I have several Mac OS X machines, laptops, desktops etc and looking for a way to use timemachine ...

[G+_Rud Dog]

I have several Mac OS X machines, laptops, desktops etc and looking for a way to use timemachine as my backup utility. The one important part of this strategy is to be able to access backups from any machine. Not just the machine that created the backup but from any one of my Mac systems. People have suggested I format my LAN drive, which is where I am storing my backups, but that is not something I feel comfortable doing. Think of this as a dropbox time configuration in the sense that all my machines can access the LAN drive but each access request is to a timemachince backup files. I currently have backups but my lap top can only see its own timemachine backup and not the others. This holds true for all my machines they can only see their own timemachine backups. I don't know alot about OS X and Timemachine so be gentle.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

First of all, I don't use Apple machines. 

 

Have you thought about a third party utility?  I'm using CrashPlan to good effect on Windows and Linux, and they do have an OS X installer available.  It has all the features you've mentioned at least.

 

Also, do we really not have Mac users in the community yet?

[G+_Rud Dog]

Would consider but the backups on the machines have already been started. The puzzling thing was mentioned and it is, can only see backups for the machine that created it on the lan drive. This means when I want to grab from a backup that was not created by the original machine it fails to see the backup.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

I think that's how time machine is setup, you'll only ever see the backups that the one machine made unless you do a full system restore on another Mac.  At least the backup program included with Windows works this way, sounds like time machine does as well.  Don't think it will do what you want.

[G+_Rud Dog]

Beginning to believe you are correct:(