How to partition your Mac to test OS X Yosemite

[Guest Peter Cohen]

 

Installing Yosemite? It's a beta. Put it somewhere it's not likely to cause problems — here's how

 

Regardless of whether you're using the Developer Preview or the forthcoming public beta, bear in mind that OS X Yosemite is beta software. It's best not to install it as the primary operating system on your only Mac, so here are instructions for making a new partition to run it from.

 

 

This way, Yosemite will be isolated from the rest of your Mac — even if something drastically bad happens, the only bad thing that should happen will be to that partition, not to your entire machine.

 

Before you partition your drive or install Yosemite on your Mac, back it up using Time Machine or another method.

 

Partitioning your hard drive will reduce the amount of available space for Mavericks, so make sure to give yourself some wiggle room. What's more, make sure to give yourself enough space to run Yosemite effectively.

 

How to partition your drive

 

1. Open the Utilities folder.
   
2. Double-click on Disk Utility.
   
3. Select your hard drive volume in the upper left hand corner of the sidebar.
   
4. Click on the Partition button.
   
5. Click the + button.
   
6. Size the partitions based on free space, and bear in mind what I said about wiggle room.
   
7. Click on the Apply button.
   
8. Disk Utility will then check the disk and make changes. This will take several minutes.
   
9. Quit Disk Utility.
   

 

 

 

 

Once your drive is partitioned, you can install Yosemite on the new partition. The Yosemite installer will give you the opportunity to import settings from your Mavericks partition — as tempting as it is, don't do it. To effectively test Yosemite, make sure to keep it a clean install. That way you know you're not introducing problems from previous installations.

 

Once you're done with Yosemite and you want to get things back to the way they were, you can delete the partition and resize your Mavericks partition back to the whole disk. To do so, follow these instructions.

 

First of all, make sure you've booted using your Mavericks partition. Turn on (or restart) your Mac holding down the Option key and select the drive icon that corresponds to Mavericks.

 

How to remove and resize partitions

 

1. Open the Utilities folder.
   
2. Double-click on Disk Utility.
   
3. Select your hard drive volume in the upper left hand corner of the sidebar.
   
4. Click on the Partition button.
   
5. Select the Yosemite partition.
   
6. Click the - button.
   
7. Disk Utility will ask you to confirm removal of the partition. Click the Remove button.
   
8. Resize the Mavericks partition by clicking its lower right hand corner and dragging down until it fills the entire partition space, then click Apply.
   
9. Once it's done, quit Disk Utility.
   

 

 

 

 

Disk Utility makes it pretty easy to create and delete disk partitions without risking data on your Mac's primary boot volume, but there's always a chance you can run into a problem — everything from a device error to a software issue, unexpected power outage and more. That's why I have to emphasize that you should always back up your Mac before attempting any operation like this. Having said that, if you follow these instructions, you should be okay.

 

Have you installed OS X Yosemite? Did you do it in a new partition or on a separate disk all together? Let me know if you have any questions.

 

 

 

 

 

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