How to partition a used mac hd

[mdechristi]

Hi,

I'm fairly new to Mac. After 25 years of working with pcs, I finally discovered Apple 2 years ago and I love it!

Anyway, I've steadily replaced my old pcs with an Imac and two macbooks. I still have one pc with old files. But as soon as it gets virus infected, it will be replaced with a Mac.

Anyway, my eldest son has a 500 gig Apple external HD which has 334 gig free which he uses to back up his 250 gig Macbook.
My children use an iMac with 250 HD and 105 gig free.
I use a 250 gig Macbook with 194 gig available.

Can the 500 gig external HD be used to back up all three Macs with Time Machine without losing the information that is already on the drive?

Any advice?

Juan

 

[Dave Braine]

Yes, but it's not really big enough for 3 Macs. It's got 334gb free and the first TM backup of the other two Macs would take 200 of that. Plus, you would need a partition for each Mac, which would erase what's already on there.

Ideally one drive per Mac, then if you have a failure you don't lose the backup of all three computers.

 

[DewGuy1999]

Macworld: Back up multiple computers with Time Machine