition iMac HD to approx 125 / 125 - 2 partitions.
Run existing Tiger system on existing HD. on 125Gb
Partition existing Tiger HD to 125/125 Gb.
On second Partition load and run Snow Leopard.
That is certainly doable.
Gradually upgrade and move all publishing applications to run on Snow Leopard on OS 10.6. - After a year or so - remove Tiger.
This proposition looks possible as IF I boot up from Snow Leopard the OS 10.6 'Disc Utility' appears to enable me to partition the Tiger (internal HD) disc without loss of data.
This is made possible by 'highlighting' the Tiger 10.4 HD and using the + option. This provides a 2nd Partition and it appears as if it will NOT destroy data on the HD.
Theoretically it is possible to repartition without losing data, but it is risky.
I would just like confirmation that this will be the case. In effect I am partitioning an 'internal (on board HD) from Snow Leopard running on an external
You
can partition the internal drive while booted from an external drive and you would definitely want to use the Snow Leopard disk utility to do it. However that will put Tiger and all your data files on the first partition. Later when you decide to delete Tiger you will find you cannot remove the first partition on a partitioned hard drive. So you want Snowy on that first partition
not Tiger.
COMMENT: I have to question the wisdom of planning on using an already obsolete and no longer supported OS two years and at least one more OS version from now. Remember Apple is committed to an 18 month OS release cycle. In two years Snow Leopard will be five releases behind the power curve.
I haven't yet managed to convince John to join this highly esteemed and august forum and post himself - but I'm working on it!
Thanks for putting up with me as "middleman"!
iBozz, you have been a
good middleman, Tell John P he would be welcome and remind him that signing up to post on FineTunedMac is free and will not expose him to any third party spam as we do not sell or otherwise exploit the membership information.
