How do you use time machine with two macs?

Question

I have an external hard drive hooked up to one of my macs. How do I get it to back up both macs?

Answer 1

You create the password for someone when you add them as a user under Users box in the Sharing Preferences > File Sharing. you have to click the plus sign under the users box to see this come up. you will get a mini address book looking thing, but I suggest just hitting the New Person button. you will see a dialog that asks for this new persons name AND password.
So lets say you want to share HardDisk123.
1) First you add HardDisk123 to the Shared Folders list on the left.
2) Then, making sure HardDisk123 is selected, you click the plus + under users on the right.
3) In the window that opens, you click "New Person" and create a username and password.
4) Once you OK out of that window, set that new persons permissions (Read & Write, Read only, etc), using the little up and down arrows next to their name.
Now you have shared HardDisk123, and created a new account that can access HardDisk123. That new account doesn't have access to anything else on your computer.
Enabling SMB sharing (in Options) is a global setting. Its confusing because you may see 1 or more users in the list there. But those are not really the same users we were just dealing with (although there could be overlap). The list of users that appear under SMB sharing in that options page is users that have an account on your computer. When you start up your computer, if you don't have automatic login set up, you are prompted to , well LOG IN. Thats how you can have a whole family of different users on one computer. They each log in separately and all have different desktop backgrounds, screen saver settings, etc etc. It how you keep your kids from deleting all your files. Well, if you have multiple user accounts setup (in the Accounts preference pane) then they will show up here under SMB and you can individually enable SMB sharing for all or just a few of those users. When you try to do that, it asks for a password.
So don't confuse those users, with accounts you create to give people on your network access to your folders on your computer.