- Joined
- May 13, 2013
- Messages
- 8
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
- CPU
- Intel i7-3770K
- Mac
- Classic Mac
- Mobile Phone
While obviously there is an abundant amount of information for dual booting Windows on a Hackintosh, I'm trying to find out anything I can about any potential issues with having 2 installations of OSX, but different versions.
I have a hackintosh that I built almost 4 years ago that has been incredibly stable (I've never had to tweak the installation with the exception of upgrading the SSD and adding memory), and is really still more than sufficient for what I need it to do. It's still running Mountain Lion (10.8.5), which would still be totally fine for my needs with the exception of a handful of programs and homebrew (which has decided to break in all kinds of ways as punishment for running on an older OS).
So ideally I'd like to install Sierra on a new SSD, but still be able to have both SSDs in my machine. That way I can work on migrating my workflow to the new OS, but can still boot into my original setup if I can't get something working or have something time-sensitive and can't afford to troubleshoot it right away.
I'm hoping that since I'd be installing it on a separate SSD (a fresh install, not an upgrade), it'd just be as simple as dual booting with windows: just unplug my other drives, get this one fully set up, and then plug the others back in and use the BIOS to select which one to boot into on startup. But I'm always wary of things that seem too simple.
Off the top of my head, the issues I could see would be inconsistencies in BIOS settings needed for each installation. Even if anyone isn't specifically dual booting multiple versions, if you've upgraded from older versions to Sierra, did you have any major changes to BIOS settings that you had to make?
The other thing I'm not sure about is the bootloader: I believe that when I set up my Mountain Lion installation I used Chimera (it was long enough ago that I don't really remember), so would using Clover as the bootloader for a Sierra installation clash with that in any way? I don't really know about the inner workings of what a bootloader really does (I just followed the guide, and if any part gave me problems, then I'd research it), so I'm not sure if only one can be installed or if it won't matter if they are on seperate drives.
Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated, as I'm just trying to gather as much information I can before I dive into this.
Here is my setup, just in case that's pertinent:
Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
Processor : Intel i7-3770K
GPU : EVGA GTX 760
A footnote:
Honestly, I would really only like to upgrade to El Capitan (I've notice a lot of people tend to scoff and dismiss the idea of not going ahead and upgrading all the way, but trust me, from talking to friends with hackintoshes who are using their workstations for similar things, Sierra does break some things that still work in El Capitan). Unfortunately, since Pascal drivers finally came out, I'm guessing I'll want to upgrade to Sierra eventually since I'd like to be able to take advantage of that for gaming on my windows boot, so I might as well start trying to find work arounds for any problems that Sierra introduces into my workflow now. As far as I'm aware the Pascal drivers are only for Sierra, but if I'm mistaken about that I'd love to know!
I have a hackintosh that I built almost 4 years ago that has been incredibly stable (I've never had to tweak the installation with the exception of upgrading the SSD and adding memory), and is really still more than sufficient for what I need it to do. It's still running Mountain Lion (10.8.5), which would still be totally fine for my needs with the exception of a handful of programs and homebrew (which has decided to break in all kinds of ways as punishment for running on an older OS).
So ideally I'd like to install Sierra on a new SSD, but still be able to have both SSDs in my machine. That way I can work on migrating my workflow to the new OS, but can still boot into my original setup if I can't get something working or have something time-sensitive and can't afford to troubleshoot it right away.
I'm hoping that since I'd be installing it on a separate SSD (a fresh install, not an upgrade), it'd just be as simple as dual booting with windows: just unplug my other drives, get this one fully set up, and then plug the others back in and use the BIOS to select which one to boot into on startup. But I'm always wary of things that seem too simple.
Off the top of my head, the issues I could see would be inconsistencies in BIOS settings needed for each installation. Even if anyone isn't specifically dual booting multiple versions, if you've upgraded from older versions to Sierra, did you have any major changes to BIOS settings that you had to make?
The other thing I'm not sure about is the bootloader: I believe that when I set up my Mountain Lion installation I used Chimera (it was long enough ago that I don't really remember), so would using Clover as the bootloader for a Sierra installation clash with that in any way? I don't really know about the inner workings of what a bootloader really does (I just followed the guide, and if any part gave me problems, then I'd research it), so I'm not sure if only one can be installed or if it won't matter if they are on seperate drives.
Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated, as I'm just trying to gather as much information I can before I dive into this.
Here is my setup, just in case that's pertinent:
Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
Processor : Intel i7-3770K
GPU : EVGA GTX 760
A footnote:
Honestly, I would really only like to upgrade to El Capitan (I've notice a lot of people tend to scoff and dismiss the idea of not going ahead and upgrading all the way, but trust me, from talking to friends with hackintoshes who are using their workstations for similar things, Sierra does break some things that still work in El Capitan). Unfortunately, since Pascal drivers finally came out, I'm guessing I'll want to upgrade to Sierra eventually since I'd like to be able to take advantage of that for gaming on my windows boot, so I might as well start trying to find work arounds for any problems that Sierra introduces into my workflow now. As far as I'm aware the Pascal drivers are only for Sierra, but if I'm mistaken about that I'd love to know!
