Multiple Time-machines Multiple Macs

[smogsy]

I got possibly a rare issue but wonder if there is a way to fix it

Issue
when switching from Mac Home to Mac Work or via versa The other laptops Time Machine wants to connect to the laptop & spams do you want to connect X drive (with password) if I hit cancel it just reappears, happens 3-4 times
only workaround found is use another Thunderbolt port to connect to each mac

What I want
everything connected to the caldigit dock & a way to ignore that drive

Setup
Home
MacBook Pro M3

work
MacBook Pro M1

both are connected to Caldigit TS4 element

is it possible?

 

[Bigwaff]

both are connected to Caldigit TS4 element

How are “both connected”? Hub support only one computer at a time.

 

[smogsy]

How are “both connected”? Hub support only one computer at a time.

I’m swapping the cable from one Mac to other and the. Tm drives moans about the other Mac’s drive

 

[Brian33]

At boot time login, macOS tries to mount all of the volumes it can see on the drive(s) that are connected. If a volume is encrypted, macOS asks for the password in order to mount it.

The easiest way to prevent the password box is to enter the correct password and check "save to keychain". Then you won't get asked again. However, the password will be in that computer's keychain.

If that's not acceptable, it is possible to tell macOS not to try to automount a specific volume. In the way I know, you have to use Terminal.app to modify the file /etc/fstab, using the vifs command.

Add a line (with your volume's UUID) similar to :
UUID=7EBA11EA-6636-3AFD-8381-9EA471B8D49D none apfs ro,noauto

After that, macOS will not automatically try to mount that volume at login. (It can still be mounted with either the Disk Utility app or 'diskutil' command, when needed.)

There are probably some gui apps that will prevent volumes from being mounted at boot login, also.

 

[smogsy]

At boot time, macOS tries to mount all of the volumes it can see on the drive(s) that are connected. If a volume is encrypted, macOS asks for the password in order to mount it.

The easiest way to prevent the password box is to enter the correct password and check "save to keychain". Then you won't get asked again. However, the password will be in that computer's keychain.

If that's not acceptable, it is possible to tell macOS not to try to automount a specific volume. In the way I know, you have to use Terminal.app to modify the file /etc/fstab, using the vifs command.

Add a line (with your volume's UUID) similar to :
UUID=7EBA11EA-6636-3AFD-8381-9EA471B8D49D none apfs ro,noauto

After that, macOS will not automatically try to mount that volume. (It can still be mounted with either the Disk Utility app or 'diskutil' command, when needed.)

There are probably some gui apps that will prevent volumes from being mounted at boot, also.

ahh cheers, that makes sense Fstab is how I would do it on Linux, but thought there might be a nicer way. cheers
out of curiosity do you know the GUI version also?

 

[Brian33]

out of curiosity do you know the GUI version also?

Sorry, I don't know of one. I did a quick search on the Mac App store. There are a number of apps to help with volumes, but a quick read didn't find any mention of the ability to block an automount. It's hard to imagine that there's not a nice utility that would do what you want... but I didn't find it.

(I made a mistake on my post #4 above -- macOS does the automatic volume mounts at login, not at boot. Doesn't matter for your issue, but I'll edit it to correct it for possible future readers.)