How can I preserve my suite of outdated Adobe apps, while still upgrading my OS?

[xmjm924x]

Hi, I know this is sort of a ridiculous question but I'm going to post it anyway. I have several thousand dollars worth of old adobe apps that I would like to preserve in case I ever decide to learn them (I bought my late-2014 iMac from a scientist who legitimately owned and used all the apps until he sold the computer to me), but I'm having a hard time letting them go.

The problem is, I'm running an old unsupported version of Mac OS X (El Capitan - 10.11.6) and once I upgrade to a newer OS, my adobe apps will no longer work (due to the new subscription model). I will lose them all. So I'm trying to see if I can migrate them over to a USB drive and preserve them somehow. Just transferring the apps themselves over to the USB will not work, right? I think I need to either clone my internal drive over to an external drive, or partition my internal drive into 2 volumes so that I can run 2 OS's...one volume running El Capitan with my Adobe apps and the second volume running an upgraded OS. The problem is, because my iMac is older (late-2014), I would need to completely erase and reformat the internal drive to a different format (from HFS+ to APFS) before I partition it and I don't really want to go through all that. Can you tell me what my options might be? BIG THANKS!

PS - If I decide to go the cloning method, my external drive needs to be at least as big as the internal drive that I'm trying to clone, right? If so, I guess I'd need a 1TB drive.

PS2 - Am I being ridiculous about trying to keep these apps? I know I'm going to get some flack for it...especially seeing as I'm not a professional and I've never actually learned or utilized any of the apps in the years that I've owned them. I just feel like there still might be a time in the near future where I decide I want to learn PS, Illustrator, or Premiere (using tutorials) and once I throw them away (by upgrading without preserving them)...they are gone forever and I'll be forced to pay the subscription fee if I ever want to learn them. If a time came when I DID ACTUALLY learn the apps, I would surely discard these old versions (CS6 & 2018) and pay the fee to use the new versions. I think I paid $600 for this machine back in 2019 (or 2020) and I felt like the inclusion of the entire adobe creative suite was a pretty big part of the incentive to buy it...although the machine was still worth it without them.

PS3 - I have an older 2009 Macbook that I'd be willing to keep and use exclusively for running my Adobe apps, but I don'y know what I need to do in order to run those apps on that machine. Can I just transfer them over somehow? Or can I transfer the apps to a USB drive to use on that machine? It's running El Cap, same as my iMac.

 

[MacsBug]

A lot to digest here... But no, this is not a rediculous question at all.

If you really want to keep your old CS6 suite the best way will be to partition your iMac and install the newer OS on the 2nd partition. Then Boot into El Capitan when you want to use the Adobe software.

Your thinking here is incorrect as far as APFS goes. If you partition your iMac's drive into 2 partitions by adding a partition while running in El Capitan, you would then only need to format the 2nd partition to APFS. You would leave the 1st partition as it is as HFS+.

Moving the software to your 2009 MacBook may work if you clone your iMacs HD to the HD in your 2009 MacBook using software like Carbon Copy Cloner. The reason I say may is that after the clone, you may lose the activation state of the software.

To properly move the software you would need the installers for the suite. There are a lot of hidden files that are needed other than just the main apps. The problem here is that even if you have the installers and the proper seal numbers for the software, Adobe has closed their actvation servers for the old CS suites. So there is no way to activate the software on another Mac.

Hopefully I answered most of your concerned, if not please reply back.

 

[xmjm924x]

MacsBug, thank you so much for your response. I posted this question to five different forums and of all the answers I've received so far, yours was the best overall. You did a great job of analyzing what I wrote and coming up with a concise, logical argument for why partitioning would be the best option for me.

Unfortunately I'm currently under the weather and trying my best to formulate a proper way of explaining my thoughts on how to proceed from here.

Based off the opinions of yourself and others, I've concluded that I'll probably run into trouble if I decide go the cloning route. Whether I clone to my MacBook Pro or an external drive, I don't want to get to the end of the process only to be greeted with an activation or licensing error when I go to run my Adobe apps, so I'm eliminating that option all together. And on the plus side, that will free up the use of my MacBook for other things, such as installing a fresh copy of a newer OS using OCLP and giving it to my brother to use.

So now that I know I don't have to wipe & reformat my entire drive before partitioning, I think that is the best route to go. It's the only real option that makes sense at this point. And if at some point in the future I still haven't used any of the Adobe apps and I've come to terms with my lack of time/discipline to learn them, I can just merge the partitions back into a single volume and use OCLP to upgrade my OS to a later version, right?

Ok so to stay on track here (my mind is all over the place and I'm having heaps of trouble writing this), I'm going to write a basic step-by-step set of instructions on how I think I should proceed from here, and I'm hoping you can comment on it and correct it if necessary...

I'm assuming the first thing I should do is reduce the size of my used disk space on my drive, right? Because wouldn't it make sense to partition as small a space as possible for the volume that is going to run El Capitan? I only need it to be big enough to run the Adobe apps, so I might as well move all of my personal data off the drive and onto a USB, as well as uninstall all my unnecessary apps before I go to begin the partitioning, right (I'm assuming I cant reduce the size of the partition at a later time after it's already been created)? Will I be able to transfer data between the partitions later (in a drag & drop fashion)?

For reference, I'm going to refer to the volume that contains the soon-to-be upgraded OS "volume-1" and the volume that will continue to run El Capitan "volume-2".

1- Reduce used disk space as much as possible and move all data to external drive.
2- Partition disk & reformat volume-1 to APFS while keeping volume-2 as HFS+.
3- Upgrade volume-1 to BigSur (will it be considered an upgrade or a clean install since it's on a new partition?) And how do I acquire the installer or means of installing the new OS on my partition?
4- Transfer all my data from external drive back over to volume-1

Does that sound about right or am I just completely insane an/or lacking a fundamental understanding of the partitioning process? I don't understand how any of this shit really works tbh.

I'm going to bed but now but I thank you again for you advice and I apologize if I overelaborated and created an overly-long post, it's what I tend to do.

 

[xmjm924x]

Damn that response of mine was way too long, sorry about that. I just tried to edit last night's post to make it shorter but I found out this forum doesn't allow editing of posts after a couple hours have passed. Oh well.

 

[MacsBug]

One thing that you can try is to clone your drive to an external. Then boot your MacBook Pro from the external and see if the Adobe software still runs, If it does run without needing activation then you will have options,

If it doesn’t run, then you can create a 2nd partition and install a 2nd OS on your iMac.

 

[xmjm924x]

Thats a good idea, except I don't own an external drive to test it out. I have a 128GB USB stick but that's not big enough for the clone. I think I'll pick up a 1TB external drive by Crucial at one of the big box stores for $80 and give the Carbon Copy Cloner software a try. If it doesn't work out, I can just keep the external drive for backing things up and proceed to trying the partitioning method. Probably gonna get started on all this tomorrow so I'll update this thread when I've completed or made significant progress.

Thanks again for your input, much appreciated.

 

[xmjm924x]

Just wanted to give you an update.

I bought the SanDisk "extreme" 1TB SSD and used CCC to clone my internal drive to it. Everything worked flawlessly and the process only took 34 mins. I booted off the external drive and the Adobe apps still worked just as they did before, no issues. I upgraded my OS to BigSur and I'm currently in the process of getting everything organized and breathing new life into this iMac.

The only thing I haven't done as of yet, is tried booting off the external drive AFTER having upgraded my OS. I don't think I should have any problems, but I'm going to try that next just make sure everything still works. I wouldn't be that surprised if some kind of "firmware update" issue ruined the activation of the apps, but we'll see.

And to anyone who cares, I HIGHLY recommend both the SanDisk "extreme" as a great choice for a rugged, high-quality SSD and the Carbon Copy Cloner software as the best choice for cloning your drive. CCC is some of the best software I've ever used and it comes with very well-written instructions (in multiple languages) on how to format your drive and complete the cloning process. And you get a free 30-day trial of unrestricted use, good stuff.

 

[MacsBug]

Awesome, Glad that you have everything working

 

[xmjm924x]

Awesome, Glad that you have everything working

Yup, thank ya sir. I can confirm that everything is still working good...even after the upgrade to BigSur. The external drive still boots up and runs the Adobe programs just as before. And strangely enough, my Adobe CC 2018 apps (there was 4 of them & the rest were actually CS5.5) are still working perfectly fine on BigSur as well...which doesn't make a lick of sense to me, but I'll take it! I think the guy whom sold me this computer might have had a few hacking tricks up his sleeve or something...perhaps he bypassed the Creative Cloud activation deal or something of that nature, I really don't know.

But all is well.