referencing files on multiple drives

Question

referencing files on multiple drives

Hey all,

I followed your wisdom and referenced my masters seeing as I'm working on a laptop now. Makes good sense. Here's what I've done so far, then the question at hand:

#1 - I got the seagate go drive. Nice 1TB unit, needs no powercord, FW800 is ok, got every master on there. Not a bad deal overall

#2 - being a redundancy FREAK, I have to back up in multiple locations. I just have to. I can't sleep if I don't. I fear losing data.

#3 - So I get the little nifty expansion/34 eSata card from OWC to speed things up. I'm waiting on the adapter to arrive to adapt the go drive from 800 to esata

#4 - in the meantime, I take one of my 2TB hard drives, slip it into a external shell that has an eSata connector.

#5 - boom: TM does its thing quickly, so happy

#6 - genius idea hits (read: sarcasm) - I take a direct copy of the seagate go drive and copy over to the eSata 2TB external unit, thinking that this not only gives me a backup/redundancy fix, but also I can then go ahead and utilize the speed of eSata NOW while waiting for the adapters to arrive from OWC.

#7 - Now I'm learning about relocating referenced files. They are showing as disconnected seeing as the seagate isn't mounted.

#8 - I'm trying to make aperture reconnect with the full copy I copied over to the eSata 2TB external unit. I can see it all in the relocating the referenced file screen, but don't seem to be having any luck making the final connection.

Now the question:

What am I doing wrong?

Am I only able to reconnect with the original drive only plus nothing?

Or can I make exact copies of the original (same name, etc) and then force somehow aperture to see and reconnect with the masters in the new location?

So far, I can't seem to make the reconnection with the exact copy in the new external eSata drive.

Feedback?

Thanks

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.1), proud owner of a dual G5 desktop

Posted on Oct 16, 2011 1:48 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 16, 2011 3:12 PM in response to Texas_Man_Luvs_His_mac

In the photos view select all your photos (check you have no filters set as well, so it shows e.g. 10,000 of 10,000 selected at the bottom of the browser.

Right click one of the images and select "locate referenced files"

There will be a preview in the top half of the window showing one of your images. There will also be the list under it of all your other images.

In the bottom section browse to the location of the selected image on the top section. Chech the images are indeed the same and then click on "reconnect all".

That should do it.

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Answer 2

Oct 16, 2011 6:38 PM in response to Shuttleworth125

thanks for the efffort, but I can't get it to work as you've described.

I've been fiddling with that locate referenced files" window all day.

I have the original masters disk not connected to the computer.

I have the exact copy on esata connected.

the bottome half shows the exact copies. I can select in Ap3 the pics as you describe, I can select all, choose one pic, select locate referenced files. Nothing shows in the top half or the bottom half.

I can see the mounted esata correct masters copy. I find the exact pic, but all options are "greyed" out. There are no buttons I can push to connect. I cannot seem to get the mounted exact esata copy on the bottom of the locate referenced window to "move" to the top of the screen so that I can get it to connect that that this disk has the exact copy of all masters.

Can anyone tell me other steps to take?

Is it possible to even make exact copies with exactly the same names but on different drives and then use the copies as the masters, or am I stuck using only the original FW800 seagate go drive?

Thanks

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Answer 3

Oct 17, 2011 4:23 AM in response to Texas_Man_Luvs_His_mac

You can definatey do what you are tryingto do, I did it the other week when my main masters drive died and I had to switch to my backup clone. There must be something else amiss. You havent got "Show only files not found" checked have you?

The other way you could do it (or perhaps should have done it in the first place!!) would be to start again, connect up your FW800 drive so all your masters are back online, then use Apertures' "relocate masters" command, and specify the eSATA as the destnation. This will copy the masters to the eSATA and remove them from the FW800, so you'll have to then clone them back to the FW800 to make it your backup drive.

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Answer 4

Oct 17, 2011 6:33 AM in response to Shuttleworth125

At this point, I don't see the value in relocating masters from one drive to another. It is the same effect. One is considered by ap3 as an original, one is considered not. The "not" is visible in the bottom half of the pane but cannot be accessed in the top half of the pane when trying to locate referenced file. I know not why.

You may have done it the other week, but anyone who has been around computers a while knows the inconsistent performance overall or forums like this would have no need to exist.

I am still hoping for someone to come up with another idea on how to mount the copied masters so that ap3 will recognize them.

Thanks

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Answer 5

Oct 17, 2011 6:54 AM in response to Texas_Man_Luvs_His_mac

You could try relocating just one master to the eSATA just to confirm that Aperture has no problems using that drive as storage for your masters.

Can you post a screenshot of your Reconnect Masters window?

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Answer 6

Oct 17, 2011 7:50 AM in response to Texas_Man_Luvs_His_mac

As a test I just tried the following:

I relocated a few maters to a flash drive making them referenced. I also copied these same files to a folder on my desktop.
Quit Aperture unmounted the flash drive and restarted Aperture,
The masters on the flash drive showed up as off-line NOT missing.
Selected these images in Aperture ran File->Locate Referenced Files

Now a big difference here with Apertures handling of off-line files vs missing files. In the Locate Referenced Files window there are no files listed in the top section UNLESS you uncheck the Show Only Files Not Found checkbox.

With that unchecked the files in the selection appear in the top half of the window. At this point if you select one of the files ad then go to the bottom part of the window and select the drive that the images are on and then locate the corresponding image you will be able to direct Aperture to the new drive.

You wrote:

I can select in Ap3 the pics as you describe, I can select all, choose one pic, select locate referenced files. Nothing shows in the top half or the bottom half.

It seems from this that you are selecting one image befroe running the command. You have to select all of them THEN run the command. And as I wrote above to get the files to appear in the upper window in this case you have to uncheck the Show Only Files Not Found checkbox becuase to Aperture these files aren't nor found they are offline.

Message was edited by: Frank Caggiano - Had checkbox title wrong, corrected.

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Answer 7

Oct 17, 2011 9:34 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

I appreciate the time and effort.

The one thing that made a difference -one time- was to select all using the edit->select all, then to use File->locate referenced files. I was able to reconnect one project. I thought I had the problem solved.

I tried to insert a file pic, but the grab is forcing a .tiff and this forum doesn't want a tiff.

At any rate, thought I had it solved.

Went to next project, repeated same procedure. This time though, I noticed the eSata Ap3 file was NOT in the upper half of the locate referenced screen. I did find the file in the bottom half, which is a no brainer. And I have checked and unchecked show only files not found to see if that would make any difference, nada.

Now I have the original go flex showing in the top half with this new project, the eSata showing in the bottome half, and I cant seem to make them "see" each other from top to bottom half of the screen.

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Answer 8

Oct 17, 2011 10:32 AM in response to Texas_Man_Luvs_His_mac

My externals don't show in the upper half either, just the volume the selected file is located in:

The top half of the screen autofills itself with whatever photo is selected. The bottom half starts off empty other than the attached drives, then the columns fill up as I navigate through to the matching image on the external.

Message was edited by: Shuttleworth125, Uploaded the wrong image!!

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Answer 9

Oct 17, 2011 12:57 PM in response to Texas_Man_Luvs_His_mac

At this point I'm not sure what else I can say. I know if you follow the steps I wrote up as I wrote them the procedure works. To be sure I've done it a half dozen times here reconnecting to the flash drive then to the folder on the desktop and each time all the files are reconnected worth one click.

One last try. First off I don;t know why you keep referring to 'projects', You are reconnecting individual files, projects have nothing to do with this.

You wrote:

Went to next project, repeated same procedure. This time though, I noticed the eSata Ap3 file was NOT in the upper half of the locate referenced screen. I did find the file in the bottom half, which is a no brainer. And I have checked and unchecked show only files not found to see if that would make any difference, nada.

Why would you expect the eSata drive to appear in the upper window? You are trying to tell Aperture where the file is now not where it's been. What matters is what is in the lower window. As long as you can find the corresponding file in the lower window to the file you have selected in the upper window that's all that matters.

Now I have the original go flex showing in the top half with this new project, the eSata showing in the bottome half, and I cant seem to make them "see" each other from top to bottom half of the screen.

I can;t figure out what you are trying to say here. Why would you want these two drives to 'see' each other?

The whole point of reconnecting files in Aperture is:

You have masters in Aperture that use to live somewhere, now they live somewhere else. The upper window in Locate Referenced Files is where Aperture thought the files were. They aren't they anymore (which is why we're going through this). The lower window is where the files now are. Pick one from the top and find it in the bottom.

Agina this can be a hard think to explain via text messages. You might be best heading to an Apple Store anf working with someone there.

good luck

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