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Rename Mac?

I gave my old iMac to my wife, and bought a new one. Both are running ML. I migrated the old one. Now both iMacs have the same name (Joe's iMac). That seems to be confusing the Time Capsule: Joe's iMac.sparsebundle is listed there twice. And TM keeps doing complete backups. So I need to rename one of them. How can I rename an iMac?

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on May 1, 2013 8:50 PM

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Posted on May 1, 2013 8:51 PM

Open Sharing preferences and change the name in the top text field.

7 replies

May 1, 2013 8:56 PM in response to DesertRatR

You can rename your Mac easily enough. System Preferences > Sharing. Edit the Computer Name.


That will not do anything to your Time Machine backups though, which will be retained regardless of your computer name.


Presumably you no longer need the old iMac's backup, so turn off Time Machine, erase the Time Capsule's backup disk using AirPort Utility, then turn on Time Machine again and select the Time Capsule's backup disk.

May 1, 2013 9:02 PM in response to John Galt

I don't believe this is the case. It may be so with some setups, but I have networked Time Machine backups for my systems (via AFP to a shared folder on a Mac running 10.7) and when I change the name of my system the sparsebundle also changes names to reflect it. Here's a screenshot showing the backup volume directory list on the backup share, where the bundle for my laptop reflects a "1" added to the name when I change my Mac's name:


User uploaded file

Rename Mac?

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