Aperture 3 incomplete vault restoration

Question

Background: I just recently had to wipe my hard drive clean. I first backed up my library using Aperture's "vaults" system and put them on two external drives  and stupidly the RAW files no where else. I realize now that I lost all of my RAW files, but seeing as how I just started shooting RAW around a year ago, I'm hoping to salvage the JPEGS and move on from there. I have no idea wether my library was referenced or managed (I still don't remember the difference and it makes me mad that I should have to go through all this trouble just to organize my photos!) and this is part of the reason I'm moving away from Aperture (it's so complicated and disorganized!).
Problem: I tried to restore the vaults in Aperture with both drives plugged in. After it was finished, I could see that all (or from what I could tell) the projects seemed to be there, but not all of the images. In the browser viewer, there are many blank spaces and other images that say the image is not available. I've tried restoring a few times and updating the paths, but nothing seems to be working.
I realized I've already lost a lot, I really hope I can save what I KNOW I BACKED UP! Any Aperture experts would greatly be appreciated. I've talked to many people and not a whole lot of headway has been. HELP!

Answer 1

Mr D.
I understand I can't get the RAW files back, since I did back up my entire (managed) library to vaults, I'm assuming that the JPEG copies or whatever I was looking at in the library (not the masters) would be backed up.
Ok.  You half-answered the question.  We should take it to be true that you cannot get the RAWs back?
Aperture does generate thumbnails for use within Aperture.  Thumbnails are stored in some proprietary formatted files I think.  (Note there is no real documentation for end-users about the topics in this conversation.)  It may also generate previews based on your preferences.  The previews are in fact small JPG versions of your files.   I was quite surprised the other day to find that Aperture does back up some of these items to a vault.  I was surprised because, as a software engineer, I saw no benefit to backing up both the photos, and the low-res thumbnails of the photos.  After all, in normal circumstances, you will just be wasting backup space, as you can regenerate the thumbnails and previews from the originals in the case of a normal vault restore.  Now I see that your non-normal case may be why it works this way.  Of course, I do not know if the thumbnails are actually restored. I just know what I saw when I looked in my vault.
So the bad news: you may be able to find the previews and/or thumbnails but it will be difficult to find them, and you will have to do all the work.
Note, that what I am about to tell you is dangerous.  If you change anything, you will wreck your Aperture library.  Reading (Ie., copying) is ok.  Writing (Ie.., deleting, moving, changing) is not ok.
So, if you use Finder to "Show Package Contents" of your Aperture library, you will see a folder called "Previews".  If you had previously elected to create Previews (which is a directive that Aperture 3.2.2 is not very good at following, BTW), you will find a hierarchy of folders organized by date.  I believe the date is the date of the photo, but it may be the date of the import.
At the end of each folder structure, you will find some JPGs.  These are probably what you are hoping to find.
To answer your second question -- individual photos are managed or referenced.  It is neither a library nor a project attribute; it is per photo.
nathan