Can I store my Aperture library on an external Hard Disk?

I have a MacBook Pro with very few free space on its internal hard drive. My Aperture library is getting very heavy and i would like to move my Aperture library to an external HD. I know that you can keep files where they are and see them in your aperture library, but the thing i'm trying to do is to STORE AND OPEN MY APERTURE LIBRARY (.APLIBRARY FILE) FROM AN EXTERNAL HARD DISK. Is this possible?

It is possible to put the Aperture library on an external HD as long as the HD is formatted correctly see: Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture
However keep in mind that depending on the HD type and the way it is connected to your Mac performance may be an issue. For the best possible outcome the external drive should have a large cache, high RPM and be connected via firewire.
The other option to explore is to put the masters on an external drive and keep the library on the internal. This will give you relatively good performance using a standard USB drive.

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On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

Go into Time Machine (the program not the bundle on the extrnal disk) and using Time Machine's browser go to the Folder where the library lives. You could look in the library bundle in Time Machine but that won't really tell you much,
If you want to make sure it truely has backed up your library you will need to restore it and open the restored library with Aperture.
If all this still has you confused you need to read up on Time Machine in order to get a feel for how it works, for what it is doing and for how to restore files from it.

I have a macbook pro with only 128gb of hard drive. I have lightroom installed and all my photos on an external hard drive. Can I store my lightroom library on the external hard drive too?

I have a macbook pro with only 128gb of hard drive. I have lightroom installed and all my photos on an external hard drive. Can I store my lightroom library on the external hard drive too?

Yes. Find the LR catalog file by looking in Edit/Catalog Settings/General. Close LR and navigate to that spot. The catalog file is the one that ends in .lrcat - move it to wherever you want. Next to the .lrcat file is a subfolder called Previews.lrdata. You can move that over as well, but if you don't LR will generate new previews. Double-click on the .lrcat file in its new home and LR will open with that catalog. Set Preferences to When Starting Up Use Most Recent Catalog.

Hi there, My Hard Disk space on the Mac Book is running low, I found about 105gigs in Back Ups, after I moved my ballooning Aperture Library to an external hard disk. Can you help?

Just checked on Lion - somehow I have over 100gigs in Back Ups, but much less in pictures. I moved Itunes, Aperture Libraries to my external hard Disk. Still running low on the 250 gigs space. Any tips on how I can free this are much appreciated!
Thanks!

Did you actually move / delete the data on your HDD?
When you click and drag to an external drive, it automatically copies instead of moves.
What are these backups & their location?
You could try and app similar to WhatSize.

I can't copy my itunes library to an external hard disk drive!!

this is my first time at the forum and i dont find a better way to ask, i want to copy my itunes library to an external hard disk drive for have a back up, but when i try to copy it it appears this message "the item "itunes music" has 1 or more items that are in use and cannot be modified", i dont know why, then i search for help in apple support and this article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751, but i do what it says and i still having my problem, i can't copy my music, that message keep's appearing and it dont let me copy my music.

forget it i discover my problem, this message gives u 2 option stop or continue i just click continue and it get copied, i think this is normal but like this is my fisrt time i dot this i get confused, i think i still used to windows, i cant believe because i have a ear with this computer. well anything is a good experience.

Can i store unused iTunes Library on an external Hard-drive?

Hi There,
I have 3 account on my Macbook each have an itunes library on them, the on is use all the time, but the other 2 never change and are never listed to becausethe only used of the laptop!
is there any way I can move the library on to my hard-drive so i can free up space on my laptop, but still have accesses to them if i need to update the 2 of them to put new music on there iphone and ipods?
Thanks and help would be greatly appreciated??
Tom Green

See this Apple note about moving an itunes library to an external hard drive.

Can I store my iPhoto library on an external hard drive?

My iPhoto library has become very large and I would like to tranfer it over to my hard drive.
Can I copy my iPhoto library over to the drive and then delete it from my system hard disk without loosing my photos? And, when I import photos, where will they be imported to?
Thanks a lot.

Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library. - and this is where new additions to the Library wil go.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Regards
TD

Restoring aperture library from an external hard drive?

I have a major issue with my aperture library. It crashed completely and it turns out that the back up I have on my time machine was corrupted because of a hard disk error. I found this out after buying a new mac and while trying to migrate the old library to the new mac. I kept getting error message -36.
The situation is now as follows:
- I have the full Aperture library on an external hard disk that I recovered from my crashed mac
- I can acces and copy the indivial pictures via the master folder, but cannot copy the entire library. If I try this it give me an error (-36)
- I can see the individual photo files via (click, 'view content'), and can copy them in groups, but not as a whole. It turns out that If I try to copy the master folder, there are some corrupt images there and the copy exercise then quits automatically. It does not allow me to delete the corrupt images.
- when i try to restore the the library via aperture (so opening it with aperture) it keeps saying that my 'permissions' are not set correctly.
Does anyone have an idea to copy the library (24gb worth of photos) without having to go in and copy group by group eliminating the corrupt files?
There must be some way to rebuild the library on my new mac, from the hard disk, as I can see and access the individual pictures?
Thanks!
Alco
- My old mac ran on Snow Leopard.

+the problem is this, almost every time i start my imac, launch itunes and then play a track purchased from an old itunes account, it keeps asking me to authorize that account. even though i have had previous macs containing itunes content on this old account, it has always played with no issues at all. now then... to try and remedy this, i first of all uninstalled itunes COMPLETELY and reinstalled. this seemed to do the trick but after a few days, it all started again.+
Did you unauthorize your old Mac and authorize this one? You only get a maximum of 5 machines, so maybe you're past that or haven't authorized the new one - to do that, open iTunes, click on Store in Menu. Now, there should be two options: authorize or de-authorize this computer. Click on authorize and report back with whatever message you get.
+on to my second issue, Aperture. the app works fine except, like itunes it constantly asks me to enter the serial number from the box. please note that this is a legitimate copy purchased from the apple online store and i used it for about a year on my old macbook pro with only having to enter the serial during the initial installation.+
The Aperture SLA states that you can install it on two computers - a desktop and a laptop. I don't know if there is any protection embedded in the DVD (if you've already had it installed twice), but if the issue persists, I'd contact the Apple store (since you said that is where you bought it) and ask - or, if you're covered by warranty, simply call Apple. Or, if not, make an appointment at your nearest Genius Bar and get answers there. It is perfectly legal to install it again as long as it no longer exists on the old machine - and I don't think it has anything to do with hardware, sounds more like a glitch. Oh, and have you tried to install it fresh, enter the serial, open it to see if it works and then copy over the library?

How can I migrate an Aperture library from an external HDD with Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) format?

How can I migrate an Aperture library from an external HDD with Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) format?
I used to store my pictures on an external hard drive using the latest version of Aperture. Now I tried migrating my Aperture library to Photos. However, after a short moment an error message popped up telling me that "Photos was unable to make a copy of your library before preparing it. Photos does not have the necessary permissions...".
My external HDD doesn't need any permission repairs nor is the system prohibited to read from or write to it.
Thanks for any advice in advance!
Gohtac

My guess is that the encryption is the problem for the new app.

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

You'll get better performance if you use a Firewire hard drive (especially if you buy a 7200 RPM drive). Firewire's IO speed is significantly faster than USB 2. USB 2 has a theoretical max speed of 480 Mbps except that it has extremely high over-head. The fastest speeds you can typically get are about 300 Mbps. Firewire, on the other hand, has very little overhead. The fastest speeds you can get are very nearly 800 Mbps. You will typically be constrained by the maximum read/write speed of the drive, not the speed of the I/O on the Firewire bus. Now if you had one of those nice shiny new Macs with the Thunderbolt I/O and a Thunderbolt drive (Light Peak) ... I think they alter space and time so that your data arrives before you know you want it.
Also... unless you want to buy a solid state drive (very expensive), try to keep your hard drives from becoming much more than about 60% full if you want great performance. A nearly "full" hard drive is, on average, only about half as fast as the same hard drive when nearly empty.
USB 2 will work perfectly fine... just not as fast.
Also... it's much safer to move the entire Aperture library than to "relocate masters". Your images must be managed. You can Aperture manage them, or you can manage them. But someone has to manage them. If you "relocate" them so that they are no longer stored inside the Aperture library then you'll need to work out a system of how you decide to organize things and it's critically important that you don't start moving files around or deleting things without Aperture's knowledge. If you do, you'll break the links to your masters and start having problems with missing masters. If you have Aperture manage the library then you don't need to worry about any of that stuff.... it's safer.
Do make backups (use the Aperture Vault or use some other backup program, but make sure you back up your work if you care about it.) There are only two kinds of hard drives in the world: (1) those that have failed and (2) those that are going to fail. There are no exceptions to this rule. Hard drives are cheap. Backup software is built into Aperture and into your Mac.

I recently moved my Aperture Library file to an external hard drive. Can I now create a vault to be saved on my Time Capsule for the Aperture library on this external hard drive?

I recently moved my Aperture Library file to an external hard drive. Can I now create a vault to be saved on my Time Capsule for the Aperture library on this external hard drive?

One thing to bear in mind, if you are using Time Machine on your Time Capsule and have it set so the TM backup includes your external drive, you will effectively be backing up your Aperture library twice on the same drive, once with Time Machine and once with the vault. This isn't a problem unless you start to run out of space.
Another thing to note, vaults on network drives used to be flaky (i.e. not really supported) and required workarounds to be able to use them. I'm not sure if this has changed, but I just managed to create a vault on my TC ok.

What is the best way to copy aperture library on to external hard drive? I am getting a message that say's "There was an error opening the database. The library could not be opened because the file system of the library's volume is unsupported".

What is the best way to copy aperture library on to external hard drive? I am getting a message that say's "There was an error opening the database. The library could not be opened because the file system of the library's volume is unsupported". What does that mean? I am trying to drag libraries (with metadata) to external HD...wondering what the best way to do that is?

Kirby Krieger wrote:
Hi Shane. Not much in the way of thoughts - - but fwiw:
How is the drive attached?
Can you open large files on the drive with other programs?
Are you running any drive compression or acceleration programs (some drives arrive with these installed)?
Can you reformat the drive and try again?
Hi Kirby,
I attached the UltraMax Plus with a USB cable. The UltraMax powers the cable so power is not an issue. I can open other files. Also, there is 500GB of files on the drive so I cannot re-format it. Although, I noted I could import the entire Aperture Library. However, I do not want to create a duplicate on my machine because that would be defeating the purpose of the external drive.
Thanks,
Shane

How can I export my iTunes Library to an external hard drive?

How can I export my iTunes Library to an external hard drive? and once i do that how can i play the library through the external drive? I basically want to be able to delete all my music on itunes once it is on my external hard drive so i can have more internal hard drive space.

Follow this guide very carefully: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364?viewlocale=en_US
It's very easy to do....

How can I store my music files on an external hard drive and listen to them through iTunes that way?

How can I store my music files on an external hard drive and listen to them through iTunes that way? At the moment they're both on the external hard drive and also stored on the computer but I'm quickly running out of memory on my iBook G4 so I'd like to only keep them on the external hard drive and, if possible, delete them from my computer's hard drive. At the moment, when the hard drive isn't plugged in a lot of the files won't play and I get the exclamation mark next to the particular song in iTunes, but everything plays fine when the hard drive is plugged in.
Thank you.

Sounds like your files are playing from the external drive already. To check go to iTunes - Preferences - Advanced and check the Media Folder Location. Change it to the external drive if you need to.

If I put my I tunes library in my external hard disk can I still share it with all the accounts of my Mac?

If I put my I tunes library in my external hard disk can I still share it with all the accounts of my Mac?

Hello there, Gnorra.
The following Knowledge Base article reviews how to share your music in iTunes with multiple users on the same computer:
iTunes: How to share music between different user accounts on a single computer
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1203
If you're using Mac OS X, follow these steps:
Quit iTunes.
Go to your iTunes Media folder. By default, it's in ~/Music/iTunes. (This folder may be named iTunes Music if you created your iTunes library in iTunes 9 or earlier.)
Note: "~" represents your Home folder. Other users on your computer can't access these locations.
Drag the iTunes Media folder to a public location. For example, you could move it to the Public folder in your Home folder (~/Public) or to a location outside your Home folder that other users can access (/Users/Shared).
Important: Don't move the iTunes folder, the iTunes library file, or the iTunes library.xml file.
Open iTunes.
Choose iTunes > Preferences.
Click Advanced.
Click the Change button.
In the window that opens, go to your iTunes Media folder.
Click Choose or Open.
Repeat these steps for each user that you want to share music with. If multiple users on your computer are storing music in the same public folder, duplicate song files may appear if a user imports music from a CD that another user already imported.
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro.

Can I store my Aperture library on an external Hard Disk?

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