Time Machine Multiple Macs One External Drive

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Time Machine Multiple Macs One External Drive

Before Monterey I used to be able to backup multiple macs to the same external HDD. TM would create a folder for each mac and place the backups there. I cannot seem to do this with Monterey. Each computer wants to format the disk or claim the backups for it's own. Am I missing something?

Please don't preach to me about multiple backups on the same disk. I don't need any lessons on backup best practices, let alone be forced into one. I am just looking for a solution to macOS behavior I was accustomed to.

Posted on Mar 2, 2022 9:39 AM

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Answer 1

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ematech Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 3, 2022 7:57 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thank you for the response. A network share scenario is not effective as the computers are not on the same network. Even if they were, the initial backup would be time and bandwidth intensive. The multiple partition idea seems to be a good one. The manual creation of TM volumes seems to be the best option. I will try that.

I've been using Apple products since 1981. I grow increasingly frustrated with (seemingly) arbitrary changes like this.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,638 points

Mar 3, 2022 6:21 AM in response to ematech

You will either need to partition the drive with a partition for each Mac, or use diskutil in Terminal to create Time Machine volumes on the single partition drive.

Big Sur APFS TM Setup with Quota Specified - Apple Community

You don't need to set up a quota or encrypt the volume, just leave those parts off the command if you don't need them.

Is there any reason you cannot host the drive on one single Mac and let the others connect over the network to back up to it?

You would still need one partition for the host Mac, and a second partition for the other Macs.

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Time Machine Multiple Macs One External Drive

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