Backing 2 MAcintosh Computers to One Eternal Drive

I have an IMAC and a MacBook at home and a IMAC at our church - all with Leopard. I want to back them all up to one external hard drive. I rad one of the comments to direct one to another (relatively new to MAC's).
So is there an easy way to do this - even if I need to partition the external hard drive?

The same Time Machine drive will back up both macintosh computers. The backups will be stored by computer name in the "Backups.backupd" directory. For example, I have two computers. The first is named "Topher" and the second is named "Zephyr". If I backup both machines to the same Time Machine drive, within the "Backups.backupd" directory will be two folders: the first will be "Topher" and the second will be "Zephyr", and each will be the location of the backups for the respectively named computers.

Similar Messages

  • Backing up two computers to one hard drive

    I've been backing up my iMac using Retrospect Express, onto an external hard drive.
    We also have an iBook, which we have not been backing up.
    Two questions:
    1. Can I back up both computers onto the single external drive I already own? If so, do I need to partition the drive (something I know nothing about)?
    2. If I do have to partition, does that mean I lose all the data on my external hard drive?
    2. Since I've got Retrospect Express, not Desktop, on my iMac, I need to buy a new backup program. I could upgrade to Retrospect Desktop (quite expensive; and Retrospect seems to be a fading project); or I could buy Chronosync, SuperDuper, or Carbon Copy Cloner for the iBook. Which of these paths would any of you recommend?
    imac 15 / ibook g3 12 Mac OS X (10.3.9)
    imac 15 / ibook g3 12   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

    You can backup both computers to the same drive, but you would need to partition the drive first. Partitioning will erase all the data on the drive. You will have to backup both computers anew.
    I don't know why you would need to buy a second backup program. Retrospect Express can be used to backup both computers. However, if you wish to replace Retrospect there are some excellent alternatives:
    Basic Backup
    You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
    1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
    2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
    3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
    4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
    5. PsynchX 2.1.1 and RsyncX 2.1 (Freeware)
    6. Carbon Copy Cloner (Freeware - 3.0 is a Universal Binary)
    7. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
    The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
    1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
    2. Toast
    3. Impression
    4. arRSync
    Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
    Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
    Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
    Use Disk Utility to partition the drive. Open DU (Utilities folder.) Select your hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Select the number of partitions from the drop down menu. Use the resizing gadget to size the partitions. You will need each partition to be large enough to store the contents of the drive it will backup. Set the format type to Mac OS X Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait for the volumes to mount on your Desktop.

  • Backing up 2 computers on one external drive

    I have a Toshiba Canvio Connect 1TB external drive and I want to back up both a macbook Pro and an iMac desktop to the drive.  How do I put both computers on the same Toshiba drive?

    While it is obviously possible, it is not recommended: all hard drives fail at some point and if you back up both of your machines to just one drive, you may lose both backups. So, the best thing would be to back up your backups.

  • Sharing music on two computers with one external drive

    I'm a Mac. My wife is a PC. If we both link to an external drive and put all of our music on there, can we both access it from our own separate iTunes accounts via file sharing? Will she be able to put music I've downloaded on her iPod? Will I be able to do the same? So far she hasn't downloaded any of her own music onto her computer so if she were to remove her current iTunes from her computer and reload it using my account name, would we both be able to have full access to music both imported and downloaded from both computers? Sorry for the questions on top of questions, but while there are a lot of other posts and articles similar to this one, I haven't found what I'm looking for. Thanks!

    Yes, sorry for piling on. 1st question: Would having her remove iTunes on her PC and reload it under my account name to be able to access my iTunes library on an external drive work?

  • Can I backup two Apple computers to one hard drive with time machine?

    I have a 2007-vintage MacBook Pro running iOSX 10.6.8 and an iMac  running 10.5.8 -- Can I use a single external hard drive along with Time Machine to backup both of these computers without any problems?  The hard drive has already been backing up the iMac for a few weeks now and the SeaGate drive had to be reformatted to do that. How will I be able to separate the information saved on the hard drive to know which computer is which? (i.e., how "smart" is Time Machine's file structuring when it makes a backup?)

    Do you mean you want to connect a USB drive to the TC?  If so, it will recognize a disk formatted in FAT32, but not ExFAT or NTFS.
    If you mean you want a Windoze-like partition on the TC's internal HD, that's a bit trickier, since it can't be partitioned.  But you could create a disk image on it via Disk Utility, formatted MS-DOS (FAT) aka FAT32, or ExFAT  (I'm not entirely sure if ExFAT would work in a disk image there, but it might.)

  • Backing up two computers to one external disk

    Can you use time machine on two different computer to backup each computer to the same external hard drive.

    I have Time Machine set up with both an iMac and my MacBook using the same drive. But unlike what Canada Steve is doing I've set the MacBook to look at the hard disk as a network volume so backups can be done at the same time and restoring can be done wirelessly.

  • Backing up from one USB Drive to Another

    I have two WD USB drinves that I use for my photos, one as the primsary drive,the other as the backup. When these were connected to my Windows PC I could use Western Digital's WD Anywhere Backup software to provide an "instantaneous" back up of any of the photo files that I hadd added / changed on my primary drive. This worked like a charm. Using the software with my USB drives connected to me MacBook Pro . Mavericks laptop the software thinks that it is working perfectly but is not backing up all the files. On a test I specified a folder with 40+K files and 240GB of data as the folder to be watched and backed up. The software reported a successful backup but only 11K files and 60GB of data had been transferred. I reported this to WD who indicated that the software is designed to back up from the coputer's hard drive to a back up frive, not from one external drive to another.
    My question is: Does anyone know of any software that will run as a daemon and automatically back up new / changed files from one USB drive to another? Obviously I could do this with any of a multitude of products if I scheduled hourly/daily backups. However, I would prefer the convenience of "instantaneous" backups as soon as a change is made within a watched follder. From what I have read Chronosync seems to be the best backup software for Macs but, as one reviewer noted (http://www.macworld.com/article/2011101/review-chronosync-4-3-5-a-multitalented- file-sync-and-backup-tool.html) "I would like to see ChronoSync go one step further and offer an option found in some other sync software: the ability to watch specified folders and synchronize changes as soon as they occur rather than waiting until the next scheduled run." Can anyone point me to the "other sync software" that offers this capability?
    Thanks in advance
    Brian Catterall

    SOLVED
    Once I got Time Machine to perform totally new backups it picked up the new external drive containing my images.
    John

  • One Hard Drive Two Computers

    Can you use one Hard drive to back up 2 computers with time machine?

    yes but only across a network. you can connect the hard drive to one computer and back it up directly and if the second computer is on the same wireless or ethernet network as the first you can also back it up to that hard drive but across the network. it is also possible if you have an Airport Extreme Base Station. you can connect the drive to it and back up both computers to it via network.

  • Can I use one icloud drive account to back up all family share devices?

    Can I use one icloud drive account to back up all family share devices?

    No
    They all use different iCloud accounts and they will backup to their own iCloud accounts

  • HT201250 Can I use Time Machine on two different Macs to back up to one external drive?

    Can I use Time Machine on two different Macs to back up to one external drive?
    I have one 1T Western Digital backup drive that works well with Time Machine and my MacBook Pro.  I now want to back up my wife's MacBook Air using Time Machine on her Mac and want to know if I can use the same WD external drive or if I need to get a 2nd back up drive?  If I can use one external drive for the two Macs do I need to do something special on the drive or will Time Machine do it automatically?

    Yes. You will need to configure Time Machine preferences on each computer to backup to the same drive. Note that you cannot connect the backup drive to both machines at the same time.

  • Lightroom - how to restore backed up files (not Lightroom catalogue) from one external drive to another?

    How to restore backed up files (not lightroom catalogue) from one external drive to another.
    I recently backuped my photo files from one external drive to another. The backup (carbon copy cloner) pointed to some corrupt files on the original drive.
    I have deleted those files and am finding good copies of them  in Time Machine backups.
    I want to get rid of the original external drive; use the recent backup as my main external and then back it up onto a brand new drive.
    What I am not sure about is how to point lightroom to the backups so it knows to look on the new drive instead of the old drive and all those exclamation marks and question marks go away.
    There are close to 60,000 images in numerous folders all with one 'parent folder.'
    My best guess is from Lightroom Help - Create and Manage Folders -  Locate Missing Folders
    Can I point to the one parent folder and all the subfolders will come back?
    Is this the process to recover files into lightroom and will there be a problem with so many photos?

    http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

  • HT201250 can I back up files from one hard drive to the other hd using time machine?

    I would like to back up my files automatically from one hard drive to another skipping the computer backup. If anyone knows anything on how to set it up, I would like your help
    Thanks!
    Ruta

    If you want to copy one external disk to another external disk, and you want an exact copy, then you might consider Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper.  Either of which will make an exact duplicate of the disk.
    If you wish to have Time Machine include an external disk as part of your normal Time Machine backups, that means just including the external disk as part of your Time Machine backups.
    If you mean run a One-Off backup of the external drive to another external drive using Time Machine, I would go with CCC or SuperDuper.
    If you could give some more details about what you are trying to do, how often you want to do this, what kind of information is on the drive being backed up, how often the data is being changed and thus how often you want to do this disk to disk backup, whether you want to have the incremental backups offered by Time Machine, or if you just want a copy, and anything else you can think to tell us about your situation and the problem you are trying to solve.

  • Will my time capsule be inaccessible to one computer while backing up other computers?

    Will my time capsule be inaccessible to one computer while backing up other computers?

    It will be accessible but backup or file-sharing operations may slow down.
    Matt

  • Can i back up 2 macs on one external hard drive?

    can i back up 2 macs on one external hard drive?

    If the external drive is large enough, yes.
    Recent versions of Time Machine will do this across a properly set up and Shared network connection or to a drive on a Server. But you may be unhappy with the amount of Wireless traffic generated to perform the backups, especially the initial full backup.
    Utilities like Carbon Copy Cloner will do this ONLY when performing a file-by-file backup. A "Disk Image" backup reproduces the Source disk, including blank space, and fills the entire Destination drive with the Source Disk image.

  • How Can I transfer TM back up from one hard drive to a different drive??

    Set up Is:
    1 iMac with internal 500 GB drive
    1 external 120 GB FW400
    1 external 500 GB FW400
    1 external 1.5 TB FW800
    Right now TM is backing everything up on my 500GB and it's full. I bought a new hard drive today(1.5 TB) and would like that to be the new drive TM backs everything to. How do I do this so TM is not effected by me changing the destination of where to back everything up to? Can I just copy all the TM back up files from the 500 GB drive to the 1.5 TB drive and then change the destination in the TM Preferences? Or what do I need to do?
    Thanks for any help!
    Tyler

    Thanks Wullus,
    It took all night for SuperDuper! to make its copy! WOW that was slow! Then I made sure all my data was copied over. Then I opened System Preferences for TM and clicked on the button that said to change disk. After I made that change TM did a back up and it works great! Im now using disk Utilities to erase the old TM drive and Im Zeroing out the data also which it looks like it is going to take it 5 hours to Zero out.
    Thanks for everyones help
    Tyler

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