How long does creating a Aperture vault take?

It's within the gamut of normal, which is pretty wide given the range of equipment users bring to the task. How are your external drives connected? How fast are they? What other programs are you running? How much RAM? All of these effect the time it takes Aperture to import or to create Vaults. The differences are magnified for very large image stores, which 180 GB is.

There is one thing you mention which I don't understand. You have already imported your images from iPhoto into Aperture ("I recently migrated ... all 180 GB."), and now you are creating a back-up of your Aperture Library using Aperture's Vault feature ... and your Images all have Referenced Masters ("All my original master images are stored on a external HD"). The Vault never backs up Referenced Masters, so I don't see how you could get a notice saying "copying masters".

At this point, don't force-quit even if the dialog reports that Aperture is not responding. I'd let it run another 24 hours before looking into aborting the process. Force-quitting Aperture is almost always creates additional problems.

budda42 wrote:

Hi. Thanks for the input. It's good to hear that this does take time.

My iMac has the intel core 2 duo. proc. speed 2.66GHz and 1GB DDR3.

One GB of RAM? That's it? I don't have time to check, but I think the minimum listed by Apple is 2, and that's not enough. You'll need 4 to run Aperture successfully (and that's without multi-tasking), 8 to run Aperture and multitask (real-world minimums).

That alone could account for the slow performance you are seeing.

budda42 wrote:

What I'm trying to do is creat a backup of all my images - some 31,000, to include all post production adjustments, metadata, etc. Reading in Aperture that if I back up with out using the vault then all the data associated with each image is not present if I need to restore my origional library.

You Library is a Finder file package. (A package shows in Finder as a file, but is in fact many files.) Everything Aperture knows about your Images is in the Library. Ergo, if you back up your Library, you have backed up all the information about your Images.

The Vault is simply a differential back-up program built into Aperture.

I backup my Libraries by copying them to external drives.

Your Images' Masters, however, may not be included in either a Vault or in a back-up (or copy) of your Library -- that depends on where you have told Aperture to put them. If you told Aperture to include them inside your Library (as Managed Masters), then they are included in the Vault (as well as in any backups or copies of the Library file). If, otoh, you told Aperture to store them elsewhere, then neither your Vault nor any backup or copy of your Library will include them. In that case, you are responsible for backing them up using some program other than Aperture.

To restore a lost or damaged Library, you need a copy of your Library and copies of any Masters which are not included in your Library.

budda42 wrote:

I have my origional Aperture library on an external HD because of it's size, 180 gig. My iMac only has 320 gig, and the whole family uses it. Currently I only have my masters (origional library) on this one external drive, then I do backups onto dvd's.

Are your Images' Masters Managed or Referenced? Let's clarify that, and then move forward.

Unless you reasons to do otherwise, I suggest putting all your Masters in your Library (every Image's Master will be Managed), putting that Library on one external drive, and either copy or Vault your Library to your second external drive (and storing it apart).

You didn't mention drive speed: I have seen a welcome difference between 7200 rpm drives with large caches and 5200 rpm drives with small caches. Some users can get by with FW400, but really FW800 should be the least you'd purchase. If you are using a USB connection, you are going to see performance slow enough to be unusable.