Check your applications for compatibility here….
Solve them first then upgrade.ģ Check HDD for free space. If you have issues on your present system don't compound them by installing over them.
Make a bootable clone SuperDuper! or CarbonCopy Cloner or use TimeMachine.Ģ. Anything can happen at any time, so you should always keep a good backup.
Upgrades and updates contain important security improvements plus additional features.ġ. Generally speaking, you should always upgrade to the latest possible system that you meet the specs for, as long as you have no “must have” apps that do not meet the specs. Once installed, restart with the option/alt key held down, select the new partition and reboot. You might want to make a copy of the installer outside the Applications folder to avoid having to re-download it in the future.
Download the installer from the App Store and when it starts, point it at the new partition. Name it something and select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format (step 5). Select the newly created space and hit the + button (step 4). Using the /// at the bottom move it up (step 3) until the size box decrease by about 50 GB. Open Disk Utility, select your hard drive (step 1), then the Partition tab (step 2), and select the partition.
By doing this, if you don’t like it you won’t have to go though the revert process.Ĭheck to make sure your applications are compatible.Įl Capitan 10.11 Compatibility informationĪlso check to make sure there is a compatible driver for your printer. If you like/don’t like it it, you can then remove the partition.
If you find there are any problems with the install, you also have a USB hard drive with a bootable clone of your disk as it existed before you installed Lion, which you can always boot from and use to restore your Mac.One option is to create a new partition (~30- 50 GB), install the new OS, and ‘test drive’ it. Once the install is completed, your Mac will reboot and you should see either the new Lion login interface, or, if you are the only user on your Mac, a short animation about the new scrolling behavior in Lion, like so:Ĭongratulations! You’ve installed Lion while simultaneously making sure that your machine is as clean and compatible as possible. For us, it took about thirty minutes for Lion to fully install. The Lion install process is just stupidly simple: you aren’t called upon to do anything but wait. When it’s finished downloading and the statusbar goes disappears, close all your running programs, open the Lion install file, accept Apple’s EULA and then click “Install.” Your machine will restart, and the Lion install process will begin.įrom here, everything’s easy. Be patient: this file is 3.4GB, and takes a while to download. Once you buy Lion, an install file will open up in your dock, complete with a download status bar. Alternatively, you can just click this link.
Just open the App Store under Applications and do a search for Lion. Pop the installer in, power down your Macintosh and unplug your backup drive, it would be a cryin’ shame if you accidentally installed over your backup. Make sure everything boots up, poke around a bit, make sure everything seems to be working. Once CCC is done, reboot your Mac with your external drive still connected, holding down the option key to boot from the backup drive. Now, depending on the size of your hard drive, you’ve got a chance to watch either the standard, or extended version of Lord of the Rings. Just remember to make your backup drive bootable, you will have to completely wipe your destination drive. To create a bootable backup of your main drive there is only one totally free, easy-to-use choice, Carbon Copy Cloner, and it’s push one button simple. Upgrading to Lion through the App Store is uncharted territory, and while it’s unlikely anything will go wrong, why take chances? Let’s make a bootable backup of your main drive just in case. Just be careful to know what you’re deleting. Give it a whirl, and you may be just as surprised as we were to learn that your ‘Downloads’ directory is taking up half your hard drive. Fortunately, our friends at Omni Group have a utility just for that. Our hard drives always seem to be shrinking, and it’s often hard to tell where most of that space goes. After you’ve cleaned up all your redundant files, now it’s time to ‘sweep’ your disk.