[srfdriver22]

My girlfriend is going to be moving in to my apartment in a few months and I'm trying to find a solution to our computer predicament. We'll have two computers, a MBP and an iMac but I'd like either of us to be able to use whichever computer we want while still having our own users and home folders and still have them backed up via Time Machine.

My solution is to get Time Capsule (replacing my fragile linksys router) and plug my 500GB WD USB2 HD into the back of it. I'd put both of our home folders on the 500GB drive and use the HD in Time Capsule for Time Machine. The idea is that either of us can login to our user via the iMac or the MBP as long as we're in the apartment. Then we'd share a generic account on the MBP if we ever take it out of the apartment (this would probably be a rare occasion).

My question is, does anyone foresee any problems with this setup? Hopefully being on the local network the speeds will be ok while accessing the home folder on the network. Has anyone ever done something like this? I did some searching and couldn't find anything exactly like this setup. I did see some people successfully moving their home folders to another volume. But I didn't see anyone doing this with two different computers.

Also, I'm assuming Time Machine will be able to backup each computer's local drives plus the external 500GB USB2 drive attached to Time Capsule. Does anyone know if that would be a problem?

Lastly, am I overdoing this? Does anyone know of a simpler solution? (besides not letting her move in!)

[mduell]

Don't, it's not worth the hassle and slowness.

Consider FolderShare, ChronoSync, or similar to sync a few folders between the machines.

[Simon]

Do not go the TC route.

What you want to do - as simple as it sounds - is actually pretty involved. OS X Server will let you set up clients in such a way that any user can use any client and always get his own environment. And there are tricks to "emulate" this behavior with AFS mounts, rsync, symlinks, etc. but none of them give you what the real solution does. It's simply not as seamless as you'd like it to be. And if one of the clients is ever unavailable, things can get really messy.

I suggest you guys use FUS and some network storage. You could think of running rsync scripts for reoccurring transfers. This solution is not quite as nice as the OS X Server solution, but it's by far cheaper and it is much more robust than trying to do it "by hand".

[mduell]

Simon and I agreed, thread over.

[srfdriver22]

Thanks for the response and suggestions guys!

One of the secondary reasons behind doing this was to avoid duplicate copies of files. This would become more of an issue when dealing with GB's of music and pictures which should really only be stored in one location (and then backed up). rsyncing may be the answer to that but I'm not exactly sure how to set that up so that it's "seamless."

I'm a little disappointed that this isn't as easy as I thought. What kind of issues/hassles would I run into if I tried my method above? I'm also disappointed that in order to "do this right" I'd have to spend $499 for OS X Server just to use one portion of it. I don't need to serve podcasts or host websites, I just want a central location for 2 users. Are there any 3rd party pieces of software that could do this? Lastly, does anyone know what Apple is doing for these network user accounts in OS X Server? Could this be done by hand or via other software?

Thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it!

[Simon]

In the case of iPhoto it's actually quite easy. Quit iPhoto, copy
~/Pictures/iPhoto Library
from one Mac to the other, and launch iTunes again. Done. I guess you could use rsync here to make sure you update both ways.

IIRC iTunes is a little more difficult and I've never done it before. But it has been discussed on this board.

[srfdriver22]

Thanks for the input Simon. I suppose I could keep an account for each of us on both computers and just point iPhoto, iTunes, Documents, etc to a network shared folder for each account. We'd have separate accounts on each computer but their libraries would be pointing to one location.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by srfdriver22 

Thanks for the input Simon. I suppose I could keep an account for each of us on both computers and just point iPhoto, iTunes, Documents, etc to a network shared folder for each account. We'd have separate accounts on each computer but their libraries would be pointing to one location.

That can be done. But make sure that network share is always alive. If it's not weird things could start happening.