Lion was recently released last month and as with any operating system upgrades your hardware may support the new OS’s requirements but all of your software may not.
Its a good idea to research your applications compatibility with Lion before upgrading.
If you find that your main applications or a good percentage of them are not updated but you still want to get on board with Lion and keep up to date with the latest Mac OS X we have a solution for you. You can use Drive Genius 3 and repartition your drive and add an additional volume to run a “ Dual Boot Mac “.
With the additional partition you added with Drive Genius 3 , you can volume clone your existing Snow Leopard volume and upgrade it to Lion. The benefits are twofold if you have available disk space. There are many new features in Lion but sometimes easing into a new operating system is the best option. If the install fails or your applications fail to launch or you don’t see your previous documents and you will have the benefit of your secondary OS X ( Snow Leopard) volume to transfer files from easily.
This article briefly explains how to repartition and add a volume using Drive Genius 3.
Before you get started backup your drive using Time Machine, Data Backup 3 or other backup applications before starting this process.
You will need to boot from the Drive Genius 3 DVD or another startup disk that has Drive Genius 3 installed on it to be able to unmount your internal boot drive. Once you have done this open the Repartition tool and follow the steps below.
Step 1. Shrink your existing Volume.
Select your existing Mac HD volume from the Pie Chart.
Click on the Resize button
Move the slider to the left to decrease the size of the partition, or type in a smaller new size of the volume and press the Enter key to set the value.
Click on Start to Resize the volume.
After the Resize is completed , a new free space partition will be present in the Pie Chart.
Step 2. Add a volume.
Select the free space portion of the Pie Chart.
Click the Add button.
Enter a name and choose a size for the volume by dragging the slider or typing a value and press enter.
Click the start button.
After the Add is complete, the volume will be shown in the Pie Chart.
For the final step you will need to switch to the Duplicate tool within Drive Genius 3.
Step 3. Clone your Snow Leopard Volume to your newly created Volume.
Launch Drive Genius 3 or startup from one of the preferred methods outlined in section 2.1 of the Manual , or the startup DVD.
Click on the green arrow in the arena menu.
Click on the Duplicate Icon.
Click on the Volumes category ( tab on lefthand side), then select the volume you want to duplicate.
Select the target volume from the Destination list.
Click the Start button to proceed.
To check your boot-ability of your new Snow Leopard volume simply restart and hold down the “ option “ key down and select the volume you duplicated with Drive Genius 3 and click the arrow.
Mike Fiato
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