How to: Run two operating systems on your Mac

Advertisement

Post Views: 161

While most people are happy with one operating system on their computer, geeks like us want to push our systems to the limit. One way to do this is having two operating systems on one computer.

Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!

Doing so allows a user to test other operating systems (such as the upcoming Mac OS X 10.9) or run a previous version of OS X for one reason or another.

Thankfully, OS X makes it easy to do so by using an included utility called Disk Utility.

Disk Utility can be found in Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

A new window opens that looks something like the above. On the upper left is the name of your hard (or SSDD) Drive. Clicking on that will open another window on the upper-middle-right side. Among the 5 options, click on the Partition Tab. Clicking on this tab will take you to another window.

To add a partition, click the plus (+) button (lower-left). A drop down window will appear asking the number of partition(s) you wish to create. For this example, we’re going to go with one, splitting the hard disk into two separate areas. From here, you can give the new partition a new name – which is optional.

When you’re satisfied with the new partition’s specs, click the Apply button to create the new partition. DO NOT INTERRUPT THIS PROCESS, OR SERIOUS DATA LOSS MAY OCCURE.

When that is done, then you can install what ever operating system you wish. Just make sure that you select the newly created partition when the installation process asks you where to install the new operating system.

When the installation is finished, you can select which operating system you want to go in to by rebooting the computer and holding down the option key.

That’s it.