Time Machine, two computers, and one external HD

Hi. I have a question regarding time machine and laptops. I have an iMac, a Macbook and a WD Mybook external HD. I have time machine setup and working, seemingly well, with the iMac and the external HD. However, I'd also like, from time to time, to be able to backup my macbook as well. Can I use the same external HD, or will that mess up the iMac's backups? And, if I can't use time machine to backup my Macbook, what would your recommend?

The backup of the networked computer will be done to a sparse image while a direct connection will produce just the normal TM file structure. That means that Time Machine will do one backup for the MacBook when it is networked and a completely new backup when the MacBook is hooked directly to the Time Machine drive. In the interest of drive space and time you would probably want to choose either backing up your MacBook directly or over a network and stick to it.

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azemel wrote:
Can anyone tell me if it is possible to copy the backups performed by Time Machine on one external drive to another external drive, and if so, how?
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/18.html

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Time Machine, two computers, and one external HD

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