Aperture referenced files on a NAS

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Aperture referenced files on a NAS

I have a fairly complicated issue i am trying to get my head around and would love some help....

I have about 250GB of photos arranged in year/month/day folders on a NAS.

I have about 50GB of photos on my MBP (150GB SSD) which is filling up and is starting to slow down considerably.

(Perhaps foolishly...) I have merged the files on the MBP with those on the NAS so now I have a complete collection of my photos filed accurately on my NAS. I now want my MBP to look at the NAS for the referenced masters (instead of locally) and potentially now add to aperture some of the other 'older' photos that are stored on my NAS.

I realise this means storing the database on the MBP locally, but the referenced files on a NAS which I know can be clunky. But I dont see that I have much of a choice with such a large phot collection.

So my questions are....

1. Is this a really bad idea!?

2. How do i get aperture to look at the NAS, and store the database locally?? I know i should have used "relocate masters", but i wanted to merge the files into the NAS structure which already existed.

3. Can i do this without going throught every single image in aperture and telling it where to look on the NAS??!

Thanks alot for your help!

JG

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Mar 11, 2012 9:51 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,767 points

Mar 12, 2012 3:56 AM in response to jongol

(Perhaps foolishly...) I have merged the files on the MBP with those on the NAS so now I have a complete collection of my photos filed accurately on my NAS.

I am not sure, I understand fully what you did: Did you move your master image files from your system drive to the NAS, and they are no longer on the system volume or did you copy them?

If you copied them, and your Aperture library still connects them to the original masters on your system volume, then just move the masters again to your NAS, this time using Aperture's built-in "File -> Relocate Masters".
If they are no longer on your system volume and you now have broken references in Aperture, select all images that need reconnecting at once and use Aperture's built-in "File -> Locate Referenced Files" to reconnect them.

Usually you can reconnect more than one image at a time, if you select several images at once and point Aperture to the correct master image file for the first of the selected images. Aperture is smart enough to find the other masters, once it found the folder for one of them.

To find all images that need reconnecting, you may define a search or a smart album with the added rule:

File status: is missing

Regards

Léonie

P.S: I see my post only addressed your third question:

So my questions are....

1. Is this a really bad idea!?

2. How do i get aperture to look at the NAS, and store the database locally?? I know i should have used "relocate masters", but i wanted to merge the files into the NAS structure which already existed.

A bad idea?

The Aperture library need to be on a local, MacOS Extended formatted volume, but many users keep their masters on a network volume. Problems may arise if the network volume is not formatted MacOS Extended, or if you do not make sure that the volume is properly mounted before you access any image with referenced masters, or if your network is not reliable. It is your own risk, and I will refrain from giving a recommendation.

How do i get Aperture to look at the NAS, and store the database locally??
I assume your database is stored locally right now, so you only need to relocate your masters using Aperture as described above; then Aperture will know where to look for them.

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