I wonder how pro photographers use aperture?I shoot raw and my harddrive is alreay full.I'm not able to import new pictures.Is it ok if i create a vault and delete all my projects in the HD.Can I use an external HD use aperture through the vault??

Question

I wonder how pro photographers use aperture?I shoot raw and my harddrive is alreay full.I'm not able to import new pictures. I don't know what to do. I created a vault. My plan was to create a vault(put all my master files into an external harddrive) and then delete all my projects in my mac pro's harddrive. Is it the correct way to do it ? What should I do if I have thousands of raw files ? How should my workflow be? Can I use an external HD and use aperture through the vault,without keeping the master files on my computer's hard drive?? Or should I shoot raw+jpeg and store raw files in an external backup harddrive and import only jpegs into my aperture library?

Answer 1

There's a bit to learn.  It will slowly make sense.
Aperture is an empty field.  You're given a tractor and a whole bunch of attachments. What you grow, how, and where, is entirely up to you.
Vaults are for back-up and only for back-up.  They have nothing to do with storing your working files.
When your Library outgrows your system drive (and for good performance, you should leave c. 20% of every drive empty), it's time to convert some of your image's Masters from Managed to Referenced.  ("Managed" and "Referenced" refer to Masters, not to Libraries.)
There are hundreds of posts in the forum, and several pages in the User Manual on using Masters.
Many people run Aperture with the Library on their system disk, and most (or all) of their images' Masters on external FW drives.  This is a good set-up.  Note that you will likely have to take steps to back-up the data on your external drives.
If you do the above, there should be no reason to delete any Projects.
The choice of RAW or RAW+JPEG or JPEG depends on the kind of work you are doing.  I capture RAW only -- but I don't do any commercial shoots.  Pros on deadlines report that the RAW+JPEG works well for them.  Capture JPEG if it saves you time.  IMHO, there is not a good reason to shoot JPEG to save space (space is cheap; time expensive).
Short-term solution: buy and use a FW800 external 1 TB drive, formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", and using Aperture relocate the Masters of all images older than 30 days to that drive.  (Be sure to change your back-up strategy to include this new drive; you may need a second new drive.)
This general post of mine might help you understand more about Aperture.