Backup/Time machine HD advice

[maelstromr]

Hello Mac Gurus,

I have a MacPro tower, latest version, a Macbook (2ghz intel core duo) and a PBG4 (latest model from that family) that I would like to back up onto one volume rather than worry about three separate hard drives.

My home network is set-up through an airport extreme base station, so I am inclined to plug in a USB harddrive into that rather than buy a new time capsule unit, unless that is a better option. I am also considering buying a new internal drive for the tower and using it as the back up drive from inside the desktop computer. Currently I have two separate drives connected to the USB and FW800 ports on the macbook and macpro respectively.

Of these three options (time capsule, AE w/ USB drive and internal SATA) which is preferable? Is it as simple as partitioning one drive into 3 parts for this operation? Are there other options or concerns I should consider?

Thanks for your help in advance.

 

[Latro]

Maelstromr, I believe you don't have to do anything but select the aiport extreme with the usb hd and select it from each computer.

Time Machine supports backing up multiple computers on one disk without any need for repartitioning.

You can also restore from different computers backups in Time Machine.

 

[soberbrain]

Latro's right - no partitioning required. Time Machine will save the files into 3 folders for each of your Macs.

You can partition your external if you need space for something else. Since TM will keep weekly backups until the drive is full, I've partitioned space aside for video projects.

 

[iPhil]

The previous posters posted multi-mac backup is "solved"...


My Q is for OP: How big is your home folder on each machine? and How long do you want have backups for ?


If You want 4 month+ backups then I'd suggest minimum of this and this.



I currently use this setup for TM for 1 Mac before I transferred the file it was 92GB... I went from 320GB TM drive to 640GB TM drive since my boot drive was on the down hill ... Now I'm on the 320GB as the boot drive....