My best friend and I both have 120gig Macbooks. I want to buy a 250 gig hard drive. Is there anyway we could split the hard drive and both back up with Time Machine to the same one?
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Hard drive for Time Machine w/ 2 machines
- Thread starter someone28624
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zen
macrumors 68000
Yeah I'm curious about this two. If you have a shared drive via Airport Extreme, can more than one machine Time Machine to it?
And I don't know much about hard drives, but I have a Fireone external that has two Firewire ports - can I plug two Macs into it and they both mount it?
And I don't know much about hard drives, but I have a Fireone external that has two Firewire ports - can I plug two Macs into it and they both mount it?
I think that would work, you might need to partition it, you might not.
What I'm curious is this:
I have a 250GB internal drive, and a 250GB backup drive. If I use up 80% of the drive, surely the backup will fill up reasonably fast - as it keeps every change. With files as big as several GB, this could fill up in no time!
I guess I need to buy a 500GB hdd? What do you think?
zen
macrumors 68000
Yeah, the bigger the drive, the longer back in time you can go with Time Machine.
You could in the meantime select a folder for Time Machine NOT to include in the backup. For example, I have a 500GB internal drive and a 300GB external one. But on my internal drive, 250GB at least are media files (video and music), so I may as well tell Time Machine not to bother with those. Likewise the Applications folder. So I'll just use Time Machine for documents and pictures mainly. Should cut down the space required.
emptyCup
macrumors 65816
If I understand it correctly, you do not have to partition the Time Machine drive to backup more than one machine. Each machine backs to its own folder.
Also, after the first complete backup only changes are stored. Therefore you do not gain much, and you risk losing everything, by not backing up your media files. If you value your media enough to keep 250GBs of it, it should be backed-up.
No, that wouldn't be possible, it can only be mounted on one machine at a time.
Perhaps attaching it on one mac, and sharing it to the other over the network might work (but would be slow unless you had 802.11N). Otherwise, you will have to swap it between the 2, or buy another drive - they are much cheaper now than they used to be.
If you have an Airport Extreme (N one), you can plug it in there and both comps can use it over the network, that would be an ideal solution for Time Machine, but only if you already have an Airport Extreme.
DavidLeblond
macrumors 68020
Sorry to hijack the thread, I've seen a lot of posts on the internet saying that if you hook a disk up to an Airport Extreme, multiple macs can back up to it with no extra configuration.
I plan on hooking a drive up to my iMac and using that drive to backup the iMac + 2 laptops. Would that be no extra config as well? Or would that require partitioning?
I plan on hooking a drive up to my iMac and using that drive to backup the iMac + 2 laptops. Would that be no extra config as well? Or would that require partitioning?
zen
macrumors 68000
No, so long as the drive is on the network and can be mounted on each Mac, it can be used. Doesn't matter if it is an AirDisk or plugged into another machine.
...which kinda answers my own question from earlier. Wonder what kind of performance hit the iMac would take?
Are Macbooks 802.11n?
...which kinda answers my own question from earlier. Wonder what kind of performance hit the iMac would take?
Are Macbooks 802.11n?
Has the AirPort functionality been re-confirmed? Apple removed all references to using TM via AirPort disks from their site the other day and I've not been able to verify yet that it actually will still work. I'm trying to find out from the people who already have Leopard (illicitly, I know), but my question keeps getting buried by the 1230912349081234 jumping on soapboxes regarding piracy.
good question. I was wondering the same thing if I could back my iMac & MBP up using the same external drive.
If the Airport - USB ends up working out that's going to be the way to go.
man, the excitement is killing me!!
If the Airport - USB ends up working out that's going to be the way to go.
man, the excitement is killing me!!
When I used an ADC build last year, Time Machine created a folder on the external drive with the name of the computer it was backing up. I presume using one drive to store backups from multiple machine is an included feature.
Ok, seems like it would work.
I'm still confused by a few things though. Since time machine stores every change, it doesn't actually store a new copy, does it? It just knows the differences between the files, right? So how much more space than my actual hard drive size, do I actually need?
If my hard drive fails, will I actually be able to boot from the external drive? Or are OS files not stored on there?
And do I need a special hard drive to back up to it wirelessly? How does that work?
I'm still confused by a few things though. Since time machine stores every change, it doesn't actually store a new copy, does it? It just knows the differences between the files, right? So how much more space than my actual hard drive size, do I actually need?
If my hard drive fails, will I actually be able to boot from the external drive? Or are OS files not stored on there?
And do I need a special hard drive to back up to it wirelessly? How does that work?
1. If you have a 1GB file, make a change and save it, time machine looses 1GB. If you have a 5GB file like an iMovie file (it is actually a folder full of files) then it would only increase by a few mb (the size of the file within the folder). So it really depends on how the program handles the file.
The more spare space you have, the longer it will be before time machine has to delete old versions of changed files (it will ask you what to do).
2. Not sure about booting, but the original of every file will be there, and also the latest version. To restore, you put in your leopard DVD and choose the “Restore System from Time Machine” option. So it works as a full backup in case your hard disk dies too!
3. I don't think it will currently backup to a networked drive, though we will have confirmation on that pretty soon. I am sure apple plans to add this feature, but did not have it ready at release time. So expect an update, then buy your network hd.
Partitioning of shared hard drive for time machine?
I don't think I saw a clear answer to whether or not partitioning is required to back up 2 different Macs with Time Machines to one external hard drive. Is there an advantage to doing that?
Would I partition the external drive into 2 parts and have each Mac back up to one of the parts? How do I point each Mac to its own partition?
Thanks for any help.
I don't think I saw a clear answer to whether or not partitioning is required to back up 2 different Macs with Time Machines to one external hard drive. Is there an advantage to doing that?
Would I partition the external drive into 2 parts and have each Mac back up to one of the parts? How do I point each Mac to its own partition?
Thanks for any help.