Q: Library Will Not Connect to Images on Remote Drive Since Lion

Same problem here. I did a fresh install of Lion. Library is on my local disk, but master fotos are on an external network drive. Aperture tells me that the external drive is offline. I have used "browse connected files" reconnect all and then they are back until I restart Aperture.

Also Single App mode is not working without display errors.

So it seems to me Aperture is not really ready for Lion and this is really bad. On the other hand there have been changes in the afp protocol so maybe I need also an FW Upgrade of my NAS (QNAP). I upgraded to a pre Release of a Lion compatible FW.

Sorry, this is really unacceptable for an pro app. Apple could have found that out already. There should be a fix very soon!!!

Hi Reinhard,

the afp protocol is not the cause. I copied the folders with the master photos from my NAS to the HDD of my iMac and tried to re-connect, but it does not work.

It is even worse - in my case Aperture does not even offer the opportunity to reconnect the working copies with the masters. The option in the menu is not highlighted so that I can't choose the option...

What a poor performance again by Apple! Lion is their flagship OS and Aperture their 'professional' photo software - and they do not cooperate in such an essential feature. Can't be true...

Kricki wrote:

...

What a poor performance again by Apple! Lion is their flagship OS and Aperture their 'professional' photo software - and they do not cooperate in such an essential feature. Can't be true...

Lookling at the future development, I'm starting to check out another solution e.g. Lightroom

I've more than 100.000 photos in my Aperture Library. But after several years with Aperture I get the impression, that it might be a better idea to change to a more stable product.

JO

Yes, sometimes I have the very same thoughts. But now it is too late now. Looking around new OSX Lion Server and FCPX, seem to me like Apple forgot about PRO users and now cares only about **** BFU users...

I would never ever switch to Windows, but this is sooo painful for me.

At least, pleas FIX this bug ASAP!!!

Add me to the list of users with a Mac running Lion and unable to see external drives at all most of the time. It is the erratic nature of this which worries me. I have two identical 500mb USB Iomega HDDs. My iMac will never recognise them both when plugged in, but sometimes recognises one of the other of them. I cannot log into my NAS properly either. And these are all faults in Finder. When I open a third party file utility like Path Finder, which I installed on a 30 day free trial, it can see these drives.

Apple Support helped with a few more system tweaks today that got me to where I am (even the above is progress) and advised that I check out the working of things thoroughly before then seeing what happens in Aperture. First job has been to copy a load of material from my NAS to a USB drive for sake of safety. Sometime in next 12 hours, I'll then be looking at what Aperture "sees" of my set up and file locations.

Well, as far as I can tell, this morning I have a fully working version of Aperture. It even seems prepared to import from external drives. Been using it to do some sorting and editing this morning, and it has worked normally.

However, my research with the apps on my iMac show the following don't open, and give error messages (see if you can spot the pattern here!):

Address Book

iCal

iChat

Numbers

Pages

Keynote

Photobooth

Preview (though double clicking a photo file will open it)

QuickTime Player

Activity Monitor

System Profiler

Yup - these are all Apple's own products. Third party apps on my machine all seem to work fine. What's the betting that Apple Support, from whjom I am supposed to be getting a call in half an hour from now, try to suggest that it is third party apps that are causing the problem.

OK, update. I now have a basically operational iMac running Lion.

Problem was a bizarre one in the end, and it was only me uncovering the errors in my previous post that pointed Apple Support at the solution. All the disfunctional apps were Apple's own. The list included System Profiler, which gave me an error message when I opened it from the Utilities folder inside the Apps folder. The error message said I had a version for OS 10.6

The point is, there is no System Profiler app in Lion! It has been replaced with a utility called System Information, though confusingly this keeps the same icon. Upon devling into my folders and files, we found that Lion appeared to have installed a new, updated Applications folder, but had not put this on the Dock. The old one, containing pre-Lion software, was still on the dock.

Rebuilding the dock, deleting the former dock preferences, and relacing the Appls folder with the new one appears to have solved everything. Apple Support had no explanation for why or how this had happened, though.

A quick follow up to my fellow "network storage" Aperture users...

After referencing this thread several times to tech support and to the iTunes/Mac App Store, I was finally able to get a full refund for Aperture - even though the purchase was made several months ago.

I encourage others to do the same if you are inclined to make the switch.  In fact, if you go to newegg right now you will see that LR3 is on promo again for $150.  If you have a Fry's nearby you can price match it as well.

After battling this exact same issue myself for over a week, I'm somewhat relieved to have found this thread--I thought I'd hosed my entire environment somehow. I'm running Lion on my desktop client and serve critical files, including my referenced masters for Aperture, from a Linux server via AFP and netatalk. This setup has been working seamlessly for several years--until now.

As a professional software developer (and serious amature photographer) with over 20 years of industry experience, I must say that I cannot fathom what Apple could possibly have done to Aperture to make it so completely incompatible with network filesystems. I rely daily on massive network filesystems for my work and have never encountered the kind of total failure I've witnessed with Aperture. Not even with Windows and Windows-based applications.

This latest situation has pretty much pushed me over the edge; I'm going to start evaluating LR3.

This is not an Aperture issue—it's a Lion issue. Unfortuantely it seems to have hit Aperture where it hurts.

-Joseph @ApertureExpert

Did the situation change for anybody since the Lion update 10.7.1 ?

JO

No change with 10.7.1.

anybody with some news?

anybody with some news?

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@ drmauro: Not from my end. I had wiped my drive and started over with Snow Leopard. When the upgrade was released, I decided to take a chance on 10.7.1. So, I did the Lion upgrade again. I had the exact same issues with Aperture and my images on external drives. With 10.7.1, an additional problem appeared: I now couldn't delete some files from the Aperture library housed on my internal drive. I had not encountered that problem previously.

I went to the Genius Bar at an Apple store, and as expected, they hadn't heard of this issue. They gave me a few "solutions" I'd already troubleshooted but otherwise, could not help me.

Not seeing any nearby light at the end of the Aperture tunnel -- or any word from Apple that this problem even exists -- I decided to grab a deal on Lightroom and switched over. I haven't had any of the external or internal drive issues with Lightroom. Sad, because I love the Aperture program. Lightroom is great, but Aperture has some features that, in my mind, are much better. I'll see what happens on this Lion/Aperture issue.

Same issue here. Latest version of Aperture and Lion. Using QNAP NAS 439 Pro II to store my originals. All worked like a charm until the arrival of Lion. Glad to have found this thread, i thought i had messed up my library. As has been pointed out before, you can fix it by importing one photo from your NAS, that seems to connect all others. However, that only lasts until you close down apterture. When you open it again, it will not connect to your originals.