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Two macs using one external HD?

A

Ad Pro

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 4, 2007
86
0
UK
Hi, I have an iMac and a MacBook Pro. I want to use an external hard drive as a file store, for all my photos and old work. Both the iMac and MacBook Pro will need to access the drive.

Is there any problem with two Macs using one drive at the same time?

Also I will have a backup of the drive on another external, If I schedule a backup on my iMac (not sure what App. I will use, may set up a RAID 1) will the files still be backed up when I write a file to the drive from my MacBook Pro?
 
Ad Pro said:
Hi, I have an iMac and a MacBook Pro. I want to use an external hard drive as a file store, for all my photos and old work. Both the iMac and MacBook Pro will need to access the drive.

Is there any problem with two Macs using one drive at the same time?
Click to expand...
You can't connect one drive to two computers simultaneously via USB/Firewire. However, you can connect the drive to one computer, and then enable personal file sharing on that computer which will allow you to connect to the drive from the other computer over the network.
Also I will have a backup of the drive on another external, If I schedule a backup on my iMac (not sure what App. I will use, may set up a RAID 1) will the files still be backed up when I write a file to the drive from my MacBook Pro?
Click to expand...
I'm not 100% sure what you mean. If the backup happens *after* you write to the drive from your MBP, then whatever your MBP has written will get backed up. If the backup happens *before* you write to the drive from your MBP, then that write will not get backed up.

As an aside, RAID 1 is a very bad idea as a backup solution. If any data on your primary drive gets borked (hardware/software corruption, accidental deletion/overwrite, etc.), that bork-up will get mirrored to the secondary drive automatically. Better to do periodic backups.
 
Super Macho Man said:
You can't connect one drive to two computers simultaneously via USB/Firewire. However, you can connect the drive to one computer, and then enable personal file sharing on that computer which will allow you to connect to the drive from the other computer over the network.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that answers my question perfectly. Don't know why I didn't think of doing it that way. I presume the network can just comprise of a firewire cable from one mac to the other - will this work?
 
Ad Pro said:
Ok, thats great!

Here is what I have in mind (the MBP time machine backup and file storage are on sepparate partitions on the same drive), any obvious problems with this?:

View attachment 91495
Click to expand...

Looks good. I would get a Gigabit ethernet switch (sometimes $20 after rebate for 5 port), and run cat5e or cat6, cat6e cable for gigabit ethernet speed.

If you can afford it, get drives with firewire 800.
 
Consultant said:
Looks good. I would get a Gigabit ethernet switch (sometimes $20 after rebate for 5 port), and run cat5e or cat6, cat6e cable for gigabit ethernet speed.

If you can afford it, get drives with firewire 800.
Click to expand...

Could you explain this in more detail please, I presume you are talking about the network setup between the two macs, this sounds great.... please tell me more and what are the advantages - how do you go about setting it up etc?

And yes, all the drives I am getting have FW800.
 
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