Can I Install Different MAC OS Versions On Different Hard Drives

My G4 iMac is running 10.2.8 on the internal hard drive. If I install
10.3 on my external LaCie Firewire drive, can I boot from either drive
without problems? Will I experience any problems going back and forth
between the newer Apple applications (Safari, Mail, iMovie, iDVD) and
the old ones?

Thank you.

--

Kurt Todoroff


Markets, not mandates and mob rule.
Consent, not compulsion.

 

I should think none, other than the odd moment of confusion.

Of course, some documents may be upgraded by its parent app so that an
older version will have trouble opening it. Major revisions of iLife
apps are a case in point.

One more word of caution: Make sure older & newer apps use different
directories for their settings files and so on. By default they would do
that under this setup. Otherwise, when an older app tries to read from a
pref file that a newer version just modified, it seems possible, but not
entirely likely, that conflict may occur. (I should hope that if the
discrepancy is too great, the older app will refuse to read the newer
pref - but YMMV.)

 

As far as switching between the tow versions of Mac OS X, there should
be no problem. However, newer versions of applications frequently
update their preference files in ways which are not backward compatible
with earlier versions.

If you intend to work with different versions of applications, I would
recommend using different user accounts (to keep the preference files
distinct) and moving the data files to a shared folder so there is a
single copy of the user data. Even that may not be enough if the newer
version of an application uses a different data file format.

 

If he boots from another disk, he will automatically be logged in as
another user as well. Each system has its own user, residing on the same
disk as that system. Even if the name and password are the same, they
are still different users. Consequently, there is no danger screwing up
preferences, because these will be in the Library folder of that user.
Using a shared folder for common files is a good idea, of course.

 

Unless he has his /Users directory in a separate partition, as is not
uncommon.

 

To clarify, "by default" the preferences are in
/Users/<name>/Library/Preferences, and unless you
have intentionally changed it, /Users/* in in the
boot partition.

But that can be a major pain, having to keep track
of which of your directories you were in when you
created or edited xyz.doc

 

Not necessarily. If the user NUMBER is the same, that
User is the owner of the files in both user directories.
However, there ARE two User directories UNLESS you intentionally
change it. Which is not hard to do.

I have five users. The admin User's directory is on whichever
partition I boot from, but the 'regular' Users all have their
directories on a different partition so they don't have to keep
two sets of files synchronized. And all the OS9 stuff is in one
partition so I don't need two copies of all the Classic stuff.

--
Wes Groleau

Guidelines for judging others:

1. Don't attribute to malice that which
can be adequately explained by stupidity.

2. Don't attribute to stupidity that which
can be adequately explained by ignorance.

3. Don't attribute to ignorance that which
can be adequately explained by misunderstanding.

 

Let's not make the exception the rule. I know you can have a user
account on another partition or disk and I know you can combine accounts
like you said. The normal situation however is that if you install OSX
on a disk, you create a new administrative account together with that
installation and this accounmt will reside on that same disk. Switch to
another system on antoher disk and you automatically switch to the other
account as well.

Also, the OP is not a die-hard techno-oriented Macintosh user, otherwise
he would have not asked this question in the first place. Consequently,
the OP would install both systems the way I describe it, using a norma;
'out of the box' installation. Don't make things more complicated for
him that it needs to be. The answer for him is: Yes, you can do what
asked. And no, you do not have to worry about screwing up preferences.

 

Not uncommon for you, I'm sure. But for an OP who needs to ask whether
it's possible at all to install two systems on two disks, it's highly
unlikely he will use such a setup.