You can pick up a copy of Snow Leopard Server on eBay for about £50/$60/AU$85, as long as you avoid getting a copy with unlimited licences. This works just the same as the regular edition of Snow Leopard (apart from some system administration features that you’ll never use) but handily, it will also install correctly under Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion. The only tiny complication is that Apple’s licensing agreement doesn’t allow the regular edition of Snow Leopard to be installed on a virtual machine, so you need to buy a copy of Snow Leopard Server instead. The virtualisation software takes care of interfacing with your modern hardware, so it works even with older operating systems.
Either of these can create a virtual machine that runs within your existing OS and allows you to install and run a completely different operating system on top of that.
Instead, you should use either Fusion 8 or Parallels Desktop 12.
Unfortunately, running Snow Leopard isn’t as simple as just taking the original install DVD and putting the system on an external drive.Īn operating system from five years ago doesn’t have the right drivers for lots of the hardware on a modern Mac, such as a Retina display or USB 3.0 ports.
