I updated to Catalina not realising I would not be able to access my external Aperture Library of 546gb. The advice is to go back to Mojave and migrate to Photos which is on my laptop. I only have 66gb of space left there. Could I get some advice on what to do please?
MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.15
Yes, when you migrate an Aperture Library or an iPhoto Library to Photos by opening it in Photos, the Photos.app will create the new Phots Library library on the same volume as the original Aperture Library. This way it can save storage. You do not need to delete the original Aperture Library. Photos is storing the duplicates of the images efficiently, so they will not need much extra storage. The file system format needs to supported by Photos, however, and the external volume must not have been used for Time Machine backups.
Yes, when you migrate an Aperture Library or an iPhoto Library to Photos by opening it in Photos, the Photos.app will create the new Phots Library library on the same volume as the original Aperture Library. This way it can save storage. You do not need to delete the original Aperture Library. Photos is storing the duplicates of the images efficiently, so they will not need much extra storage. The file system format needs to supported by Photos, however, and the external volume must not have been used for Time Machine backups.
I now have an extra folder on my external HD that is greyed out which I think is the migrated library -
Aperture Library 3...plibrary.
What is the full name of "Aperture Library 3...plibrary."?
After you migrated the Aperture Library to Photos you should now have two libraries:
Are you seeing these two libraries on your external volume?
If the filename extension of your Aperture Library has not been changed from .aplibrary to .migratedaplibrary, Photos has converted a different library or the conversion has not been successful.
If the file chooser dialog is showing you the original Aperture Library as greyed out, it is perhaps still in use because the migration is not completed or it is damaged in some way, or your external volume is not compatible with Photos. Can you enable the "Ignore Ownership on this volume" flag as described her?
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac – Apple Support
And has the external volume been prepared as stated by Apple? The correct file system format? And locally mounted, not accessed over the network? If you cannot enable Ignore Ownership, there is something wrong with the volume.
You could try to install Mojave on an external volume, so you do not need to downgrade the internal system volume. Use this method to restore your Mac from a Mojave Time Machine backup, but on an external volume:
Yes, you need another drive, that is formatted as described here:
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac – Apple Support
Then try to drag the "Aperture Library 3.migratedaplibrary" to that volume, also the "Aperture library3.photoslibrary"
Try first to open the "Aperture library3.photoslibrary" by double-clicking it. If it does not work, try again to migrate the original Aperture Library. Rename "Aperture Library 3.migratedaplibrary" back to "Aperture Library 3.aplibrary" and try to open it in Photos.
You can migrate to the external. It doesn't have to be on the internal HD.
The most recent version of PowerPhotos (for Catalina) has now support for a lossless merging. The previous versions could not move the edited photos as a master-version pair, but version 1.7.7 can do that.
I created new library on new external HD by clicking on option when opening photos then went back to old HD that hasn’t been formatted properly but where the migrated library was. Then right clicked on Ap3 migrated library, selected show package contents, choose masters then dragged and dropped to open library. I have not had error 36. The computer guy thought geo tagging might be causing errors. I did have some very long file names could have been copies of copies and there were a few that could not be copied. These were from years ago when mucking around with photoshop. I can’t really tell anymore because I used to have other folders that contained creative photos and this is not labeled anymore.
So have I done it the right way?
Power Photos will not migrate the Aperture Library directly to Photos. You first have to create a Photos Library from the Aperture Library. Then you can use PowerPhotos to merge your libraries.
Photos for Mac is maintaining the Aperture file structure, if you used a referenced library. But a managed library in Photos 5.0 has a very different structure from an Aperture Library. The library structure has been similar in Photos 4.0, but since Photos 5.0 it is pretty futile to use "Show Package Contents" and to look inside the package. Photos is renaming the originals, so we are not able to search for them by the filename. PowerPhotos can show you the filename to search for.
I haven't tried this but here's the Help page from Powrphotos that 'deals with this:
https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/Docs/migrate_libraries.html
Cloning is a good idea, if it can finish, but clone only the photo libraries, not the complete volume. Is your cloning software fully compatible with Catalina? If the cloning software has not been recently updated, it would be better to format the external volume not APFS, but MacOS Extended (Journaled). Could you set the "Ignore ownership" flag?
You may want to change the "Finder Preferences > Advanced" to always how the filename extensions and for the photo libraries check the Info with ⌘i; in the "filename & extension" section of the Info disable the "Hide Extension" flag, so you can see, which libraries you are dealing with.
There was a fault with my external HD I was able to swap it for another one, then the computer guy said it kept stopping and I should do it by manually dragging the folders over from the migrated library and to a new photo library on my external hd, this has worked but I am still doing it it’s going to take ages.
Everything is there but out of order and I lost edits so there is a lot to sort out but I am very grateful that I have not lost my photos. Thanks so much for your help.
How are you copying the folders from the migrated library to the new library?
Are you importing into the new library? Then you will lose the adjustments and many metadata, your albums. It will just save the photos.
To copy a library in arts, if it cannot be copied, you could try to do it like this:
How to avoid the Error -36 when copying a Photo Library - Apple Community
Choices:
Apple recommend that you create full-sized previews in Aperture before migrating. This can only be done with Aperture.app, and so Mojave is required. But if you don't that, then its not.
Thanks for your suggestion Leonie. My entire aperture library is also on an external disk - what would be the steps then to do the migration assuming that I would then merge aperture library to photos on by bigger external disk and then I suppose drag the new photos library to a separate folder so it could be used on the external disk as my photo library for Catalina? Hope you understand what I mean.
Would it be feasible to use as third party app such as power photos which claims to retain all metadata. My idea would to create a new photos Library on the same external drive as my aperture library then use power photos to transfer my aperture library to the new photos library all on my external drive - would I then be able to access using Catalina?
Migration of Aperture Library
