Time Machine Backup to Shared Firewire Drive Not Working

Hello
I know this may have been posted before, but I am looking for a simple troubleshooting / diagnostic process I can follow to resolve my issue:
I have a Imac running Lepoard with all possible software updates. A WD Studio 500GB drive is attached via Firewire 800. The drive has the latest firmware etc. I also have a 15" powerbook G4 (last model) running leopard. All Macs are connected to the a Netgear DG834N router, via ethernet cables.
The Imac and Firewire connected external drive works normally with time machine.
I have shared the external drive on the Imac and given all 'built in' groups read/write permissions.
I can mount the external drive on the powerbook and see the files that are backed up by the Imac, I can traverse the folder tree within the folders contrained in the backup. Double clicking on these folders invokes the 'star trek' style time machine window.
When trying to backup the powerbook, I could see the external drive as a time machine target disk.
The backup failed twice. Having checked the disk a sparse image was created. I tried again a number of times without success - I deleted the sparse image and tried to start again.
This time I could not find the disk in the selection in time machine, a reboot of everything revealed the disk, but when selecting the 'use for backup' button in time machine on the powerbook nothing happens.
Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

You have a pretty simple problem: time machine does not allow you to backup two computers to the same hard drive or partitioin. the way to fix this is to repartition you WD drive into two partitions, one for each computer. if you already have other data (not from time machine), make three partitons: one for iMac, one for PowerBook, and one for Other. do not put any data other than time machine data on the iMac and PowerBook partitons, always put it in other. you can partiton a disk easily with disk utility, but wait:
_CAUTION: THIS WILL CAUSE YOU TO LOOSE ALL THE DATA ALREADY ON THE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE!_
to avoid this, first use disk utility to make a disk image of the external hard drive, and save it on your internal drive. if the image won't fit (your internal drive doesn't have enough capacity, then you can either erase all the data on already on the hard drive with the reformat, or buy another disk to use for the PowerBook) then, when the disk is partitioned correctly, mount the disk image and copy all the files on it back to the correct* partition of the external hard drive. *if the files on the external hard drive came from the iMac, then put them on the iMac partiton of the drive. if they came from the powerbook, put them in that partition, and if it is not from time machine, put it in othe
Hope you followed all that!
nate

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