Hello again First I’ll put the question, then give some background details.
For a clean install of OS X Mavericks to an erased HD, do I need to install OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 as an intermediate step? The backgound. My late 2009 iMac suffered a breakdown a few weeks ago. With wamug help (particularly from Ronni) the iMac is now functioning well. As the “cause” of the breakdown was not identified, the iMac is on a “use with care but don’t rely on it” status. I want to do a comple erasure of the hard drive (and zero all data) and re-install Mavericks. My plan was to use the original Snow Leopard 6.1 install DVDs and upgrade the iMac to 10.6.8. Then install Mavericks via a bootable installer of the app. Next update Mavericks with the OS X 10.9.5 combo update, and finally install the OS X Supplementary update. I realise other apps and data would have to be re-installed, and preferences all set up again. I have the Mavericks bootable installer and appropriate update .dmg files for Snow Leopard and Mavericks. My belief was that Mavericks will only install over Snow Leopard 10.6.8. However on perusing the Macworld articles on installing Mavericks, I found an interesting postscript, copied here in full: "Note that the installer lets you choose any drive that has OS X 10.6.8 or later installed or any blank drive. (The latter is what you would choose if you wanted to do a “clean” install that contains none of your data, applications, or settings from your current installation of OS X.)” === Note the “… or any blank drive”! Hence the question, "Do I need to install OS X Snow Leopard as an intermediate step?" Or was that applicable only when the user wanted to download Mavericks from the App Store? Regards, Alan Alan Smith Late 2012 iMac 27" Intel Quad Core i5 Fusion 3.2GHz 8G RAM - OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks Late 2009 iMac 21.5" Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz 12G RAM - OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks iPhone5; iPad2; ATV2 -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
