Upgrade OS

[plshelp]

My elderly neighbor is running an iMac 8,1 model with OS 10.6.8. A local computer store has told me that if he backs up his data, the current hard drive can be wiped clean and reloaded with OS 10.11 which would allow him much better access for browsing (using Google Chrome) and generally just run better. Keeping in mind that he only does email, browses a little bit, and mainly does Facebook with distant relatives and Ancestry.com, would this be a feasible thing for him to do and expect decent results? He is on a fixed income, and a newer computer is not an option. I should also mention that his machine has 2.4GHz, Intel Core 2 Duo, 6 GB memory.

If it is a good option, I would like to help him complete the task. I would need some input from all of you as to how to go about: 1) wipe the current hard drive clean 2) partition it to accept the new OS version 3) finding a legitimate site to download aforementioned OS version from.

Thank you all in advance for input!

 

[chscag]

Welcome to our forums.

While it's true that macOS 10.6.8 is a very old version, you may run into unexpected difficulties when erasing his hard drive and then trying to install a later version of the operating system. You may get varying opinions on this but personally I would leave well enough alone. However, we will try to answer:

1. Never wipe the hard drive without first making a bootable backup of its entire contents. We recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner to an external hard drive.

2. No need to partition. The installation of macOS will automatically create a Recovery partition.

3. Only one site that you can download macOS from and that's Apple. There are no other legal sites.

Again, think long and hard before attempting what the computer store recommended. An iMac 8,1 is either a 20" or 24" 2008 model so the maximum version of macOS that can be run on it is 10.11.X. (El Capitan)

 

[plshelp]

Thank you chscag. I am no expert, so I have a couple of questions 1) If we decide to wipe the hard drive, what method should we employ 2) Once wiped clean, how would we be able to access Apple via the web?

Lastly, what "unexpected difficulties" are you familiar with when someone tries to wipe the drive?

 

[plshelp]

P.S. My plan to wipe the drive would be Disc Utility "erase". Please advise...

 

[ferrarr]

You can not erase a drive you are booted from.

Use this, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886, and get El Capitan downloaded to the iMac. Before installing El Capitan, make sure any important data has been backed up to a separate drive. Next, you should create a bootable USB/flash/thumb drive (minimum 8GB) and then use that to install El Capitan. I prefer this method, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886, to create the bootable USB OS X installer, but others prefer to use Disk Maker X, http://diskmakerx.com/, to create the drive, use whichever you feel comfortable with.

 

[Nighthawk4]

That is helpful. I didn't know you could still download El Capitan now that Sierra is available

 

[ferrarr]

That is helpful. I didn't know you could still download El Capitan now that Sierra is available

THat’s “only” for certain Macs. For the ones that can’t run Sierra.

 

[Nighthawk4]

THat’s “only” for certain Macs. For the ones that can’t run Sierra.

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks

 

[harryb2448]

Suggest you leave the old guy where he is and what he knows rather than change to a new operating system. That model iMac will be approaching its tenth birthday shortly and can only handle 6GB of memory maximum. The newer operating system generally like to run on 8GB and many of us think that is inadequate. El Capitan OS X>11 will do nothing mto speed the machine up not increase the graphics performance over the installed 256MB maximum memory of the card. It may even be 128MB.