Multi-user/mac TM setup

[dazole]

I just bought a 500G external drive for use with TM, however, before I try to set everything up, I have a few questions.

The 500G drive will be the TM drive for 2 macs (mini and MB). The mini has 3 users (me, wife and daughter). The MB has 2 (me home and me work). I would like to have all 3 accounts on the mini and the 'me home' account to use the 500G usb drive for TM, attached to the mini (for now).

Do I need to create seperate partitions for each user/machine? Or can I just use it as 1 big partition? (I will be excluding system files from the TM backups).

Other question: How can I setup the usb drive to always be shared? Right now, I have it setup as shared by my admin account on the mini. As soon as that account logs out, the share goes away. Not the best situation for TM backups.

Thanks for any info you can provide,
David

 

[baummer]

I just bought a 500G external drive for use with TM, however, before I try to set everything up, I have a few questions.

The 500G drive will be the TM drive for 2 macs (mini and MB). The mini has 3 users (me, wife and daughter). The MB has 2 (me home and me work). I would like to have all 3 accounts on the mini and the 'me home' account to use the 500G usb drive for TM, attached to the mini (for now).

Do I need to create seperate partitions for each user/machine? Or can I just use it as 1 big partition? (I will be excluding system files from the TM backups).

Other question: How can I setup the usb drive to always be shared? Right now, I have it setup as shared by my admin account on the mini. As soon as that account logs out, the share goes away. Not the best situation for TM backups.

Thanks for any info you can provide,
David

Well, I would recommend splitting it by machine. Make one partition 250GB, another 250GB. Point Partition 1 for the mini, and Partition 2 for the MB.

Although, I think with this setup, it will fill up quickly.