Aperture 3 Slow to Process Images on External HD

Snyth-

Sorry but I am confused. Choosing not to use referenced Masters very, very frequently does lead to problems as drives overfill. Your solution seems simple to me:

• Back up original image files on and off site before using Aperture or any other images management application. This should happen irrespective of type of Library.

• Create a Referenced-Masters Library using File/Relocate Masters to move existing Masters to external drives. The Referenced-Masters Library should live on an internal drive like Kirby said.

• When importing new image files have the files on the external drive where they will live and tell Aperture to "store files in their current location."

• Back up the Libary routinely using Vaults.

Note that drives slow as they fill, and can lead to unstable workflow when overfilled. Maintaining drives at less than 70% full is a good guideline, but less full is faster.

HTH

-Allen Wicks

Hi and thanks,

I really appreciate your help - I managed to first of all realize I shouldn't be having the problems I was having (freezes after a couple of minor tweaks) and then how things should be organized. Which lead to figuring out what the real problem was (drive failure!!) and on the road to fixing it. A bit of history: I began using Aperture 1 with everything on an external drive (yes, bad idea) thinking the images would fill the internal drive and that would be the way to handle it - yeah, they probably had referenced-masters libraries back then too, but I didn't notice...

Now I have the library and all the images on the internal drive on my iMac - because I have a 1T drive and, at the moment, they fit. The plan is to move to referenced images on an external drive, library on internal drive.

Why? because it turns out a big part of my problem was an external drive failure. The drive with my main Aperture library on it failed. I was .. sort of.. able to recover it (note to self: don't bother paying for data recovery, just use the vault) but chunks of info were missing so ended recovering using the vault anyway. The new drive is LaCie d2 quadra 7200 rpm w. FW800.

Right now I'm waiting for some time in my work flow - after losing tons of time with this problem (downloading/uploading entire library over and over, for one thing) - to move images to another drive and set up a referenced masters library. BUT first I have to work out a backup system for those images. So they're filling up my internal drive for the moment - but being backed up with vaults and time machine. Hey, at least it's working!!!! and backed up.

Mucho thanks everyone.

Glad you are back to functioning!

snyth wrote:

...BUT first I have to work out a backup system for those images.

Backup of newly referenced Masters is easy. Just

• pick your location to move Masters to, such as a folder on a large external hard drive.

• "Relocate Masters" from within Aperture as described in my earlier post above.

• Attach backup drive(s).

• Drag (Finder-copy) the folder that Masters were relocated to on to the backup drive. Repeat with additional drives if extra redundancy is desired.

• Verify that all files copied properly.

• Done.

Then for new imports back up and verify before importing into Aperture.

HTH

-Allen

Thanks SierraDragon,

So you basically manually back up new masters before importing to Aperture? So, load from camera SD cards into your masters files on various drives, then link to Aperture. So backing up is manual and just part of your normal workflow.

Hmm, I was thinking the masters would have to be backed up frequently - like the vaults - but they never change, so why would they? The actual changes to them would be in the actual Aperture Library and the vaults. (right?)

Great, thanks!

Yup.

Before giving up with the FW 400, do this -- remove all FW cable, and for good measure those to any USB storage devices, and do a restart of the Mac. Then reconnect the needed cables and devices. Since Snow Leopard, the FW bus can become corrupt. I have not proven that in isolation with Lion, but one experience suggests it is a good thing to do ever so often.

Btw, I can operate with a Managed Aperture Library of over 800 GB on a USB as test when I have copied the one from one of my internal drives as backup. But I don't push it.

Ernie

FW400 bus can become corrupt? Thanks for the heads-up. I still have 2 of them, daisy-chained into the FW800. Not planning to put anything Aperture-related on them, though.