Getting access to Time Capsule backups of both my Macs?

[urbaneast]

I have two Macbooks (Macbook Pro and Air, both running Mountain Lion) which I am backing up via wifi with my 2TB Time Capsule. I also use the Time Capsule as a hard drive for storing stuff from a third PC.)



When I go to one of my Mac machines and click on Devices-->Time Machine in Finder, I can only see the backups for that Mac only, not the other one. And yet, when I click on the Time Capsule (named "TCK") under "Shared," I can see the sparse bundles for both backups. I've gone to

System Preferences--->Time Capsule and looked at the options, but none of the options appear relevant.

Everything (the two backups/spare bundles and the files from my PC) are stored in a subdirectory (a "sharepoint) in the time capsule called "Data."

Also, although I have remote access to the files I've stored manually on the Time Capsule hard drive , there appears to be no way to get remote access to the Time Capsule backups of my two Macs.

I have BacktoMyMac enabled on both machines, so of course, I can connect to the other machine directly. But what I'm trying to do is get access to the backups for both machines. I have file sharing and Share Disks over WAN checked in the AirPort utillity, so that's not the problem. If you have any idea how I can fix this, I'd very much appreciate your help! (My knowledge of technospeak is weak, so please be patient.)


I'm using MacBook Air (mid 2013) and Macbook Pro Retina (mid-2014), running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5.

 

[priitv8]

You need to mount the sparsebundle(s) to access the TimeMachine backed up data.
As you can see them both, you can mount and access backups of both computers.
That's precisely how Time Machine works over the network. The behaviour is different on direcltly connected drives.
See the last pink box here: http://pondini.org/TM/33.html

 

[urbaneast]

Thanks, Privt. I appreciate your response.

Is there any way I can access the other computer's sparsebundle remotely? I can access the hard drive remotely and have access the files stored there, so it would make sense that I could access the contents of both sparsebundles remotely also?

I know this is not to be done on a regular basis, but I would like to do this occasionally.

 

[priitv8]

if you generally have set up WAN access to your TC disk, then of course you can also access those sparsebundles.
However, as they generally contain hundreds of thousands of links to files, the performance might be really painful, depending on your DSP's upload speed.

 

[Alrescha]

Option-Click

Once you have shared the Time Capsule drive (you can see the sparse bundles in Finder), Option-Click the Time Machine icon in the menu and choose "Browse other backup disks..."

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

A.

 

[urbaneast]

Once you have shared the Time Capsule drive (you can see the sparse bundles in Finder), Option-Click the Time Machine icon in the menu and choose "Browse other backup disks..."

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

A.

Alrescha, I tried this and unfortunately, it doesn't even work on a LAN. It only gives me access to the time-capsule disk of the computer I'm working on. Again, I do have the shared Time Capsule drive, but this method doesn't give me access to it.

 

[Alrescha]

Alrescha, I tried this and unfortunately, it doesn't even work on a LAN.

I am afraid you are right - I tested the interface and everything worked as described - but if I actually go browsing, it looks like I am stuck in my normal Time Machine volume. I do not have any more suggestions, mounting the sparsebundle manually as suggested by others may be the only solution.

A.

 

[urbaneast]

Thanks, Alrescha. I really appreciate it!