Be patient: this file is 3.4GB, and takes a while to download. Once you buy Lion, an install file will open up in your dock, complete with a download status bar. Alternatively, you can just click this link. Just open the App Store under Applications and do a search for Lion. Pop the installer in, power down your Macintosh and unplug your backup drive, it would be a cryin’ shame if you accidentally installed over your backup. Make sure everything boots up, poke around a bit, make sure everything seems to be working. Once CCC is done, reboot your Mac with your external drive still connected, holding down the option key to boot from the backup drive. Now, depending on the size of your hard drive, you’ve got a chance to watch either the standard, or extended version of Lord of the Rings. Just remember to make your backup drive bootable, you will have to completely wipe your destination drive. To create a bootable backup of your main drive there is only one totally free, easy-to-use choice, Carbon Copy Cloner, and it’s push one button simple. Upgrading to Lion through the App Store is uncharted territory, and while it’s unlikely anything will go wrong, why take chances? Let’s make a bootable backup of your main drive just in case. Just be careful to know what you’re deleting. Give it a whirl, and you may be just as surprised as we were to learn that your ‘Downloads’ directory is taking up half your hard drive. Fortunately, our friends at Omni Group have a utility just for that. Our hard drives always seem to be shrinking, and it’s often hard to tell where most of that space goes. Anyway, if you still want to check out one of the tutorials you'll find when searching for 'upgrade old mac to mavericks'.After you’ve cleaned up all your redundant files, now it’s time to ‘sweep’ your disk. Then try again.īasically if you got a MacPro1,1 (~August 2006) or MacPro2,1 (~April 2007) you're not officially supported and I would advice against trying to upgrade your Mac forcefully since compatibility issues would arise regularly. You can use MacTracker to search for it and get the new name scheme with 'Model Name (Year)' out of it and compare it with the list of compatible model you linked to.Īnd, … if your Mac meets the minimum criteria, you could try freeing up some more space (maybe around 500 MB) to be on the save side. There select the Hardware tab (I think it's preselect) and check your Model Identifier. You can check what model you have click on the Apple icon in the menubar (top-left on you screen) and click 'About This Mac' > 'More Info'.

Please verify that your Mac meets this criteria or is newer than that.

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