Network backups Time Machine doesn’t only back up a single Mac. You can backup a network of Macs to a shared server or a single hard disk. Folders on the backup disc are organised by computer name to keep them separate. Here’s how to backup to a disk connected to another Mac.
Step by Step Guide
Step 1
Make sure that the Mac with the external hard drive connected is available to other users on the network. For shared backups to work each Mac must be running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. On this host Mac, open System Preferences and select the Sharing Pane. Turn on File Sharing.
Step 2
On other Macs on the network, the host Mac should appear under the Finder window’s sidebar’s Sharing tab. To access the shared drive you will need to login to the host Mac. Click the Connect As … button in the Finder window toolbar and enter the host Mac’s login details.
Step 3
You should now be able to access the shared drive. Open Time Machine and when it prompts you that a storage location for backups hasn’t yet been set up, click the ‘Set Up Time Machine’ button and select the shared drive from the list.
Step 4
Time Machine should now backup files seamlessly, although backups will be slower over a network. Time Machine backups from each Mac can co-exist happily. They are kept separate and are organised by Computer name, followed by the backup date and the files backed up.
Backup Price: Free for .Mac subscribers
URL: www.mac.com
In the furore over Time Machine, it’s easy to forget that Apple already offers another capable backup program that can run on pre-Leopard Macs. Backup 3, available free to .Mac subscribers, doesn’t revolutionise backups in the same way as Time Machine, but it’s more powerful than many give it credit for.
It stores incremental backups, like Time Machine, but it can do one thing that Time Machine can’t: it can copy files directly to your iDisk. Thanks to the fact that iDisks can now hold up to 10Gb, this means that you can now store much of your smaller, but vital files – such as the contents of your Preferences or Documents folder – off-site. Even if your Mac is stolen or lost, your most important files will be safe on Apple’s servers.
Backup includes ‘QuickPicks’ to allow you to quickly create backup schedules for documents relating to particular applications. By default a ‘Personal Data & Settings’ schedule copies your Address Book, iCal, Keychain and Safari settings, but you can easily create your own. Media schedules can be mixed, so you can create a set of routines that back up some files online, while archiving large files that change less frequently to DVD or CD.
Pros: Online backup + multiple media scheduling
Cons: Only available to .Mac subscribers
When Time Machine first scans your system, it creates a full copy of every file on it. After that it runs every hour, copying the files changed since the last scan. It keeps multiple versions of a file: if one has changed and the backup drive already has a copy, it is renamed rather than being overwritten. The backups themselves are stored in a ‘Backups.backupdb’ catalog in the root folder of your Time Machine backup drive. Inside this is a series of date-stamped subfolders for each Mac being backed up and each subfolder is stamped with the time at which file was appended to the archive – you can open these and see any files that have changed. Time Machine doesn’t keep every hourly change. After 24 hours it merges hourly backups into a daily backup, and after a month it puts daily backups into a single weekly snapshot.
Backups are handy, but who wants to trail an external drive around with them? If you’re on a network you can use a single server or a hard disk connected to another Mac as a backup device. Just make sure the other Mac is running Leopard and has Personal File Sharing enabled in its System Preferences’ Sharing Pane.
That begs the obvious question: can more than one Mac share the same single backup drive? The answer is yes – as long as there’s enough space. Each backup folder is organised by computer name, so individual backups are kept separate by Time Machine.
