Sharing a Time Machine drive attached to an iMac with MacBooks

[carmen617]

I have lots of Mac clients who have old Time Capsules still, set up years ago, chugging away "backing up" multiple Macs in their homes. However, this set up is problematic, mostly because Apple no longer supports it, but also because restoring from these Time Capsules is awful. So, Apple says I can set up a drive on one iMac, and then share it, to be used by other household Macs as a networked Time Machine drive. The documentation on how to set this up is pretty sparse, and the two times I've tried to get it working I could see the drive but never get permissions to work properly, so that the MacBooks could actually start backing up to the Time Machine drive.

Has anybody actually set this up successfully, and have a link, or some suggestions for me, in terms of what I have to do to get it working?

 

[Markverhyden]

Post links to what you tried. What versions of macOS? Any error messages. I've done this before and it does work. That being said, just like any other computer, share points can disappear. Which is always been a problem with machine attached storage. What do they have for routers? Many modern consumer ones support an attached USB storage device.

 

[timeshifter]

I’d suggest getting a small Synology NAS for this. Synology supports this and there are a lot of people using it.

 

[NviGate Systems]

Yeah, Time Capsules are a ticking time bomb. Those drives are what, at least a decade old now?

 

[carmen617]

Post links to what you tried. What versions of macOS? Any error messages. I've done this before and it does work. That being said, just like any other computer, share points can disappear. Which is always been a problem with machine attached storage. What do they have for routers? Many modern consumer ones support an attached USB storage device.

Hi Mark,

Actually didn't try much, and foolishly didn't copy the error message. Have tried this for two clients, and in both cases set up a standard 5TB external drive as a Time Machine drive on an always on iMac running Catalina, using these Apple steps to share the drive to other devices:

Back up to a shared folder with Time Machine on Mac

On a Mac, share a folder that other Mac computers on your network can use for Time Machine backups.

support.apple.com

The other devices are MacBooks running a mix of Catalina and Ventura. When I try to access the drive to set up Time Machine on the remote computers, it sees the drive but won't allow the log-in credentials to connect. I have tried setting up a separate folder on the drive itself just for the remote Macs. I have tried inputting the user name and password for the iMac, I've tried just using "guest" access (which I allow when I set up the share), and I've tried creating a new user just to test and see if the remote MacBook can connect with that. Restarting all devices doesn't solve the problem.

As I said, have tried twice, stupidly didn't take a picture of the exact error message, but have had the same result, so clearly I am missing something in the setup process.