Windows and OSX backups on one EHD

Craigus · 6 Mar 2016 at 22:30

Hi, I have had a good search around but would like a bit of advice on this.

I've purchased an External Hard Drive to backup my Macbook but would also like to backup my windows pc. I know I can partition the drive to accomplish this, what file systems are best to use to format the partitions (exFAT etc.)?

Is there anything else I need to be aware of doing backups this way? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Edwin009 · 7 Mar 2016 at 20:47

External drive for both Windows and MAC

Hi,

I came across this article from another forum which explains how you can use external drive for both Windows and MAC. Hope this helps you: http://www.pcworld.com/article/250431/how_to_share_an_external_drive_between_a_mac_and_a_pc.html

Regards,
Edwin.

Deleted member 77746 · 7 Mar 2016 at 21:16

Just format it to ExFat. Will work in OSX / Windows no problem.

dlite · 8 Mar 2016 at 11:31

If you want to use Time Machine to take the backups of your Mac (like you should), you need to do a bit more than just format the hard disk to exfat:

This is a copy of the article found from macworld.com (original has apparently quite annoying advertising so I paste it here).

I wanted to use Time Machine on my exFAT hard drive, but turns out that these volumes aren't supported from Time Machine! There is a very simple way to use Time Machines on unsupported hard drives, as long as you follow these instructions carefully you shouldn't have any issues at all.

First, connect the unsupported volume (in this case, an exFAT external hard drive.) When it mounts, open the Terminal and type these commands, substituting 'My External HDD Name' for the name of the unsupported volume.

cd /Volumes
cd 'My External HDD Name'

Next, type this code, substituting for your needs:

hdiutil create -size 320g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -fs "HFS+J" MacBook-Backup.sparsebundle
open MacBook-Backup.sparsebundle

Here, a 320GB sparse bundle named 'MacBook-Backup' is being made and mounted. You can change these values as you see fit. From herein, I'll refer to the sparse bundle name as 'MacBook-Backup'.

After you've run these commands, a new volume named untitled will appear on your Desktop. This will become your Time Machine backup volume. If you want, rename it to something else (I called mine MacBook Pro Backup) and run the command:

diskutil list

You should see a list appear of all connected volumes. Find your new volume's name and read along until you find the disk identifier. In this case, my identifier is disk2s2, but yours may be different.

Finally, enter the commands below (entering your password if prompted). Replace disk2s2 with your identifier, and 'MacBook Pro Backup' with the name of your new Time Machine volume.

sudo diskutil enableOwnership /dev/disk2s2
sudo tmutil setdestination '/Volumes/MacBook Pro Backup'

Now, open the Time Machine preference pane in System Preferences, and turn Time Machine on. That's it - you've set up Time Machine with an unsupported volume!

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20140415132734925