Changed disks in my RAID, Aperture lost all referenced masters.

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Level 1

4 points

Changed disks in my RAID, Aperture lost all referenced masters.

I have a G-Speed eS RAID system. I had 4 X 1TB disks.
I decided to change the hard disks to 2TB ones to double my storage capacity.
I retained the same volume name. I backed up the 2.5TB of data to 3 other disks and then copied it back to my upgraded RAID.

So I have a completely identical file structure. My photos were in /Volumes/GS/photo, and this is where they are now. However Aperture lost all connections to the 35000 referenced files.

It seems that there is no way to tell Aperture that old /Volumes/GS and new /Volumes/GS is the same location from my point of view (is your point of view different?). This means I have to reconnect each one of the 100+ projects manually. I DO NOT LIKE THAT. Am I missing something, or is this a nasty oversight? Don't tell me that this is a "feature" and one can only move REFERENCED masters from within Aperture...

Note: Repairing or rebuilding the library does not help.

MacPro 8-core (Nehalem), Macbook Pro 15" 2.5GHz (Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Jan 14, 2011 10:51 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 14, 2011 11:46 PM in response to nkan

Hi

Aperture remembers also the drive ID and not only the path. To reconnect your masters choose 'File' -> 'Locate Referenced Files...' from the menu. If you locate a master file, Aperture should reconnect all the others. In my case I needed some attempts until all the masters where connected again.

Regards, Michael

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Answer 2

nkan Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 15, 2011 2:18 AM in response to Michael Hobi

I have already reconnected manually about 10 projects, but no luck.
What Aperture version were you using in your case? 2 or 3?
I am using the latest version (3.1.1)

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Answer 3

e2photo

Level 2

176 points

Jan 15, 2011 6:22 AM in response to nkan

A while ago, Aperture lost its ability to recognize file path name and now seems to rely solely on a disk ID number. That means if your disk fails, but you have an identically names backup, it will be necessary to manually reconnect your masters on the backup disk. I have sent multiple comments and bug reports to Apple over the past year or so without the problem being fixed. Why this was changed is a bit beyond me.

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Answer 4

nkan Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 15, 2011 7:16 AM in response to e2photo

I am now trying to change the disk UUID inside the Aperture Library to that of my new disk.
Of course, this is black magic for the average user and an act of desperation.
My patience with Aperture is running out...
I
f I have any success, I will post how to do it.

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Answer 5

Jan 15, 2011 7:27 AM in response to nkan

Using Aperture to reconnect your masters is not that hard. And you'll probably have better luck then trying to muck around with UUID's.

Take a look at this [Topic : Confused about moving my library...|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12911893&#1291189 3]

It works for most users.

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Answer 6

nkan Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 15, 2011 10:43 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

Your suggestion works, but
1) You have to first select all photos in the "photos" smart album. If you do select them all, "Reconnect All" will not work.
2) Most important, after reconnecting, I also told Aperture to rebuild my library. And it lost them again... The photos got connected to a <null> named drive which is shown as offline.

We are talking about a big deficit of reliability here...
I had a backup of my Aperture Library. So I reconnected the files again, without a Library rebuild this time.
But what if I need to rebuild my library in the future?? I AM SCARED...

No need to mention that I have lost all day moving around many gigabytes of data, reconnecting files, etc etc. This is hardly a productivity boost.

The worst part is that I like a lot the Aperture UI and I hate the alternative.
But Aperture is unfortunately unreliable.
Just play enough time with the loupe on my MacPro and the application will crash.

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