Time machine Back up

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I want to back up two macs using time machine to my WD hard drive what is the best way to do this without moving the hard drive back and forth? also am I in the right place?
 
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You need a networking drive or a Time Capsule to do it reliably.
 
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what do you mean by reliable? Also if I don't want to go buy new equipment, how can I do it with a WD hard drive and two macs?
 

Slydude

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I assume you are using a router as part of a home network? If so, check its documentation some of them support attaching an existing hard drive to the router, That may or may not work depending upon how the router requires the drive be formatted.

If you can provide make and model of the router our brain trust here can probably help.
 
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I don't have the manual to the router because it is one my cable company gave me, I know its model number is techncolor model number TC8305C. It has a usb port on the back of it, and I tried just plugging the drive in to it and the drive did not show up on the macs, am I missing some steps to get it there?
 
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Most of the time a USB port is to run a diagnostic or flash a device not always is it for adding devices or drives unless stated by the manufacturer.
What I meant by reliable is it not supported by Apple and if you run into problems they will not be much help that being said I ran a 1TB drive connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station for years but not trouble free occasionally it required using Finder to disconnect and reconnect I have not experienced that problem using a NAS or Time Capsule.
 

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I did a little Google foo a few minutes ago and found the manual for that router. It appears the USB port was intended for things like powering some phones and other devices (not very specific about which ones). There's no mention of it being able to recognize an attached hard drive.

I think this is the user guide
 
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thank you for finding that, I see what you mean by the manual not specific about what it supports. So does that mean that there is no way to do what I want?
 

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You can back over a network using a drive attached to another Mac. See this article. Look in the Portable Mac section of that article. It discusses the basics of backing up to a shared drive on another Mac. Follow the link in that section it has more specifics about setup.

Edit: I haven't tried this method so I can't vouch for how much the backup slows down if the first (host) Mac is being used while the second Mac is trying to do a backup, Obviously both Macs have to be on and connected to the network for the backup to take place
 
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