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Is it possible to back up two Macs to one backup drive?

I have a Mid 2010 MacBook and a Mid 2007 iMac. I am currently backing up the MacBook to a WD My Passport backup drive. There is still plenty of room on the drive, and I would like to begin backing up the iMac as well. Is it possible to back up both the MacBook and the iMac on the same hard drive?



Thank you!

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Feb 15, 2014 7:09 PM

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Posted on Feb 15, 2014 7:13 PM

Yes, you can. You will need to have separate partitions on the external drive - use Disk utility to partition it.

8 replies

Feb 15, 2014 10:09 PM in response to JBActor

What backup method are you using?


@ Linc:


Unless I'm missing something, for both Time Machine and bootable clones, you do need to have a separate partition for different Macs/backups. If I am wrong there, how can two bootable clones or TM backups co-exist on one partition?


If you simply use drag 'n drop, then you wouldn't have to have a separate partition of course, but in order to be able to easily see which file belongs where, a separate partition would be helpful there as well.

Is it possible to back up two Macs to one backup drive?

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