Airport extreme for time machine, using 2 macs?

[mister.kevin]

Hi all, I have an airport extreme attached to a 1tb Seagate external drive through USB. Currently it is set up with time machine to back up my iMac (500gb) but I'd like to get it to back my macbook (250gb) up too. Both machines run snow leopard but I cannot get the macbook to connect and back up with it. Do I need to partition the drive (something like 600/400 gb) and set each machine to back up to its own partition? Anything else to try?

Thanks in advance

 

[Jolly Giant]

Hi all, I have an airport extreme attached to a 1tb Seagate external drive through USB.

FWIW, the problem may be due to the fact that your setup is not supported.

Disks that can be used with Time Machine

some users report success, for some it does not work at all. even if it does (for a while) you're risking that your backups become corrupted over time.

if you nonetheless wish to continue, you might find some valuable information in this user tip.

also worth a visit: Time Machine Troubleshooting.

good luck !

 

[Brian33]

I'll repeat what Jolly Giant said, that using Time Machine with an AEBS disk isn't officially supported and presumably could fail without warning. I think there's too much risk of not having a good backup when you really need one... but I'll get off my soapbox now.

Since you've gotten it to work with your iMac, I would expect it to work from the MacBook, too...

... Do I need to partition the drive (something like 600/400 gb) and set each machine to back up to its own partition? Anything else to try?

I'm sure you don't need to partition the drive. The TM software should create one .sparsebundle file for each Mac.

What do you mean, "I cannot get the macbook to connect?" Does the airport disk show up in the MacBook's Finder? I think it should... if so, then does it show up in the MacBook's Time Machine preference pane (click Select Disk)?

Regards,
Brian33