If you read my previous post about how to format an external drive for Mac, you know that I bought a 2TB Seagate Expansion external hard drive and managed to create two partitions on the disk — one for Mac backup purposes, and the other for personal use.
- Can I Backup Two Macs On One External Hard Drive
- Can I Backup Two Macs On One External Hard Drives
- Can I Backup Two Macs On One External Hard Drive Software Download
In this article, I’m going to show you how to back up your Mac data to an external drive. You should back up your Mac on a regular basis, especially if you’re planning to perform macOS updates.
I did this several weeks ago while preparing my MacBook Pro for a system update. Make your own videos free download. You may also be interested in taking a look at the macOS Catalina slow issues we encountered during that process just in case you also want to upgrade your Mac to the latest operating system.
Any external drive can backup as many computers as there is space on the external drive, through any number of ways. See Document ID: 206419 for information on how to store data on hard drives. If you're physically switching the disk from one Mac to another, that can be a bit of a problem, too. Eventually you may damage one of the ports, and you won't get backups of the Mac that's not connected. An alternative might be to leave the drive connected to a desktop Mac, and back the other one up to the same drive via your network. How to Backup a Mac to an External Hard Drive Insert your drive and use the Disk Utility app to format it. Open two Finder windows. One should show your internal drive, while the other should show. If you make two different partitions in the external HD, you can easily have the two different Time Machine backup in the each partition. You only need to specify the partition to use for the MacBook during the initial Time Machine setup. Then the Mac would know which partition to use for its backup the next time you connect the external HD.
Please note that the backup tool that I used is Time Machine, a built-in app provided by Apple. If you want to back up your Mac data without using Time Machine, there are also other third-party Mac backup software worth considering.
Where is Time Machine on Mac?
Time Machine is a built-in app within macOS ever since OS X 10.5. To find it, click on the Apple logo on the top left corner of your screen, then select System Preferences.
In the Preferences Pane, you’ll see the app located between “Date & Time” and “Accessibility”.
What does Time Machine Backup?
Time Machine is the easiest way to back up Mac. And the app is created and recommended by Apple. Once you have a timely backup, it’s incredibly easy to restore all or part of your data in case of accidental deletion or a hard drive crash.
So, what kind of data does Time Machine backup? Everything!
Photos, videos, documents, applications, system files, accounts, preferences, messages, you name it. They all can be backed up by Time Machine. You can then restore your data from a Time Machine snapshot. To do so, first open Finder, then Applications, and click on Time Machine to continue.
Be aware that the recovery process can be only be conducted when your Mac can start up normally.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Backing up Mac to an External Hard Drive
Note: the screenshots below are taken based on an older macOS. If your Mac is running Mojave or Catalina, they will look slightly different but the process should be similar.
Step 1: Connect your external hard drive.
First, use the USB cable (or USB-C cable if you’re on the newest Mac model with Thunderbolt 3 ports) that comes with your external drive to connect that drive to your Mac.
Once the disk icon shows up on your desktop (if it doesn’t, open Finder > Preferences > General, and here make sure you’ve checked “External disks” to let them show on the desktop), move on to Step 2.
Note: if your external drive can’t show up on Mac or macOS hints the drive is not supported, you’ll have to re-format it to a Mac-compatible file system before continuing the following steps.
Step 2: Select the disk for backup.
Now open Time Machine (I tell you how above) and select the disk you want to use. I have partitioned my Seagate drive into two new volumes, “Backup” and “Personal Use”, as you see from the screenshot. I chose “Backup”.
Step 3: Confirm backup (optional).
If you have used another disk for backup before, Time Machine will ask you whether you want to stop backing up to the previous disk and use the new one instead. It’s up to you. I selected “Replace”.
Step 4: Wait until the process is complete.
Now Time Machine will start to backup all your data. The progress bar gives you an estimate of how much time is left before the backup is complete. I found it a bit inaccurate: Initially, it said “About 5 hours remaining”, but it only took two hours to finish. It’s worth noting that the remaining time may vary from case to case depending on the write speed of your external hard drive.
After about an hour and a half, it says only 15 minutes remaining
Step 5: Eject your external drive and unplug it.
When the backup procedure is completed, don’t rush to disconnect your device as this could cause potential disk problems. Instead, go back to the main desktop, locate the volume that your external hard drive represents, right-click and select Eject. Then, you can safely unplug the device and put it in a safe place.
Final Words
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Like any other hardware device, an external hard drive will fail sooner or later. It’s best to make a copy of the data on your external drive — as they say, a “backup of your backups”!
One good option is to use cloud storage services like iDrive which I’ve been using and I really like the app because it’s super easy to use, and it also allows me to download Facebook photos automatically. Backblaze and Carbonite are also popular options in the market, though I am yet to give them a try.
I hope you find this tutorial helpful. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of data backup these days, especially when my mid-2012 MacBook hard drive died all of a sudden. I’ve also seen cases where my friend’s computer and hard drive failed. You can imagine their desperation. Without a proper backup, it’s really hard to restore data. Although you could try a third-party data recovery program, chances are they won’t get all your lost data back.
Anyway, the main takeaway I want you to have from this article is this: back up your Mac with Time Machine or another app, and create a second or third copy of those backups if you can.
Why backup multiple computers on one external drive?
Nowadays, one family holds usually more than one computer for different uses. Each computer, more or less, stores important data that needs to be backed up. So if disaster occurs, there is a way to get the data back. Well, so many devices could be used as the backup storage, why choose one and only one external hard drive as the destination path?
Can I Backup Two Macs On One External Hard Drive
Generally speaking, user who hasn’t purchase an external disk may think about backing up these computers to other storages, such as cloud storage and NAS. Truthfully, these two are not bad choices for large scale computers backup.
However, compared with external hard drive, there are two factors you need to pay attention to. One is the backup speed. Backing up files especially large-sized files to cloud takes up a lot of time. The other is storage price. For most families, it is a little bit wasteful to purchase a NAS for home computer backups. For office backup, it is not a bad choice though.
External drive ranks among the best of optional backup storages. It is easy to carry due to its portable property. An external hard drive with 1TB or 2TB capacity is affordable for most PC users. It is quite easy to backup one computer to external drive, so some users tend to purchase as many external drives as computers.
Equipping each PC with one external drive is acceptable so long as there are enough budgets. But from common perspective, that is costly and to some extent hard to manage.
Now that it is possible to backup multiple computers to one external drive, why not? Now, let’s learn how to backup more than one computer to a single external drive in details.
How to backup multiple computers on one external hard drive?
It is important to know that the external hard drive you are going to used as the backup storage should be large enough to store at least all the files you want to backup, let alone later scheduled backup with backup scheme.
Solutions are different when you buy different external hard drives. For instance, there are network type external drive and USB type external drive on the market. Network type external drive like Seagate FreeAgent has bundled backup software that allows its user to backup multiple computers with unique computer name to separate directories of the drive.
Each directory’s name is named after each computer’s name. It also has tutorial to guide you do the backup. Such backup solution really helps a lot yet it needs software license or the like in most cases.
The other USB type external hard drive is the most common one in our daily life. It can be connected to any computer via USB cable and USB port. The drawback of this type external disk is that it can only connect to one computer at a time. Obviously, we need to find a way to let it become the backup storage of all computers’ files.
Auto backup two computers to one external drive in Windows 7
A low tech way is to create sub-folders for each computer on the external drive, connect it to one computer and backup it to the corresponding sub-folder. Keep moving the external back and forth between computers every few days so they each get a chance to backup. This is the easiest way yet it needs more time and effort.
If these computers are all in the same segment of LAN and they can “see” each other in Network like picture below, things would be better. We can set the external drive as network shared that is available for all computers in LAN. Then choose a backup utility like AOMEI Backupper Professional to backup computer to network location.
It allows you backup system, entire disk and single files to external disk. File sync is also available. Sounds simple, isn’t it? Keep reading to learn the specific steps.
1. Attach your external drive to one of the computers first. If it is a new drive, you need to format hard drive before you can use it. Find the external drive in Windows Explorer, create several folders for each computer and you can name the folder after computer’s name or just numbers.
2. In Windows Explorer, right click the backup drive and select Properties > Sharing. You’ll find Not Shared under Network Path. Minecraft official version free download. Click Advanced Sharing and check Share this folder box in the pop-up window. You are allowed input comments here. Be sure to click Permissions.
3. In the Permission dialog, make sure Full control, Change and Read all have Allow checked. Then click Apply to save the change.
4. Back to the Properties window, you can see the network path of this drive is “Aomei-pcf” in this example. Keep it in mind because you’ll need it later.
![Can I Backup Two Macs On One External Hard Drive Can I Backup Two Macs On One External Hard Drive](https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/backup-plus-hub.jpg)
Note: This action will make any machine on the local network have full access to this drive, for example read and write to it. It’s still protected by the security software on the machine it’s connected to, and it’s still behind the routers firewall so it’s inaccessible from the Internet.
5. Download, install and run AOMEI Backupper on both computers. Follow these steps to backup multiple computers to one external drive. For example, click on File Backup. Select files and folders you want to backup via Add File or Add Folder and then click to select a network path.
6. At this page, click Add Network Location and then input the aforementioned network path to open the backup folder.
7. Click Schedule to set regular and auto backup with Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Event-trigger. Finally, click Start Backup to run the backup.
Can I Backup Two Macs On One External Hard Drives
Important: if you unplug and re-plug the external drive after sharing, the drive letter could be assigned to a different one, which will cause the backup destination path inaccessible and invalid. So take caution with that behavior.
Tips:
- You can set email notification and password protected in Options.
- Scheme can help you manage destination storage by auto deleting old backups.
- System Backup, Disk Backup, Partition Backup and File Sync are available as well.
- The follow-up backup work can also be done using Windows Backup and Restore which surely provides limited function compared with AOMEI Backupper.
Important notice: if you've mapped an external hard drive as network drive, it is better to use AOMEI Centralized Backupper to centralized backup multiple clients (computers) to the external drive from one console easily and quickly.
Summary
Can I Backup Two Macs On One External Hard Drive Software Download
Can you backup multiple computers to one external hard drive and even automatically? I’m sure you have had answer for the question after this tutorial. As covered before, many solutions can help you reach the goal, just select the most suitable one for yourself.
The backup software in the example also has the ability to backup multiple hard drives to external drive under same Windows operating system. You may want to download (Windows 10, 8/8.1, 7, XP and Vista compatible) this tool and learn more.
If you want to protect unlimited computers within your company, you can pick AOMEI Backupper Technician. With the inbuilt AOMEI Image Deploy tool, you are also allowed to deploy/restore system image file on server-side computer to multiple client-side computers over network.