RobCubbon wrote:
I want to be able to go away with my laptop – copy all my work across – and then when I get back home copy over all the files that have changed.
Is there an easy way to do this with Time Machine?
No, TimeMachine drive should remain tethered to the iMac to make backups for the iMac boot drive and your files to restore to a new machine, that's what it's designed for.
Also you should have a TM for the laptop as well. In addition a seperated, occasionally updated bootable clone of each machine on each separate drives and stored off site. As well as burning data DVD's of your most important files and kept offsite in case of burglary, fire, theft, act of God or Satan or a worst a jealous spouse.
Most commonly used backup methods
I know that's a lot of drives, but it brings a lot of peace when something goes horribly wrong.
Now I have a nice solution for your laptop and iMac.
What you need is the free program called SyncTwoFolders over at Macupdate.com
What you do with this is you pick certain folder like documents and you Sync in either direction according to what you need, once it's (very very) carefully setup, you simply launch the program and click, it will decide what to copy in either direction so both folders, one on your laptop and one on your iMac, are recently updated and the contents are the same.
This way you have TimeMachine making your saved backup states and can recover on each machine to what it was before the Sync, just in case you make a misake.
