Setting up new macbook pro from back up on My Passport

Hi there, hope someone can help.

I have My Passport which I use in conjunction with Time Machine on my macbook. My boyfriend has a very old Macbook Pro on which Time Machine doesn’t seem to back up properly (someone once cocked up the settings and it hasn’t worked since), he backs up manually by copying files over to an external drive at his office. We haven’t actually tried my new Pasport on his macbook pro yet, maybe the auto sync will work… who knows. He has just taken delivery of a new macbook, so my questions are:

  1. Can we both use the same My Passport to back up at home?

  2. What’s the best way to set up the new macbook?

Many thanks in advance.

Time Machine stores backups for each computer in a separate folder, so you don’t need to worry about one computer’s backups overwriting the other’s. It might help if you review the steps to use time machine on the Apple support page.