Backing up 2 x MacBook Air on 1 x External Hard drive

macrabbit said:

What is the best method to backup 2 x MBA's on 1 x WD 1TB My Passport hard drive?

Should I partition it into two 500gb drives and let Time Machine automatically choose the correct partition?

would like to do the easiest method.


edit: the primary laptop will be backed up wirelessly via Time Machine with the HD plugged into an Airport Extreme (USB). The secondary laptop will be backed up occasionally using direct USB plug.

Click to expand...

Your Options:

1. Partition in 2 equal Volumes and set up TimeMachine on each mac, one point to the first Volume, the second to the second partition.
None of these are bootable backups.

Edit:
1.1. Partition in 2 equal Volumes, Use Carbon Copy Cloner on each partition.
Both Volumes on the external are bootable.

Edit:
1.2 Partition in 2 equal Volumes, use one with TimeMachine and the other partition with CCC.
One bootable Volume on external HD.

2. One Partition, use the first Mac with TimeMachine and use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a backup using a Disk Image to make the clone.
The disk is not bootable from the external Disk.

3. One Partition and use CCC to back up both Mac's to an Image on the Backup Drive.
This is a not Bootable drive.

4. Buy another external and back up using TimeMachine on both Macs.
Disks are not bootable.

5. As 4. but using CCC to make backups to both disks.
Both disks are bootable.


Carbon Copy Cloner is free up until 3.4.6

macrabbit said:

justperry that was amazing thanks.

I partitioned the drive into 700GB/300GB and CCC'd the second laptop to the 300GB partition, and will have Time Machine backup to the 700GB partition.

Click to expand...

No worries.

You made a good choice, if something happens with any of your macs you can now boot of the external and do damage control/repair the mac.