Vault + Time Machine w/ Referenced Masters

I know this general question has been asked several times, but I can't find a solution that matches my specific setup. I'm running Aperture off my MBP, so I have set up one external drive to hold my referenced masters. My internal drive has my aperture library with previews, etc. I also have one other external drive that is my dedicated Time Machine backup drive. How should I approach backing up? If I have Time Machine backup the aperture library and referenced masters, is there any advantage of adding a vault as well? Thanks for any help!

Gerry,
This ain't hard, just a bit complex.
To answer you first question: At this point, a Vault is of little value; Time Machine does everything you need and does it automagically. (Unless you leave Aperture running all of the time.) Time Machine is much better if you use referenced masters as the Vault does not back them up.
Time Machine is great as it creates images of your disk every hour - wonderful if you delete something by accident. People worry about filling their Time Machine disk. Don't. As long as your disk is large enough for one full back up the extra space only gets you time - that is you can go further back. For most of us, one month is all the history we will ever need. And when your disk fills, Time Machine diligently deletes the oldest data to assure that you always have a current backup. Nice.
A clone, on the other hand, is just that, an exact (usually bootable) copy of your disk. Normally, when you update a clone it adds what you have added but it also deletes what you have deleted. Delete something by mistake two days ago and last night's backup will delete it as well. On the other hand, have your Mac die (as mine did, 3,000 miles from the nearest Apple Store) and you can plug your clone into any other Mac and you are good to go. Slick.
Finally, off site is just that. What happens if your house burns or is robbed? You could lose your mac and all of your backups as well. There are many ways to do off site, from a hard disk that you sneaker net to your neighbor to a commercial service like Crashplan or Carbonite.
Hope this helps.

Similar Messages

Aperture Vault & Time Machine on same external drive?

I learned from an Aperture ProLab teacher that using Time Machine as a backup for my Aperture library is not always successful (something about the packaged file format?) - and it was recommended that I use the Vault in Aperture. Is it possible (and how, if so) to partition my external drive to be used with both Time Machine (to back up my entire hard drive) and Aperture's Vault?

Jessica-
I don't see why not, if the external is really large. Just partition using Disk Utility.
However personally I recommend buying additional hard drives rather than partitioning. Mass storage is now cheap. We always grow into hard drive space anyway, and there is a design elegance to having spearate physical drives. Design elegance in backup routines tends to lead to less errors.
I buy quad-interface drives from OWC
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/
for connection speed as well as flexibility in repurposing drives, but for backup-only cheaper USB (slower) drives from Newegg or Deal.com also are ok. Just look at cost per GB to find drives of best value.
HTH
-Allen Wicks

Vault & Time Machine on same drive?

Hello,
I was wondering if there is a way that an Aperture vault can be created on an external hard drive that is already used for Time Machine.
The drive is of size that I would not use it all and would like to back up my Aperture pictures which are excluded from the Time Machine backups.

Yes, you can store a vault (and anything else) on a drive used for Time Machine. Mine's set up this way and I've had no problems.
However, once Time Machine fills up all the free space (as it will eventually do) then you'll be unable to update your vault without manually deleting older Time Machine backups.

Need help in distributing Master Folder (all my original pics), Aperture Library, Aperture Back-up, Vault and Time Machine

I have a desktop iMac and three external HDs. One HD called Aperture Library (2T) now has Aperture Library, Time Machine backups and Master Folder, which is where I put my RAW files of pictures I want to keep. A second HD called Aperture back-up (1T) has another large Master Folder. This was created a long time ago when I was using Lightroom. I plan to transfer pictures on to HD Aperture Library > Master Folder so I will have 1 Master Folder. A third external HD called Vault (1T) now only contains my Quicken b/u.
I have not made a vault yet for Aperture, because I am in the process of exporting files from Lightroom and bringing them into Aperture 3. What a mess, especially because I was not able to use my photo apps (Lightroom or Aperture) for a few months and forgot the do's and don'ts. Please help me organize this stuff while I have the time and motivation. Greatly appreciated.

Note that Masters need only be backed up once (but to multiple backup locations) and that backup should happen immediately after copying to the hard drive from the camera card, before involving Aperture or any other images management app.
Time Capsule is an ongoing regular-routine backup process. Image originals instead need irregularly timed backup, once.
IMO referenced Masters make far more sense than building huge managed-Masters Libraries.
• Hard disk speed. Drives slow as they fill so making a drive more full (which managed Masters always does) will slow down drive operation.
• Database size. Larger databases are by definition more prone to "issues" than smaller databases are.
• Vaults. Larger Library means larger Vaults, and Vaults are an incremental repetitive backup process, so again larger Vaults are by definition more prone to "issues" than smaller Vaults are. One-time backup of Referenced Masters (each file small, unlike a huge managed-Masters DB) is neither incremental nor ongoing; which is by definition a more stable process.
Managed-Masters Libraries can work, but they cannot avoid the basic database physics.
HTH
-Allen Wicks

Aperture Vault or Time Machine

I just migrated from being a long time Windows user (and using Lightroom) to my first iMac and Aperture.
Just beginning to import my images into Aperture and had read a few posts about "vault" which I assume is Aperture's way of backing up either it's library or the master files.
If this is the case - and I am using Time Machine to back up the entire iMac drive - what is the advantage of using vaults also?
Thanks, Steve

Note that Masters need only be backed up once (but to multiple backup locations) and that backup should happen immediately after copying to the hard drive from the camera card, before involving Aperture or any other images management app.
Backup of Masters does not get complex with Referenced Masters, it is very simple because it is already done before ever entering Aperture. Vaults of course are used to back up the Library.
Time Machine is an ongoing regular-routine backup process. Image originals instead need irregularly timed backup, once.
IMO referenced Masters make far more sense than building huge managed-Masters Libraries.
• Hard disk speed. Drives slow as they fill so making a drive more full (which managed Masters always does) will slow down drive operation.
• Database size. Larger databases are by definition more prone to "issues" than smaller databases are.
• Vaults. Larger Library means larger Vaults, and Vaults are an incremental repetitive backup process, so again larger Vaults are by definition more prone to "issues" than smaller Vaults are. One-time backup of Referenced Masters (each file small, unlike a huge managed-Masters DB) is neither incremental nor ongoing; which is by definition a more stable process.
Managed-Masters Libraries can work, but they cannot avoid the basic database physics.
HTH
-Allen Wicks

Time Machine and File Vault problems

Hi,
Since I converted to Mac more than a year ago, I turned my file vault on (although I learned in the meantime that it is not actually necessary....)
I now recently bought the time Capsule and found out that the Time Machine doesn't go well with the File Vault turned on. It does back up the home folder only when logged out and I don't get the hourly backups for single files either.
I then tried to turn File Vault off, but get the error message that I haven't got enough space on my hard disk (which I have). This message led me to this article here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1974
I am really not an expert and not too confident to play around with accounts, backups and so on, so I really don't want to go down the described route.
For me, it looks like a bug in OS X, I should be able to turn File Vault off with the click of a button. Also, why is the File Vault / Time Machine conflict nowhere mentioned ? I was playing round with TM to recover a single file, but this wasn't possible, that's why I went to explore the issue further...
I now just want to turn off File Vault and finally want to use my TC normally.
Who can help ?
Message was edited by: Mike201071

....so, it seems to work now.
I did eventually go through the routine of backing up my home folder manually on the TC, then I created a new account, copied everything back, deleted the old account, and so on, as described in the link above.
I did not turn on the File Vault, activated TM and backed the whole lot up via Ethernet, switched back to wireless and TM seems to do the trick now.
I have now access to single folders and files when I go back in time in TM, instead of the whole backup only.
This seems to be the only way TM & TC are working properly, why is this conflict between File Vault and TM nowhere mentioned ?

File Vault and Time Machine

Hi, I am new mac users, and I need to know how to secure my time machine drive so if you plug in to other mac should ask for password, by googling some info, I found some trick to set our mac with file vault, so all user data will be encrypted.
but after my imac sets file vault, time machine only works for shared folders, and not realtime backup my main data and system, it inly backup when I log out or shut down my mac.
so I assume my backup data from my time machine will not work for restoring file as normal time machine backup
any solution for this? thanks

Time Machine and File Vault aren't a particularly good combination.
See #25 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), for details and some possible alternatives.

Beginners guide - Library vs Time Machine vs Vault?

I am new to Aperture 2, and up until now have had a workflow system that's involved importing images and exporting them into folders, and have no idea what Apertures Library is or does? I am using it as a default setting at present.
I have never used Aperture 2 'til this month, and am exporting all my Masters into a RAW folder as well exporting them as TIF / JPG versions of every shoot I do. But I am confused as to what the Library does? Where are the images I am importing in terms of the Library? Am I doubling up saving RAW versions? Are they stored already in the Library?
I am also operating Time Machine which is also new to me. Is this backing up the Aperture 2 Library?
If I delete the images from a photo shoot I have saved as > Export > Masters and Export > Versions as both RAW (CRW) files, TIF files, and low res JPG files, will the photos remain 'stored' in the Library?
If the answer to this is yes, then once I've sent a client their TIF and JPG versions, I can delete these folders and rely on Aperture Library, Time Machine and a hard copy on DVD of each photo shoot. Right? or Wrong?

When you import into Aperture, you have a choice between using "Managed" masters or "Referenced" Masters. Managed masters are actually imported into the Aperture library, so if you also export them to another folder, you are doubling up. Referenced masters are maintained in another location and Aperture simply keeps track of them and creates thumbnails and previews in the Aperture library.
So, to avoid doubling up, you can either: (1) import all files as managed files and not export them, or (2) move them first to wherever you want to keep them, then import them as referenced files.
Either way, you should of course have a separate backup scheme. If you use referenced files, then Time Machine works fine. Originally, there was a problem using Time Machine with the Aperture library, but I think that has been resolved. Still, I exclude the Aperture library from Time Machine and backup my Aperture library to an external using the Vaults feature in Aperture.
The Aperture manual pdf, which can be downloaded from the Aperture support site, has good explanations of managed vs. reference files and of workflow backup.

Aperture referencing files to time machine HD instead of from 'working' HD

Every once in a while I will go into a project see the "broken link" icon on my previews. In Finder I check the location I have all my images stored (and initially referenced) on an external HD. They are there.
I go to File>>Locate Referenced Files and see the referenced images have been changed to a location on my separate Time Machine external HD. I locate them and everything is fine but it's annoying.
I don't not have Time Machine on automatic because I have a laptop and like to choose when it backs up. I've looked through other Time Machine/Aperture problems and couldn't find anything. Does any one know of a setting, advice, or have experienced this at all?
Thanks.

Thanks. Sorry, for the delay to answer your questions:
I'm the only one managing the files, and it has happened quite a few times now. The files are in multiple projects ranging from recent imports to projects from a few years ago.
I didn't need to use "File→Relocate Master ..." just the "File→Locate Referenced Files" because my masters are still intact on my working HD. It says that my previous location was on "Volumes/Time Machine/photography/...etc." when I always import masters to "Volumes/My book/photography/...etc"
Does Aperture notice if I move master files because my thought is that Aperture is noticing my TM copying files to another HD and then referencing those instead of my original working HD I import to. Then, the next time I open Aperture it cannot reference the Time Machine files.
Is it because I have TM (USB) backing up my internal HD and my external working HD (FW800)?

Vault or Time Machine?

I frequently back up my vault in Aperture. Should I be excluding my Aperture library from Time Machine? Does it matter? Are there pros and cons?
Thank you so much.

To my chagrin, not a single photo in my Aperture has ever been saved in any backup, EVER.
Time Machine will backup all your photos, unless you have excluded them from backup - all my photos are on my TimeMachine backup, without any any problem.
Check your TimeMachine settings:
Open "System Preferences > Time Machine" and click the "Options" button. This will show you, if items have been excluded from the Time Machine backup. Do you see your Aperture Library there? If yes, delete it from the "Exclude" list.
How do you tell, that your images have not been backed up? In the Time Machine backup you will see your Aperture library, if you view the folder, that is containing your Aperture Library, but you will not see the individual photos, if they are managed and hidden inside the Aperture Library package.
Only if your images are referenced, will they be visible in the Time Machine backup.
I have no idea what VAULT is, however I definitely need to get in to see a GENIUS & get them to help/show me, what I need to do so I can back up my Aperture photos.
Vaults are snapshots of the Aperture Library, and will contain the managed images, but not the referenced images. I prefer Time Machine backups to vaults, because they will incude my photolibraries automatically, when I backup my system.
Regards
Léonie

Backup Storage - Aperture Vault versus Time Machine versus daily SuperDuper

What value does dumping the Aperture library to an Aperture Vault give in addition to running Time Machine to one drive and a daily SuperDuper copy to a second drive with irregular SuperDuper copies to an external drive that can be removed from the machine room.

SImon,
Vault and Time Machine address different needs. Probably you will want to have both.
The advantage of Time Machine: incremental backups of previous versions, very compact storage. And you can integrate it into your regular backup of the whole system and include the regular masters as well. But the disadvantage: Time Machine decides for you, what will be deleted, if the backup drives get full. You do not have control over what will be saved and what not from the previous versions.
The advantage of vaults: You can make full backups of your library for well defined moments in time - snapshots of important states. I'd create a vault, whenever I make a major upgrade of the system at least.
Is there anyway of cancelling a stuck Vault update other than the sledgehammer approach of Force Quit?
If the graphical user interface is unresponsive, like when updating a vault, you can use the Terminal to send the "termination signal" to Aperture: Sometimes this will succeed, even if the "Quit" button does not work:
Look for the Process ID of Aperture in the Activity Monitor (launch Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor" and click the CPU heading. This will bring Aperture close to the top of the list. Make a note of the PID number in the first column, in this case 66550.
Launch a Terminal window and enter the following command:
kill -TERM 66550 (insert Aperture's PID instead of 66550)
This will send the "Software Termination Signal - TERM to Aperture, the same as pressing the "Quit" button should do, but send it directly, and not from the GUI that is unresponsive. This way I always succeded in cancelling a vaul update without force quitting. Not all processes can be terminated this way, however. The Terminal.app is also in the Applications > Utilities folder.
Regards
Léonie

Aperture 3.4.3: Referenced images lost in time machine restore but previews remain

Dear Aperture Community,
I recently purchased a new iMac and used a time machine backup of my old iMac to move my files over to the new Mac. All seemed to work well, and I have been using my new iMac happily for a couple of weeks.
I have Aperture 3.4.3 with about 40,000 photos in my database.
However, I just noticed that a small handful of semi-recent photos (~100) have a badge showing that "The referenced image’s master has not been found" (the yellow triangle arrow badge). I tried "Locate Reference Files" for all photos to redirect to the new hard drive name, but that failed to locate the ~100 missing images. I tried to inspect the Aperture library by Control-clicking on the Aperture library and choosing Show Package Contents - indeed the ~100 images were not there, but the ~40k other images were.
I can imagine that this issue may or may not be due to Time Machine, but I certainly never deleted any images. I always import my photos directly into Aperture.
How can my thumbnails and high resolution previews of the 100 images still be visible in Aperture, and yet the masters be lost?
I'd like to recover the images. Worst case, I will use Grab to capture the previews, which are of course much lower resolution than the originals, but at least I'll have something...
Thanks for your help!

thanks for the reply Frank:
Masters. I do not know. I left it as the default. I assume that means managed?
Error message was the LONG error code with the jist of it being related to what sounds like a PLUGIN error. I don't have the EXACT coding right now as I am not home. I've googled the code +/- other stuff on it and according to discussions here and elsewhere (albeit all archived), it looks like it was related to my plugins.
as far as the restore is concerned, I am POSITIVE that the restored library was the NEW library not the original. But keep in mind, Time Machine only lets me restore the backup to the exact place where the file was before. I am just worried that somehow Time Machine backup hosed my Aperture library somewhere along the way. This is why I was wondering if there is something else I need to restore with my time machine backup besides the library file/database itself?
Thanks for the quick reply.

Is there any advantage in using Vault over Time Machine?

Hi all,
Yesterday I imported around 6000+ pictures from iPhoto and consolidated them into my Aperture library. After much re-organisation into projects, folders etc. I decided to update my backup Vault to preserve all my hard work. The Vault is located on a connected external drive with plenty of spare storage. I had previously backed up successfully to the vault when there was only a few dozen pictures in my library.
After initiating the Vault update process I then left it to get on it (and to have dinner and then watch the football...) and after several hours was dismayed to find that the process appeared to be stuck at just over 50% completion. It was obvious that no further progress was being made.
I was also concerned that there appeared to be no mechanism to cancel the process and the only course of action I could take was to apply a Force Quit against Aperture - not something that I care to do, if I can possibly avoid it.
After a rudimentary search of this community I saw that several others had experienced the same problem - although some suggested that a fix had been applied in recent versions (although I am running the latest version).
Given this, I'm reluctant to use the Vault again - particularly as there appears to be no means of cancelling a stuck job. I do however use Time Machine, so my questions are:
1) Do I really need to use Vault if I have Time Machine making regular backups of my Aperture library to an external drive?
2) Does using Vault give any advantages over Time Machine?
3) Is anyone else experiencing this problem with the current version of Aperture (v3.3)?
4) Is there anyway of cancelling a stuck Vault update other than the sledgehammer approach of Force Quit?
Thanks in anticipation,
Simon.

SImon,
Vault and Time Machine address different needs. Probably you will want to have both.
The advantage of Time Machine: incremental backups of previous versions, very compact storage. And you can integrate it into your regular backup of the whole system and include the regular masters as well. But the disadvantage: Time Machine decides for you, what will be deleted, if the backup drives get full. You do not have control over what will be saved and what not from the previous versions.
The advantage of vaults: You can make full backups of your library for well defined moments in time - snapshots of important states. I'd create a vault, whenever I make a major upgrade of the system at least.
Is there anyway of cancelling a stuck Vault update other than the sledgehammer approach of Force Quit?
If the graphical user interface is unresponsive, like when updating a vault, you can use the Terminal to send the "termination signal" to Aperture: Sometimes this will succeed, even if the "Quit" button does not work:
Look for the Process ID of Aperture in the Activity Monitor (launch Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor" and click the CPU heading. This will bring Aperture close to the top of the list. Make a note of the PID number in the first column, in this case 66550.
Launch a Terminal window and enter the following command:
kill -TERM 66550 (insert Aperture's PID instead of 66550)
This will send the "Software Termination Signal - TERM to Aperture, the same as pressing the "Quit" button should do, but send it directly, and not from the GUI that is unresponsive. This way I always succeded in cancelling a vaul update without force quitting. Not all processes can be terminated this way, however. The Terminal.app is also in the Applications > Utilities folder.
Regards
Léonie

Aperture Lost Masters after Time Machine restore

Hello, everybody.
I have such problem. I experience some problems with mouse freeze after 10.6.3 update and tried to solve this problem by restoring my backup copy of system from Time Machine. I restored full hdd. All working ok, but Aperture lost links to Masters. I did not save pictures in Aperture library all of them imported to library as linked to original files (save in current location). I see files using Finder, I could find each file through check reference files in Aperture. But it almost impossible to do it for each file in Aperture Library (more than 20000+ files) manually. How i could fix this problem? OS 10.6.5, Aperture 3.1.1

If I'm reading your post correctly these are *referenced masters*, correct? And Aperture has lost the connection to them but you still can see them on the drive. Now you want to reconnect them.
# Select all the images in Aperture that Aperture has lost its link to. You can use a *Smart Album* to so this. In the *Smart Album* select *Add Rule* then in the rule select missing. This will give you an album of all missing files. Select them all.
# Goto *File->Locate Referenced Files*. All the missing files will be listed. You can reconnect them from here. It can be a bit tricky so it would be best if you read the section on this in the Aperture Users manual.
Good luck

Time Machine Backup of Vault

My MBP has Time Machine configured to backup to another Mac's firewire hard drive. My Aperture library is excluded from the TM backup.
I configure Aperture to backup to a vault on the other Mac's additiona firewire hard drive (It has two, one for usage, the other for TM). This second hard drive is NOT excluded from that Mac's TM backup.
So, I get a TM backup of my Aperture vault.
I 'think' that when I add to the vault backup, that only the changes to that vault get saved to TM. The space of the vault is about 130GB. I don't think that TM copies the entire 130GB every time.
Can anybody else confirm this?

As best as I can tell, the "vault" is not an encrypted disc image, or any type of disc image for that matter. When in terminal, if I do a "ls -l" the result is:
drwxr-xr-x@ 10 username staff 340 Jan 2 21:22 Aperture Vault.apvault
when going into that directory and doing the same I get:
Mini-Intel:Aperture Vault.apvault username$ ls -al
total 8
drwxr-xr-x@ 10 username staff 340 Jan 2 21:22 .
drwxr-xr-x 43 username staff 1462 Oct 31 21:28 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 username staff 102 Jan 2 21:22 Aperture.aplib
drwxr-xr-x 2 username staff 68 Apr 27 2010 Attachments
drwxr-xr-x 27 username staff 918 Jan 2 21:22 Database
-rw-r--r-- 1 username staff 460 Jan 2 20:46 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x 30 username staff 1020 Jan 2 21:17 Masks
drwxr-xr-x 6 username staff 204 Jan 2 20:49 Masters
drwxr-xr-x 6 username staff 204 Jan 2 21:14 Previews
drwxr-xr-x@ 456 username staff 15504 Jan 2 20:48 Thumbnails
So that isn't what I'm worried about. But, I read that when you update the vault, it re-does everything. If this is the case, then I'd be worried that TM picks up every single file over and over again every time you run the vault.
Anybody else look into this in detail? I 'think' the inode info in the TM directory structure is showing me only one real instance of the file, but I'm not 100% sure.

Vault + Time Machine w/ Referenced Masters

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