One answer showing the basic approach can be found here: Installing Ubuntu on Mac with macOS and Windows already installed. Triple boot macOS 10.12/OS X 10.9/Windows should be covered by one of David Anderson's answers.
In the past this feature had some hick-ups though (e.g. Parallels Desktop as well as VMware Fusion allow to use the Boot Camp partition as virtual machine without losing the ability to boot to the physical volume. In my opinion a set-up covering all three scenarios is possible but it requires a lot of work and the whole thing is probably fragile and won't survive upgrades or special updates of either of the partitions. If I add a Bootcamp-built Windows partition, can it also be run virtually in Sierra (or do I have to choose one or the other)? I'm not sure how much I can rely on it, hence keeping native bootable drives for each in my setup.Ĭan I use Parallels/Fusion/other to run my EXISTING Mavericks drive within Sierra or will I have to reinstall the OS and legacy applications through virtualization software?Īssuming a setup in which Mavericks can be run virtually in Sierra, will I be able to run Mavericks natively by rebooting to it as my Startup Disk if/when needed? As I've researched, part of what I'm struggling with is perhaps not fully understanding how virtualization works.
The drive has two partitions – one running MacOS Sierra 10.12.5 and the second running Mavericks 10.9.5 (for purposes of keeping commercially licensed software that is now only available as monthly/annually-paid subscriptions).
I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM (system max) and a 1TB SSD.