Aperture running at a crawl since lion upgrade

Hold down command and option keys while doulble clicking the Aperture library to be fixed. I opted for just repairing permissions first. I did not rebuild the database yet, however just repairing the library permissions fixed things for me on my 2.4 GHz Mini with 2 GB of RAM. More RAM would no doubt improve things, but the library permissions repair is definitely what fixed things for me. I've been having the same problems on various machines up to a quad iMac with 8GB of RAM. This problem affected my whole system while Aperture was running and now it's fine. Hold off on buying more RAM until you get your library fixed. For me, it was only Aperture library permissions. I don't know why this came up only after my Lion upgrade, but it was an easy fix and I'm really happy about it. Thanks for the advice.

I have a fix that is working for me: switch to running Aperture in 32bit.

To do this: make sure Aperture is not running, find the Aperture in your Applications folder, ctrl-click and select Get Info. Check the box that says "Open in 32 bit mode".

I'm keeping my finders crossed, but performance has been significantly improved. I hope Apple gets this fixed soon!!

geck. This is likely to be good plan in smaller RAM systems.

I just did a test skimming through RAW photos fast. In 64 bit mode, Aperture's RAM consumption would rise to about 4GBs, whereas in 32bit mode, it topped out at 1.5GBs.

Just saved 2.5 gigs!!

Looks like this might be a keeper for some!

Count me as another frustrated Aperture 3.1.3 and Lion user.

Just bought a new iMac to replace early 2008 iMac because I wanted snappy Aperture perfornance, but this is worse!

Changed to 32 bit and that helped, but not much.

Will try the permssions and rebuild tricks (65,000 images) and see what happens.

Disturbing to fill out Aperture Feedback and find they don't list 3.1.3 and they want to know if I use CS3! Wish they'd use some of the cash they have in the bank to pay some folks to make Aperture everything it could be.

Will report back.

Thomas, how much RAM is on your iMac? And are you seeing any Page Outs in Activity Monitor?

4 GB machine, 36 GB page outs.

Seems to be worse when Time Machine runs...but then that's always been a problem. I've removed it from Time Machine list. No obvious improvement.

Thomas, there's your problem. 36 GBs of Page Outs is a killer. That's 9 million Page Outs, each taking about (very approximately) one hundredth of a second. So that's 90 thousand seconds of delay you have suffered since the last boot of your Mac, however long ago that was.

I have 12GBs on my 2011 iMac, and see just a few hundred Page Outs per day.

I recommend you consider adding 8 more gigs of RAM. It's cheap, and will transform your Mac.

90000 seconds is 25 hours, and I've only owned the computer for 5 days!

As a work around I paused the Aperture library update process when I was working, but let it run the last few days and nights. Seems like it spent most of the time swaping!

Another 8Gb is on the way.

Thanks for the help.

Thanks for the tip.

My MBP maxes out at 4 GB, and Aperture is crawling since the upgrade.

Don't know if I'll switch back to 32-bit, but it is something to consider. Thanks again for sharing the tip.

Thomas, it's called "thrashing" for a reason!

Here's Apple's wording on the matter from "managingmemory.pdf"...

"In both Mac OS X and iOS, the size of a page is 4 kilobytes. Thus, every time a page fault occurs, the system reads 4 kilobytes from disk. Disk thrashing can occur when the system spends a disproportionate amount of time handling page faults and reading and writing pages, rather than executing code for a program.

"Paging of any kind, and disk thrashing in particular, affects performance negatively because it forces the system to spend a lot of time reading and writing to disk. Reading a page in from the backing store takes a significant amount of time and is much slower than reading directly from RAM. If the system has to write a page to disk before it can read another page from disk, the performance impact is even worse."

Google managingmemory.pdf to read the whole story.

Post back when you have the RAM upgraded! 🙂

Yup, remeber waaaaaay back when, when IBM introdcued the first machine with virtual memory. Thrashing was the word of the day (months).

I do remember. About 1970. System/370. Many had the belief that virtual memory didn't need much real memory. Oh, the pain!

Yessss... switching to 32bit mode seems to have fixed it for me as well. Thanks for that tip geck.

For those with 4GB of memory it appears that switching to 32 bit mode will reduce the active working set size to less than 2GB, which allows the system to run well, without excessive page outs.

For those with 8GB, other factors may come into play: size of library, refenced files or not, time machine, need to rebuild/fix the db, etc. This is why some of the users with 8GB seem to be able to improve the performance without switching to 32 bit.

The average working set in 64 bit mode is just under 5GB, which is very high. Apple can fix this or issue a release note explaining memory requirements.

First Steps

Based on what everyone has said I am repairing my library and switching to 32bit mode until Apple issues a fix or I can squeeze in some more RAM.

I am not a pro user but have had Apperture since v1, the real noticeable slowdown for me was when it went 64bit. Up until then it had chugged along OK.

Setup

• iMac 2007/2008 (7,1) 24" with 2.8 GHz C2D with 4GB of 667 MHz RAM, ATI RadeonHD2600 graphics with 256MB VRAM, running Lion.
• MacBook Pro 2007/2008 (3,1) 15" with 2.4 GHz C2D with 4 GB of 667 MHz RAM, Nvidia Feforce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB VRAM, running Lion.

My modest 155GB Aperture (v3.1.3) library is on a LaCie external Rugged 5400rpm hard drive daisychained via FW800 through a a twin platter 7200rpm RAID0 setup via FW800 (used only as an Aperture Vault) to the iMac. When I go mobile the LaCie plugs straight into the MBP.Aperture library and vault is excluded from Time Machine backup.

Pimping my systems

• Whilst both machines are officially capped at 4GB RAM by Apple it seems that it is possible to bump them both to 6GB
• Looks like replacing the HD of both machines with SSDs would give both a performance boost
• Location of the library on a 5400rpm FW800 external drive - am not sure how to improve this unless there was eventually an ExpressCard<-->Thunderbolt adapter and an affordable portable Thunderbolt drive. This would only work on the MBP though

Anyone got any recommendations for improvement or configuration tweaks?

Message was edited by: Steff Stringer