Please advice in downgrading to Snow Leopard

Mr_Moto's Avatar

Mr_Moto

10 Aug, 2012 11:32 AM

Hi Mike,

I would love to go back to Snow Leopard.
I keep almost daily backups with Time Machine, but since I have only one external HD, I do not have any recent CCC backups anymore.
My latest SL TM backup dates back from Dec. 25th, 2011.
It seems to be able to go back to that date for a system restore. But of course, hundreds of files have changed since then, and I am not looking forward to looking them up one by one in all the TM backups I made since then.
So I was thinking of the following:
1) I wipe the TM HD, which is about 1.5 TB
2) I make a bootable backup using CCC 3.4.6 (is that fit to do the job? But a good advice will talk me easily into the next paid version ;-)
3) I restart my iMac with the SL install disk and I re-install SL from scratch
4) I think I can now use CCC to put back all the files. (It will not erase the SL system, I suppose?)

Is this a good way, or would you advise to use the TM backups instead? It bothers me a bit that I should have to pull all those TM backups down the drain.
And I will feel a bit vulnerable when I erase the TM HD, before having made the new CCC backup.

Please give me some good advice…

Thanks a lot!

Moto

  1. 2 Posted by baltwo on 10 Aug, 2012 11:39 PM

    baltwo's Avatar

    See Kappy's going back to SL from Lion guide.

  2. Support Staff 3 Posted by Mike Bombich on 11 Aug, 2012 04:05 AM

    Mike Bombich's Avatar

    Hi Moto:

    According to the link that baltwo provided, your TM backup won't be much good on Snow Leopard anyway. Still, it would be a shame to wipe that before getting all of your stuff back to Snow Leopard. If you have enough room on your TM backup disk, an alternative would be to create another volume on that disk to which you could clone your existing Lion installation. This video demonstrates how to do that:

    A quick How-To video that shows you how to add a partition to your backup volume

    If that's workable, you could then:

    1. Clone Lion --> CCC backup volume
    2. Reboot from the SL installer DVD and install Snow Leopard on your internal disk
    3. Restore items from your Lion backup to Snow Leopard. CCC won't copy system items back to the startup disk, so your Snow Leopard system will be protected. Note that this makes the restore of applications a bit more complicated, you may prefer to restore those individually in the Finder or reinstall them.

    Mike

  3. 4 Posted by Mr_Moto on 11 Aug, 2012 04:32 AM

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    Hi Mike,
    Thanks for your answer. Finally the info I needed - and which I feared a bit:
    a) I have made all these TM backups for nothing
    b) I do not have that extra space on my TM HD. So I will have to overwrite that with a CCC-copy, I am not planning to spend over €100 for an extra HD.
    c) I will have to do some tedious work to re-install a number of applications: apparently, it's not possible to use the CCC backup to restore all my apps & files using 1 command

    I will not need your new, paid version; but I can donate which I surely will do!
    Again, thanks. Restoring a system always is a nerve-racking affair… so I need to be sure before doing anything.
    Greetings
    Moto

    Op 11 aug. 2012, om 06:05 heeft Mike Bombich het volgende geschreven:

    > **** PLEASE REPLY ABOVE THIS LINE ****
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  4. 5 Posted by Mr_Moto on 13 Aug, 2012 09:27 PM

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    Hi Mike,

    I followed your directions, but re-installing SL turned into a disaster.
    All went well, until, after the re-install, I did a software update. Then my iMac was turned into some kind of a swamp where I could hardly move my mouse in. Using the keyboard was just as impossible.
    After this happened the first time, I tried it again, and from scratch again. Same result :-(
    So I think Apple won. I am using Lion again. I will have to get used to it, I suppose…

    Anyway: thanks!

    Moto

    Op 11 aug. 2012, om 06:05 heeft Mike Bombich het volgende geschreven:

    > **** PLEASE REPLY ABOVE THIS LINE ****
    > **** Any part of your response that is below this line will be discarded ****

  5. 6 Posted by Mr_Moto on 17 Aug, 2012 11:45 PM

    Mr_Moto's Avatar

    Hi Mike - Does my problem look familiar to you? Although I am back to Lion now, I still would like very much to downgrade to SL. Just don't like Lion, and Mountain Lion seems no improvement to me.
    Moto

  6. Support Staff 7 Posted by Mike Bombich on 18 Aug, 2012 03:33 AM

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    Hi Moto:

    I've only had to reinstall Snow Leopard once, and I didn't run into the performance issue you described. I wouldn't expect that with a clean install either. The only thing I'd suggest is rebooting in Safe Mode -- hold down the Shift key on startup. If there is an invalid cache file or a non-essential kernel extension that is causing trouble, Safe Mode will disable those. If nothing else, it will give you the opportunity to open the system log and see if there are any messages relevant to the keyboard and mouse issues.

    Mike

  7. Mike Bombich closed this discussion on 20 Sep, 2012 04:59 AM.

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