Major Problem with Multiple External Hard Drives! Watch Out!

Question

I've almost completely given up on Aperture and gone back to Iphoto due to a major glitch in Aperture that actually cost me loss of some wedding photos (approximately 20)! Watch out for this, it is damaging.
I have 3 external hard drives, and of course when you mount disk images and cards you gain them in finder on the left hand panel. It seems the order of the mount is crucial to Aperture locating things and consequently if the mount order changes Aperture can no longer locate the files, and worse if you import to hard drive it doesn't import to anywhere!
The situation I have is that the other day I was importing wedding images and was up to the last card (fortunately we had 2 photographers so the loss isn't as detremental) and the power went off. Happens a lot where we are.
So upon power comeing back on the external hard drives remounting, I have figured out they mounted in a different order to what they were previously.
So upon going back to Aperture I went back to importing to the same external hard drive location. It had no warning of a problem and seemed to import without a problem. However once it had finished, on clicking on the thumbnails the images wouldn't load. I imported again and the same problem happened, however I didn't realise and had deleted the files. When I realised I tried to locate the files using spotlight. They are no where to be found!
Also because of the re-order of my hard drives aperture can't locate previously imported (referenced) files. I can find these ones on the hard drive, so I haven't lost them, but it will take unmounting and mounting several times in different orders to try and get them back because I do not remember which way they were mounted!
This is terrible! Aperture is a mess. This sort of thing shouldn't happen. Besides it's still too slow and it has slowed my production time substantially. The only thing it has over Iphoto is it doesn't degrade the JPEG each adjustment. However in Iphoto this is negligable, it can't be noticed, and I am not going to sacrifice time, lost photos for a minute level of extra quality.
Aperture get your act together. I wasted my money back when I purchased the full price 1.0 version.
Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Answer 1

Hardly high and not mighty.
But, to your points.
It sounds like you do have a UPS, not a surge protector, though it probably provides this in addition.
The fact that your external drives dropped during import is the same as removing a drive without unmountingf it, yes? Who knows what state the inode/allocation tables look like and no surprise that any clusters part updated were dropped. They'll rebuild from the cast complete mirror, but in-flight changes would not necessarily have been written to both sets of tables.
I cannot understand why (for you) Aperture appears to need the drives mounting in the same order. Disk Utility may show something, but I suspect you tried this.
However, and this I do challenge, the fact that you blamed Aperture and stated categorically it behaves a certain way when it does so only under some odd or errored hardware condition is not the thoughful optinion of an experienced Mac user. I wish you no offence but despite what you observed and your experience, I do wish to correct your sweeping statement.
The other comment I would challenge is that "I'm writing for people to watch out for and to trial ..." I would agree with that statement if that was any part of the context of the original post. No, your original post was far more negative and accusatory.
Your other new comments are clearly based on issues causing you angst. I have felt most of them, but at the end, it is software. Perfect? No, but I haven't had a crash since 1.5.1. Far from perfect? Yes, and many features missing that may be added in v2, v3, v.... . Best for my purposes despite its faults? Yes, by far. It is the fastest and most productive way for me to get to end-of-job.
Now my question for you since: what in your view is a superior alternative? Many on this forum are professional/serious amateur photographers who want some software company to succeed. Perhaps the reason we contribute to the Aperture forum is because we've found it the best horse to ride and therefore want to see it improve.
G.