First upgrade Aperture2 to 3 or first upgrade my OS ?

Question

Please some advice!!
I’m using a MacBookPro with Intel Core2Duo 2,93Ghz, 8GB of RAM, operating system still on Leopard 10.5.8 and Aperture version 2.1.4.
Masterphoto’s (about 200 GB) are stored on a external harddrive with FW800 (raid system, and backup on separate harddrive) and imported in Aperture library as referenced files.
When Aperture 3 came out I bought the upgrade directly, but due to all problems I read, never upgraded to Aperture3.
Now I’m considering upgrading to Aperture3 again, but also want to upgrade my MBP to Snow Leopard.
What’s the best I can do?
First upgrading to Snow Leopard, and afterwards upgrading Aperture? I did read some users had problems with Aperture 2.1.4 running under Snow Leopard, so I am not sure about this option.
Other posibility: first upgrade Aperture from version 2.1.4 to 3.0 (under the Leopard OS), and afterwards upgrade Leopard to Snow Leopard (and maybe Lion). But I’m also not sure about this option too, because many of you did have problems (hanging systems etc) with the Aperture upgrade in the beginning.
I already did make a backup of my master photo’s on a seperate (2nd) harddrive, and also have two seperate vault backups of the Aperture library (containing the adjustments, keywords etc).
Hope you can help me with this decission, because I am not a real whizzkid, and when problems appear during the upgrade process I will feel lost quick.

Answer 1

JST1970 wrote:
Thanks Frank for your reply!
You don't think I have to be scared about upgrading Aperture 2 to 3, and being left with a hanging system due to memory problems. I have read so much about this problem, or were that exceptions, and should it normally give no problems?
Just remember that the postings you read here (or any similar board) are by definition from people having problems. Folk don't write in normally to say how easy and simple it was to upgrade. Or that there were no problems.
Aperture 3 has been, for me anyway, remarkably robust. I did have some issues early on on a systems that was short of memory but once that was resolved it has been fine. And I do some pretty bizarre things to my libraries (test libraries not my working libraries) in order to try and learn more about the program or to try and answer questions here.
I'm not saying that you might not run into issues but if you go slowly, pay attention and follow all directions you should be fine. And as I wrote before just make sure you have a working backup. Knowing you have a working backup and knowing how to restore is really liberating. You can proceed knowing that if a meteor falls through your roof just as you hit the return key to start the upgrade the worst thing will be the singed tail on the cat.
You're backup plan sounds fine just make sure all the elements in the plan are working. The time to find out something didn't backup as you thought it did is not when you need it to restore your system. Part of any backup plan has to include an occasionally restore from the backups just as you would do in the event of a real problem.
I know it's time consuming and not much fun but it has to be done.
Keep in mind that once you upgrade to 3 the vaults made with 2 won't be of much help. So has soon as you upgrade Aperture and your libraries create new vaults.
good luck