Yosemite and Sierra (Dual Boot)

Just wondering if it's possible to dual boot Yosemite and Sierra in a Hackintosh on the same drive. Using the legacy Chimera bootloader for Yosemite and the legacy Clover bootloader for Sierra. I gave it a shot and I couldn't get it working.

Its possible.

You just have to make 4 different partitions. Two separate EFI partitions and two separate mac partitions.

A better way to do it would be to have clover on one EFI and then have two separate mac drives.

No matter how you do it, you have to perfectly setup the partitions and software before you install.

Do you have the general steps on how to do this? Also, how would I be able to make a dedicated separate partition for EFI let alone 2 of them?

When you install OSX, it automatically creates an EFI partition.

I mean the only thing you really have to do in order to have two totally separate instances of OSX on your computer is partition your hard drive straight down the middle.

Doing this is really simple. Do everything you normally would to install OSX sierra. When you boot up your installation media, go to the drive utilities in the upper left hand corner.

You should know where this is because this is the same utility you use to format your drive as HFS

From there you should see an option to shrink the drive to half of the capacity. (i.e. if your drive is 500GB total, you would create two 250BG partitions).

You would format each partition as HFS journaled, and then name 1 partition sierra, and the other partition should be named yosemite.

Then you should install sierra on the sierra partition and yosemite on the yosemite partition like you normally would.

From here you should boot into sierra and install the clover EFI program and edit your plist.

Then set your bios to boot to the sierra partition. From this point on, clover should not only see your sierra drive, but it should also see your yosemite drive as well.

The whole process is very simple and straight forward, you just gotta get it right the first time because it would be a major pain in the ass to start over from square 1.

Install clover EFI program? I usually just run MultiBeast, I don't use the Clover program. Would I still be okay?

Multibeast for sierra will install clover.

Just go research clover. It has gotten a lot easier and gives you way more control than chimera.

@Derbshey You need SSE4 in order to use Sierra. If you wanted to do it all native-like you can make a separate partition in OSX and install afterward. OSX will make the EFI partitions itself.

However theres not much of a reason to have both as Sierra is just a direct upgrade.

There are also ways to set up the other OS on an external HDD and select it from the boot disk menu. I haven't done it in a long time, but the menu is still there under the system preferences.

It's a hackintosh not a native mac

Okay so.... would I or would I not install the Chimera bootloader? Because when I don't have that installed, I'm unable to boot to Yosemite.

My understanding of the steps to go is
1. Boot to the Sierra installer and format the drive for GUID and OS X journaled and make 2 separate dedicated partitions
2. Install Sierra to the Sierra partition
3. Install Yosemite to the Yosemite partition
4. Boot into Sierra and run MultiBeast and then when finished restart to see if it worked

Would I install MultiBeast for Yosemite in those steps or no

Yes. You got that right.

And when it comes to multibeast for yosemite, you would install multibeast, but NOT chimera.

Remember that the chimera boot loader is simply an option within multibeast. You still need to run multibeast so that you can install things like your audio and internet drivers.


The only reason that yosemite might not work is because you might need different settings for clover than you do for sierra, but we will figure that out.

To give you a better understanding of what we are doing, I will give you an analogy.

Sierra and Yosemite would be like having two doorways. Clover and chimera are like the keys.

What I am trying to do is make things so that you only need 1 key to open both doors. That way you wont have to mess around with your bios boot menu anytime you want to switch from one OS to the other.

I know this is kind of a convoluted system, but it should make your life a lot easier when you get things running right.

A bit off topic, but, if I were to UEFI install Yosemite, could I use UniBest to create the bootable USB installer and then use Clover for post installation or would that not work?

I think so.

I have never done it that way, so I can not tell you for sure that it will work. But logically I do not see any issues.

Okay, I'll wait for a response back on the TMX86 forums.

I forgot to add that the Sierra USB is a UEFI created bootable one and the Yosemite USB is a legacy created bootable one. I'm not sure if that matters though/affects this step process.

Then I am pretty sure it will not work in that instance.

You need to just bite the bullet and learn clover. Trust me, I spent months avoiding clover because I did not want the headache.

The truth of the matter is that once you learn clover, it is a LOT easier to manage hackintosh computers in general.

Damn it. Okay

Well, I tried the Clover guide for Yosemite https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/how-to-install-os-x-yosemite-using-clover.144426/ and it booted to the installer and what not but then when it got to the end of installing it just got stuck on saying "1 second remaining" so I don't know what happened there/why

But for my first clover attempt, not bad I guess, I don't know what went wrong

Do you have any guides or tutorials to recommend to follow to use Clover?