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wcartwright
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Q: Using Aperture on a Network Attached Drive (Drobo)

I have been working with Aperture on my internal hard drive, but it has grown to a size that has consumed most of my hard drive space. I used the +Relocate Masters+ function in Aperture to move all of my Projects to my Drobo (attached to my system over ethernet, via DroboShare).

After closing Aperture and restarting, everything opens fine, and all of my images seem to be there. However, a number of standard features and functions do not seem to work:

- I cannot print images. Blank pages are all that come out from images who's Masters are located on the Network drive. Images who's Masters are still local to the hard drive print normally.

- I cannot edit images who's Masters are located on the Network drive.

The conclusion is that I cannot use Aperture in this way. They make it clear that you cannot use the Vault over the network, but since Aperture allowed me to Relocate the Masters to the network drive, and I can still see all the images, I assumed that other functionality would work normally.


If someone can confirm my suspicions, or can provide suggestions on something else I need to do, that assistance would be appreciated.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.7), Aperture

Posted on Jun 2, 2009 2:00 PM

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wcartwright

Q: Using Aperture on a Network Attached Drive (Drobo)

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  • by mjmphoto,

    mjmphoto mjmphoto Jun 3, 2009 7:10 AM in response to wcartwright
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 3, 2009 7:10 AM in response to wcartwright
    I think you to move the library to the external drive. I am not sure about Drobo, but I have my Library on an external drive it works fine over a firewire 800 link (works with other links too, just I use FW800).

    You try copying (or drag and drop but not sure if that will work) the library in Finder and then pasting it to the new location and then double click it to open it. This library will be the one that opens next time you open Aperture. It will take a while though to do if it is a large library.

  • by William Lloyd,

    William Lloyd William Lloyd Jun 3, 2009 5:16 PM in response to wcartwright
    Level 7 (21,183 points)
    Jun 3, 2009 5:16 PM in response to wcartwright
    I suspect there could be problems with the file sharing protocol (is it SMB?) and whatever format is on the Drobo. Even if this does work, I think you'll find this is very slow. The DroboShare is very slow. It's at best 1/10 the speed of an internal disk. I'd say a Firewire attached drive would be a much better route.

    Drobo's good for some things (backup and archival storage that's not frequently accessed), but it's not good for this.

  • by Pistol,

    Pistol Pistol Jun 4, 2009 5:45 AM in response to William Lloyd
    Level 1 (70 points)
    Jun 4, 2009 5:45 AM in response to William Lloyd
    I have a Drobo, but I think I'm using it differently.

    I have my "library" on the internal HD and my images all stored on the Drobo (FW 800 connection).

    Works fine. No slow downs.

  • by William Lloyd,

    William Lloyd William Lloyd Jun 4, 2009 11:09 AM in response to Pistol
    Level 7 (21,183 points)
    Jun 4, 2009 11:09 AM in response to Pistol
    Right, you're using it attached over FW800 and not over the networking DroboShare.

    The FW800 Drobo is somewhat slow, but it's not awful. It can do 25-30 MB/sec which is about 1/2 the speed of a top internal drive. For referenced masters, especially with previews, it's likely not something that you would notice.

    Also, direct attached like that, you format the Drobo as HFS+ which is the OS X native file system, as opposed to going over a networking file system. Though I suspect Drobo must support HFS+ to DroboShare because you can go either direct or over the network.

  • by wcartwright,

    wcartwright wcartwright Jun 4, 2009 11:16 AM in response to Pistol
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 4, 2009 11:16 AM in response to Pistol
    As I mentioned, I am using it over the network connection, not FireWire. I have no doubt that it works fine over FireWire - it's just not the way I was hoping to use it.

    But thank you - good to know that I can make the switch if I need to.