Use Windows Computer for Time Machine?

[BradIJM]

Hey guys, I have a question that I would like to pose, as this goes outside my realm of knowledge. 

Long story short, I am finally upgrading my computer (which was long overdue) ready for University, so I can have a powerful workstation/gaming machine. I am kitting it out with a 1tb NVMe SSD (Windows Partition), a 120gb SSD (Linux and Parrot Security Partitions) and 2 x 2tb HDDs for games and other files (I'm a photographer and videographer). 

I also use a MacBook as my portable machine, and my word processing machine of choice. I want to keep doing backups of both my Mac and the computer. So I was wondering if it was possible to allocate one of the 2tb drives to back up both the gaming machine and the Mac? I know how to do it to back up the main machine, but is there a way to use Time Machine to back up to the hard drive in the computer? 

I don't know if this would require certain software, so anything specific, so please let me know.

TLDR; Can I backup my Mac with Time Machine to a hard drive in my gaming machine?

 

[PyroTheWise]

Couldn't you pull the HDD out of the PC and put it in an USB enclosure?  

 

Then that drive could be switched between the 2 systems as necessary for backups.

[Eigenvektor]

12 minutes ago, brad.i.j.m said:

…, but is there a way to use Time Machine to back up to the hard drive in the computer?

Time Machine requires a partition formatted as HFS+. There are ways to backup to a network drive (I've done it with a network share hosted on a Linux machine) but it was extremely slow.

 

As @PyroTheWise said, it's a much better option to use an external USB drive that can be formatted to HFS+ that the Mac can make full use of for its Time Machine backups.

[BradIJM]

13 minutes ago, PyroTheWise said:

Couldn't you pull the HDD out of the PC and put it in an USB enclosure?  

So right now I have a 2TB external drive which I use for my backups, but I was hoping to clean up my system a bit and streamline the backup process, which is why I want to back up to the hard drives internally. Not that it matters much, just a preference. 

[Eigenvektor]

Just now, brad.i.j.m said:

So right now I have a 2TB external drive which I use for my backups, but I was hoping to clean up my system a bit and streamline the backup process, which is why I want to back up to the hard drives internally. Not that it matters much, just a preference. 

As I said above, it's possible, but I wouldn't recommend it long term. A backup is only a backup if you are able to restore it. Using a HDD that is inside another machine (and also prone to failure) isn't my idea of a reliable backup.

[PyroTheWise]

I am not familiar with Time Machine so I can't really help there.

 

The only other option is to setup the HDD in the PC as a shared drive on  the network.   Then if you can get the mac to connect to the PC through the network then it should be able to backup to it?

 

However as @Eigenvektor says it is not advisable to keep a backup drive in a PC.  If that PC takes a electrical surge then you could lose everything. 

[Eigenvektor]

2 minutes ago, PyroTheWise said:

The only other option is to setup the HDD in the PC as a shared drive on  the network.   Then if you can get the mac to connect to the PC through the network then it should be able to backup to it?

The problem is Time Machine requires a HFS+ partition, which is not something WIndows supports. So you have to create a container on the network drive that the Mac can then mount. The article(s) I've linked to describe how to do it.

 

I've done it before. It was horribly slow.

[PyroTheWise]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

The problem is Time Machine requires a HFS+ partition, which is not something WIndows supports. So you have to create a container on the network drive that the Mac can then mount. The article(s) I've linked to describe how to do it.

 

I've done it before. It was horribly slow.

Thanks for the information.  I am just curious - are there any formats that both windows and mac uses? 

 

Honestly though in this day/age.  i would think you could setup a NAS for this or just use web-based backup solutions.   I have only used PCs for so long that I have forgotten the little I knew about MACs.

[Eigenvektor]

5 minutes ago, PyroTheWise said:

Thanks for the information.  I am just curious - are there any formats that both windows and mac uses?

Macs either use APFS or the older HFS+. Windows uses NTFS. Best option for interoperability is probably FAT32 or exFAT.

 

However, in general Macs can access SMB shares, and they should be able to read/write NTFS (with additional software), just like Linux can these days. I'm not exactly sure why Time Machine insists on HFS+ (or APFS). I assume it has some feature that makes it better suited and Apple doesn't want to compromise on.

 

The big advantage of Time Machine is that it's really simple to set up and it backs up everything. Buy a replacement machine, restore from backup, it's exactly like the old one. At work we wipe machines before they are sent for repair. When they return you can restore the backup and it's like the machine was never gone. I've never found something equally painless for Windows/Linux (which I use at home).