how do I make an external OS X hard drive with OS X 10, 10.6, and 10.7?

I see at the genius bar they have an external hard drive they can boot into one of three versions of Mac OS X. And I made my external firewire HD bootable with Mac OS X Lion So I may run iDefrag and other utilities on the Mac's at the company I work for. We also have a few mac's that have PPC so they need 10.5, and some with 10.6. I was wondering how may I run all three on my external (I have the discs to install them on my Mac. Do I just install each one on the external. Or do I partition the drive to 3 pieces and have it installed to each partition?

You'll need to partition the drive into three separate partitions and install each version of OS X individually. My advice is to install Lion first as it also creates a recovery partition for itself that's hidden. After you're through, test each by booting from them one by one.

did it.

Ok I did that... Now is there any way i can install the older OS X from my own Mac seeing as my Mac came with Core i5. And everytime I try to boot the mac from DVD i get a black screen with white letters of the system information... telling me to reboot.

To install the sex act same OS version that is on your Mac you need to "clone" the content from your internal drive to the external drive. You could use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Disk Utility will also work for this process. ATPM 17.05 - How To: Using the Free Disk Utility on Your Mac Check the section on Restoring Data.

Slydude said:

To install the sex act same OS version that is on your Mac you need to "clone" the content from your internal drive to the external drive. You could use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Disk Utility will also work for this process. ATPM 17.05 - How To: Using the Free Disk Utility on Your Mac Check the section on Restoring Data.

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Errrr.....I'm not sure I follow that first sentence

Slydude said:

To install the sex act same OS version that is on your Mac you need to "clone" the content from your internal drive to the external drive. You could use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Disk Utility will also work for this process. ATPM 17.05 - How To: Using the Free Disk Utility on Your Mac Check the section on Restoring Data.

Click to expand...

Not what I am talking about. I am talking how do i Install an older version OS X on my OS X lion laptop to an external firewire hard drive, that has 3 partitions already made, with OS X lion on one. I just need to know how do I install the others as the DVD doesn't work right.

BrianLachoreVPI said:

Errrr.....I'm not sure I follow that first sentence

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I guess we know now what Sly has on his mind. ;P

BrianLachoreVPI said:

Errrr.....I'm not sure I follow that first sentence

Click to expand...

Yeah I know I had to stop laughing before I could continue.

Oops that's the kind of typo you get when typing on the iPad.

@OP I see what you mean now. If you are installing a version of the OS that precedes what was on your Mac cloning will not work. Probably the easiest way to do this is to use an external DVD drive if the current internal isn't working.

The one thing to keep in mind is each partition will be limited in terms of which Mac it will be able to boot. A Mac that shipped with Lion for example will probably not boot from Snow Leopard.