Storage for Aperture library?

Hi there,
I have had Aperture on my macs for a number of years, and copied the library across as I have changed from system to system.
I am currently using a 500gb MacMini and unfortunately, Aperature 3 is literally taking over my mac with its large db file.
First, I thought I would move the library to my netgear 1000mbps NAS, but Aperature was very laggy as a result. I have tried my 1tb external usb hdd but again this was quite slow when dealing with my high res images.
Can anyone suggest a good solution which is known to work? Thunderbolt external hdd?

(Troubles posting. Hope this appears. Sorry if it appears twice.)
There are two schemes that work. Note that in each case you are deciding where to put your Library, and where to put your Originals. Managed Originals are kept inside the Library. Referenced Originals are kept outside the Library at a location you specify (best if this is a locally-mounted drive).
The two schemes are:
- move the Library to an external drive. Needs a fast drive (FW800 works, USB3 or Thunderbolt recommended). NAS is NOT recommended, and will likely not work well.
- relocate all or some Image's Originals to an external drive. Drive does not need to be fast (FW400 works, anything faster recommended). NAS is OK, depends on throughput, which you must test.
There are some tradeoffs for each.
The simplest thing for you to do -- and simplicity is worth a bit as it lowers your administrative overhead -- is to keep your Library on your system drive, and (since your machine doesn't move) relocate _all_ of your Image's Originals to an external drive that is permanently mounted, and use Aperture this way. On import, move the Originals to the external drive.
NB: you _must_ manually add the external drive to your back-up workflow. It _is not_ included if you use Aperture's Vault feature.
HTH.
--Kirby.

Similar Messages

Storage solutions for Aperture Library & vault??

My Aperture library has grown to over 400 GBs and I am concerned about storage as it grows larger week by week. I have been using two 500 GB firewire 800 drives, one for the library and one for vault. Today I purchased a 1 Terabyte drive for the library, it works well and I actually see a speed improvement. I will pick up another next week for the vault.
Aperture lumps all of the data in one folder therefore requiring the size of our hard drive to keep pace with the Library. I need a different solution than replacing firewire drives with larger capacity ones every three to six months.
My main requirements are speed and expandability. I do not want to keep several aperture libraries, to me this defeats the purpose of an image database.
I have heard the pros and cons of raid and I do not think it's the best solution for an Aperture based system. Sata sounds interesting and seems that it may become more standard. I have also read about using an out-dated mac as a server by installing several hard drives and connecting it to the workstation by gigabyte ethernet. I would like to have my library on a very fast connection, firewire is fine for the vault. I am wondering what others are doing in the same situation as mine and if you might have any advice.
With the purchase of the 1TB drives I figure that I will be fine until mid to late summer, by that time Apple will have their new desktop available which I plan to purchase. It might be best to see what the machine will or will not support. Any thoughts?........
G5 dual 2.0 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

As the previous poster said: this is an Apple problem that needs to be solved. I might add, it probably will be in the near future. So, you should try to scrape by for the next few months as best you can and wait and hope and pray for a solution from Apple.
With DVD and Firewire drives backing up your original you are well--probably over--backed up. One copy on DVD is more than sufficient for your originals. Make more backups of the Aperture library which includes your original file and your time consuming metadata and adjustments.
RAID 0 is risky because if a single drive goes then you loose everything! There are other RAID schemes that make your system more dependable. RAID 1 mirroring is safer but doesn't expand your storage capacity.
RAID 3 & 5 are both more dependable and give you bigger working volumes but there is a lot of processor work going on to calculate parity (error correcting and data recovery information) that is spread across several drives. If you use Mac OS X RAID or Soft RAID that processor power comes from you computer's CPU--which probably has enough work to do already without having to crunch numbers for every byte that goes to/from your hard-drive.
RAID 3 & 5 are good systems if you have hardware to to the parity calculation but they each require a minimum 4 drives to make a set--which you don't want to use as a boot drive. That means you would need 5 drives inside your G5 of a combination of internal and external drives.
A cleaner solution might be getting a Wiebe Tech Siver SATA V case and port multiplier card (about $1500 w/o drives). That will give you a good fast connection for 5 external hot-swappable drives. Then use Ben Long's library spanner to get you by until Apple comes to the rescue with a multiple drive library.

Re-arranging path for Aperture Library

My Aperture Library has turned up in the external HD I use to back up my internal HD (CCC). How do I get it back to my internal HD? Cheers, jp

BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING BACKUP YOUR COMPLETE COMPUTER!!!!
Open Finder and locate the Finder Library on your external HD. The file will probably be named something like Aperture Library.aplibrary
Then open another Finder Window once you have located the Finder Library and click the Go Menu and select Go to Folder.... and copy and paste
~/Pictures/
Next go back to the first Finder Window where the Aperture Library is currently stored and drag it to the new Finder Window. Once it's been moved the you can double click the file and Aperture will open. Once you have confirmed Aperture opens and you can see your library, shut down Aperture and go back to the Finder Window on the EHD and delete the Finder Library.aplibrary
If you have trouble doing this take the machine and the EHD to your local Apple Store or AASP and then can help you in probably less than 5 minutes.

Using External Hard Drive as storage for iTunes Library - Problems

I currently use an external hard drive to store my iTunes music, does anyone know why when I copy folders to iTunes library, duplicates appear - sometimes 2 or 3 copies of same song, same artist, album everything. A trud copy. Also, when you are setting up your music folder on the External Hard drive, would you copy from C: the entire iTunes tree - ie. iTunes/iTunes music/iTunes library or just have one folder called iTunes library? Also, when specifying location for finding music in preferences, again would you use entire tree of just iTunes music library.

See Dave Sawyer's post here - it's the easiest way
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1866272&tstart=0
Also, make sure Windows assigns a drive letter that won't change
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844

ICloud storage for iTunes library

Hello --
I am unclear on how he iCloud works with the iTunes library.
Is all my media files saved there, including items bought from the iTunes store and mp3 that add to itunes that I buy elsewhere?
Thanks
fpe

Hello there, fpefpe.
The following links provide some great information on how iCloud works:
iCloud - All y our content on all your devices.
https://www.apple.com/icloud/features/
With iCloud, anything you purchase in the iTunes Store, the App Store, and iBooks is automatically available on all your devices the moment you tap Buy. You can also access past purchases from any of your devices.
If you want to have your non-iTunes purchased content in the cloud, then you may want to look into iTunes Match. These articles provide great information on the service as well:
iTunes Match
https://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/
and
iTunes Match on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5637
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro.

Time Capsule as media storage for iTunes library?

i'd just like to start by saying that i have been searching and reading online now most of the afternoon and any help at all would be greatly appreciated.... seriously.
i'll try and keep my question(s) as to the point as possible: i have a Time Capsule - i am trying to figure out how to use it to store all or some (is some just possible?) of my iTunes library, as i am running out of space on my MacBook due to the size of my music collection. two, if i get all the music copied onto the TC, can i delete some of it off my MB then to free up the space i'm wanting? three, will i still be able to put music from the iTunes on my TC on my iPod?
i would LIKE to still be able to do backups with my TC, but after all the reading i've done it sounds as though it may be an either or situation.... if this is the case, i can always manually place files i wanted backed up on the TC, right?
i apologize that some of this may belong in another forum. i'm new and frustrated and just trying to understand. again, any help would be much appreciated. thank you.

1 - Quit iTunes.
2 - Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder from MacBook to Time Capsule.
3 - Hold Option and launch iTunes.
4 - Select *Choose library* an select the *iTunes folder* on the Time Capsule.
5 - System prefs > Accounts. Add the Time Capsule to your Login items so it mounts when you login in as the drive with iTunes folder on it needs to be mounted when iTunes is launched.
You can now delete /Music/iTunes/ folder on the MacBook. You can put an Alias of the iTunes folder on the Time Capsule if you wish.
three, will i still be able to put music from the iTunes on my TC on my iPod?
Yes. Everything will work just like it did previously.
i would LIKE to still be able to do backups with my TC, but after all the reading i've done it sounds as though it may be an either or situation
It's not either/or.
You can put other files on the Time Capsule. The Time Machine backup is a separate folder on the Time Capsule.

Online/cloud storage for use with Aperture?

Can anyone tell me if there is an option for online/cloud storage for Aperture photo libraries? I take a lot of photographs which progressively fill ip my hard drive. I'm interested in getting a Air (especially if the rumors of updated Sandy Bridge processors coming this June pan out), but can't really do that and keep all the photographs on my notebook. I realize I could use an external drive, but I would sort of like to have access to all the photographs without always to carry along the external drive. I suspect such a thing exists, but I'm a novice when it comes to cloud storage... Thanks

Check out Mosaic. Mosaic provides online storage that is integrated with your Aperture Library. This way if you have your Aperture photos referenced to an external hard drive, you can still access all of your files from the road.
This enables Argelius prefered workflow where you use an external hard drive for your local storage but you don't have to carry the external around with you everywhere you go.

Which iMac for large Aperture library

I want to continue using Aperture to manage my 100G plus library. I'm looking at iMac 21.5 versus 27 inch. I'm used to the portability of the MacBook Air but USB 2 is much too painful.
I plan to upgrade to the 1 TB fusion drive but do I need 8 versus 16 G RAM?
Is it worth upgrading to I7 versus i5?
I use my computer for photos and short videos (display only) - no gaming - basic web surfing and basic word apps.
How realistic is it to drag the 27 inch PC around the house?
Screen size isn't that important to me.

If you intend to use a 21.5" always get 16GB becasue Aperture can use RAM and you cannot upgrade the RAM on the 2012/13 21" iMacs. As far as the CPU, either the i5 or i7 are fine, Aperture is not CPU intensive. New MBA's use USB 3 which is considerable quicker than USB 2. However they are limited on storage space, what you can (and probably should do) is save your Aperture library on an EHD.

Using Reference Files - Aperture Library still larger than file storage

Still new to Aperture, and so far LOVE the metadata tagging functionality, but am troubled by the huge size of the Aperture library. Here's my stats so far, after a couple of days of importing, with no image management done so far other than assigning some metadata...
# photos managed as reference files=1175
Size of folder where reference files are stored=883MB
Size of Aperture library (.aplibrary)=1.44GB
My expectation would be that the ratio of Aperture library to reference file folder would be about 1/10. But 1.6/1 seems way out of whack. I selected all photos within Aperture and then selected "Manage Reference Files..." and all 1175 file references showed up. On that basis, I'm pretty confident that the jpegs aren't being copied into the Aperture library. But I cannot explain why the library continues to be 1.5+ times as large as the reference file folder.
This seems to defeat the purpose of keeping reference files external from Aperture.
Am I missing something, or is this to be expected? If these ratios hold, then it seems if I end up managing 10GB of photos I will incur another 15-16GB of storage requirement just for Aperture to do its thing.
What is Aperture doing with all that hard drive storage space?

By default, Aperture creates previews of all of your images. A preview is little more than a JPEG copy of the original. The size of these are determined by the settings in Aperture's preferences. When you're dealing with RAW images, the size of the previews are significantly smaller than the master image, but if you're working with JPEGs, then the previews can balloon the library to as large (large when you add up the thumbnails and duplicates) as the referenced files.
You can reduce the size of the previews, or delete them and turn them off all together if you're not sharing your photos with other iLife & iWork apps from Aperture. There are some other reasons you may find them beneficial, and this article will help you determine if they are right for you:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304499

Need Step-by-Step Instructions for Moving Aperture Library to New iMac

I've been using Aperture on an old MacBook Pro and am totally out of memory on it (I have less than 4GB free out of 465 GB). I'm needing to move my Aperture library over to a newly purchased iMac.
I have already installed Aperture on the new iMac and have updated the version to 3.5.1. Aperture on my old MacBook Pro is version 3.4.5. Will this difference in versions be a problem as I move the library over?
On the MacBook Pro, I use a referenced library, housing all of my masters on an external drive. I had to do this because of insufficient memory/storage capacity.
I do not have any vaults.
While I had been backing up to an old TimeMachine, I ran into problems with it a few months back (would spin and spin and spin and never complete a backup) and stopped attempting to back up to it. We have purchased a new TimeMachine for use with the new iMac, but have not had our AV guys out to the house to connect it to an otherwise overly complicated whole-house AV system. So, I'm afraid TimeMachine is not the useful mechanism in transferring the library to the new computer.
The thunderbolt connection evidently will not work with the old MacBook Pro, so this isn't the transfer mechanism either.
Please tell me in very simple steps how to move my library over to the new computer. Please! I have read through the Aperture users manual and do not see this topic addressed directly, though it is vaguely mentioned within the discussion on vaults. I have searched this community and do not find a simple enough explanation.
Do I need to run out and get another external drive and set up a vault to do the transfer? But, would that even work with the referenced library? There is no way I can convert to a managed library on the MacBook Pro, as I am out of space.
Please help! I have tons of photo projects that I was wanting to complete for the holidays gift-giving, but I'm at a standstill until I can get up and running on the new computer.
Many thanks for your feedback

If you cannot connect the old mac via thunderbolt or firewire in target mode, an external drive - large enough to hold the library plus some additional free space - would really be the best option for the transfer. I would not use the network to copy a referenced library. You do not need to create a vault.
Connect the drive to the old Mac.
Make sure the external drive is formatted for Mac - MacOS X Extended (Journaled).
Set the "Ignore Ownership on this volume" flag on the external drive.
Copy the Aperture library over to the external drive by dragging it in the Finder.
Now double-click it to open it in Aperture.
To move all references images to the external drive select all images in Aperture in the Photos view and use the command "File > Relocate Originals" and select a folder on your external drive as the destination.
Once the library and the referenced files are safely on your external drive, I'd run a "Repair" using the First Aid Tools: See this Manual page: Repairing and Rebuilding Your Aperture Library: Aperture 3 User Manual
Test the library on the new drive and check, if everything transferred safely.
Now dismount the drive and connect it to your new mac.
Copy the library to your new Mac by dragging it in the Finder from the drive to a folder on your new mac.
Now double-click it to open it in Aperture. Aperture will now upgrade it to version 3.5.
Use the command "File > Relocate Originals" to move the originals where you want them.
Regards
Léonie

Considering workflow for Aperture-based library?

Hi all, I'm an amateur photog, mostly sporting events, nature, and family stuff. I am using OSX 10.8.1, FCPX 10.0.5, and Aperture 3.3.2.
Until recently, I have had totally separate storage between stills and video: Photos in an Aperture library, and FCPX events for video. This works, but means that for any given event, I have masters in two places.
I recently learned that Aperture can now house ALL my source media, even my 60p video. I don't know exactly how recent this support is, but it was news to me. I like this potential to keep all originals/masters in one project location. It eases backups, helps my sense of security, and is nice for casual browsing of past events.
So I'm experimenting with consolidation of my video masters into Aperture projects, and creating FCPX events that point to them.
How I think the workflow looks:
Import from camera to Aperture. I store all masters/originals as referenced files using a simple "Year/Month/Project" organization on the drive.It's worth noting that as part of this step I use ClipWrap to losslessly convert AVCHD files to MOVs, although I don't think this is relevent to the overall workflow.
In FCPX, select Import Files...
Use the media browser to open the aperture event and select the video clips.
Uncheck "Copy files to FCP events folder"
The event is created.
Looking in finder, the event's Originals are links, as you would expect. However, interestingly, these links point not to the actual files, but to the Aperture library's "preview" files. These files are tiny MOVs that must only contain some sort of proxy or reference to the actual originals. I'm not familiar with this format or spec. I can play the files, they look like the originals, but they're tiny, under a megabyte in size.
At this point, everything seems to work fine. Editing in FCPX works normally, exporting in Compressor works, and I can even move the referenced masters around in Aperture (to a diferent folder structure for example) and FCPX has no problems with it, because it's pointing to Aperture's proxy files rather than directly to the originals.
So, my questions:
1. Is this sane? In other words, am I missing a problem that I haven't discovered? Does anyone else do this?
2. Because the "Originals" are links to these odd preview files, FCPXs date stamps are way off. I've always carefully kept my masters' datestamps accurate and used the organize by date view for events. I would give that view up if I had to, but it's nice. Any workaround?
3. What the heck are these proxy/preview MOV files? Aside from a hex editor, how can I tell where they point?
Thanks in advance.

Regarding question #2 above, I've experimented a little more, and found a potential problem: Because the time stamp of the files is incorrect, FCPX is unable to reconnect an existing project (that used an event where the files were stamped correctly) to a newly created project sourced from Aperture's native preview sharing, because the timestamps don't match.
This wouldn't be a problem if i were starting fresh, but even then I would be afraid that Aperture might touch those preview files at some point in the future thus breaking the timestamp that FCPX depends on to identify the clips.
As a workaround, if I import the files directly from the drive, rather than through the native preview sharing functionality, it shows the clips with the proper timestamps. This is ok by me.

600 GB Library with 200,000 images OK for Aperture?

Hi everyone,
I'd like to ask whether anyone has experience with very large libraries (not only size-wise, but also by the number of itmes included) slow Aperture down. I'm considering merging my year-by-year libraries into one huge library to get a better overview of the photos and to be able to work with all (use them for other projects, books, etc.).
Thanks for your ideas,
Roman

Roman1 wrote:
Since I often move around with my laptop, I'd love to have all in one huge library with 90% referenced to an external HDD. This would create an awful lot of items with their respective previews, thumbnails and database entries in the end slowing down Aperture. The question is how much and how robust Aperture is when used in this way.
Aperture is very robust with a single Referenced-Masters Library on an internal drive kept less than 70% full. A Referenced-Masters Library does not get overly large in GB of mass storage even with hundreds of thousands of images referenced.
Another worry is, that while I can have my backup process very transparent if I keep organized libraries with their respective vaults, all would change when referenced files are added to the mix. Not that it would get complicated, but simple is beautiful and I like beautiful.
First, Libraries plural is almost always bad workflow, defeating the benefits of modern digital files management. Once in a single Library, images can be keyworded and easily managed.
Second, *I very strongly recommend that back up of original Master files be performed BEFORE importing into Aperture* or any other app. Once that key step is the start of a workflow, the backup process using Referenced-Masters is simple and beautiful:
• Copy from camera card to the hard drive folder where the originals (Masters) will live.
• Important: eject and physically remove the camera card from the card reader at this point. The original images are still on the card.
• Back up that folder.
• Import from the folder into Aperture.
• Verify image count, etc.
• Reformat the card in-camera.
• Make regular Vault backups of the Aperture Library.
The Library will remain a manageable size for a single drive and Vaults will be created much more quickly and easily, which means one is more likely to frequently create Vaults, a good thing. And backing up originals before entering Aperture means originals are not exposed to the risk of catastrophic failure that sometimes occurs with complex heavy graphics apps.
I import each Project separately and name each originals folder by the project name and add _mstrs to the end of the folder name (e.g. 100815Jones_Wedmstrs). That way even if Aperture lost linkage to the Masters (which has never happened to me) a simple search on the Project name would easily find originals and backups of originals.
-Allen Wicks

Looking for a Step by Step to place Aperture Library on External

Can anyone direct me to step by step directions on how to export my Aperture library to an external hard drive?
I've seen rambling threads that touch on it of course but they refer to "Managed' or 'Referenced' and other terms that I am not sure how to check if my library are those.
I am on a iMac with only a 500 gig drive and my Aperture library is 100 Gigs of that drive! I'd like to place it on an external for obvious reasons. Crazy that Apple doesn't make this a WHOLE lot easier.
Thanks in advance for your input.

Aperture is an extremely capable and powerful program. It is not for beginners or for those who are not interested in learning how to use it. Just my humble opinion.
It is important that you understand the difference between Managed Masters and Referenced Masters. Of course, you must know what a Master is.
It is easy to tell which of which you have in your Library. Aperture uses Badges to inform you. (Badges are shown in the Metadata Overlays, as well as on the Metadata tab of the Inspector. There are seven Metadata Overlays: you should customize each of them to meet your needs.)
You can also filter Photos view using the Rule "File Status". The selections there are straightforward.
100 GB is a moderately large Library. The recommended method of lessening the storage burden a large Library places on your system drive is to convert some or all of your Images' Masters from Managed to Referenced. Aperture makes this easy to do.
It is possible to run an Aperture Library from an external drive. The faster the drive the better. I have done this over FW400 with 5200 rpm drives, but the minimum I would recommend is FW800 with a 7200 rpm drive with a sizable cache.
Putting the Library on an external drive is less desirable than putting just some or all of that Library's Images' Masters on an external drive and leaving the Library on your system drive.
Moving the Library is simple and, in point of fact, couldn't be easier. (You don't want to export your Library; you want to move it.) With Aperture closed, select the Library in Finder (the extension is "aplibrary"). Move it where you want it to be. Double-click it to launch Aperture and load the Library from its new location. Now every time you launch Aperture, it will load that Library (as long as it is on-line).
The User Manual is here. It is an excellent resource. I have highlighted in orange above some of the terms you will need to know. I strongly suggest looking each of them up in the Manual (note the Glossary at the end of the Manual), and reading the first seven chapters which introduce the program and provide a worthy map for your self-teaching.
Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger -- general clean up.

I imported some 24P HD videos from my DSLR to Aperture but these videos do not show up in iMovie '09 for editing purposes. Although my previous 24P HD Videos from iPhoto '09 show up. Why can't I access these videos stored in Aperture library?

I imported some 24P HD videos from my DSLR to Aperture but these videos do not show up in iMovie '09 for editing purposes. Although my previous 24P HD Videos from iPhoto '09 show up. Why can't I access these videos stored in Aperture library? I assumed that like the videos in iPhoto, I would be able to access the videos in Aperture through iMovie. Come on Apple! I am starting to get frustrated with your products here. And this is saying a lot when I have been using and loving apple products for the last 4 years.

Hi. My camera is a Canon 600D. And yes my videos are stored in the Aperture library and they are not referenced. Even then I tried to select all the videos in Aperture and clicked 'consolidate masters' and there was a messge that said all 'none of the files are referenced',... so they didn't need consolidating.
I also tried preferences> export> external video editor > choose > iMovie. And then right click on the video to edit with imovie. Even then the video didn't show up in iMovie. It seems like the only option for me is to import the videos directly to iMovie which means there will be two versions of the same file stored in my computer eating up space.
APPLE. What are you doing?

I have three aperture libraries. But just recently two of them (old from 2011) will not open. I get the following error: There was an error opening the database for the library "~/Pictures/Family IIi.aplibrary". Please help, thanks

I have three aperture libraries. But just recently two of them (old from 2011) will not open. I get the following error: There was an error opening the database for the library “~/Pictures/Family IIi.aplibrary”. Please help, thanks

Are all three libraries under your account or are they in different accounts? Any other errros on the system?
Start by doing the permission repair and library repair steps in Aperture 3: Troubleshooting Basics

Storage for Aperture library?

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