You can now easily dual boot between MacOS Sierra and the other stable Mac OS X release.
For what it’s worth, this would work the same with OS X Yosemite and Mavericks too if you’re wanting to dual boot Sierra with those releases as well.ĭual Booting and Switching Between MacOS Sierra 10.12 and OS X El Capitan
Now you’re in macOS Sierra running off the separate partition, this gives you access to files on your Mac but preserves the other stable operating system, in this case OS X El Capita.
How to Install MacOS Sierra to the New PartitionĪssuming you backed up, partitioned the Mac, and have macOS Sierra downloaded, you can now safely install MacOS Sierra 10.12 onto the separate partition, this will allow you to preserve your existing OS X installation without potentially messing it up with the new beta system software. Quit out of Disk Utility when finished, you’re now ready to install MacOS Sierra on the new partition.
Requirements for Dual Booting MacOS Sierra Beta & OS X EL Capitan: While we’re focusing on installing MacOS Sierra onto a partition for dual boot purposes, you can also install macOS Sierra onto an external hard drive, a USB drive, or even an SD card, and have the same dual boot situation between the macOS Sierra beta and the OS X El Capitan stable release, though performance is usually not as good when an operating system is running off an external volume.
Completing a full system backup beforehand is essential. The process of creating a dual boot Mac OS environment is not particularly difficult but it involves some risk and setup steps which could result in catastrophic data loss, thus this is generally aimed at advanced users and is not appropriate for novices.