Highly erractic import speed (minutes to hours for same size)

William Paplham wrote:

...the library to an external Drobo S

I am unfamiliar with the Drobo S specifically, but Drobos are notoriously very slow. Not recommended except for backup.

Backing up other files across drives has put all my drives at a lower than desirable free space.

...the Time Machine partion on the Drobo to get full (as well as the entire Drobo hitting about 95% capacity). I'm not sure if the Time Machine process for purging older files is incredibly inefficient or mine locked up, but it was running over 16 hours

Drives slow as they fill (as you seem to be aware). 70% full is a good maximum guideline; certainly above 90% full expect major slowing, maybe even total nonperformance.

I am interested in what people find is a practical maximum library size. With the new camera and taking pictures for two kids sporting events I'm creating photos far faster than I ever have.

Use a referenced-Masters Library with the Library on an internal drive and the Masters on other drives and there will be no issue of reaching a practical maximum Library size. Just remember that a 50% full drive is faster than a 60% full drive which is faster than a 70% full drive. Do not let drives overfill; buy larger drives and build RAID0 drive arrays as needed to stay underfilled.

Even with Managed Masters Aperture can handle huge library sizes, but it is inappropriate to do so. Basic database physics make referenced-Masters better for anything but small Libraries.

Project size does impact, so define each Project to be smaller rather than larger (max 200-500 pix per Project, do your own speed tests). In your case each single game is probably a logical individual Project.

-Allen

Allen,

I just did a small shoot this morning of 60 photos, and three videos, and imported them into Aperture. I did a restart before commencing any of this, and did not have any other active applications other than those that launch at start up, which at present are iTunes and iCal.

I then edited all of these photos, and then did an Export to another hard drive, converting to JPEG versions that were limited to 4288 x 4288 -- a common task I often do to manage the huge file size of 7360 x 4912 from the D800.

Video imports were done first, and there were no pageouts -- Free memory went from 7.81 GB to 7.36 GB, and Inactive went from 332 MB to 458 MB. I then commenced the import of the sixty NEF files, followed by editing of them, followed by exporting version with conversion -- there still were no pageouts, and Free memory ultimately was reduced to 3.89 GB, while Inactive increased to 2.69 GB. During all these steps, Real memory credited to Aperture never exceeded 2.0 GB.

In the past, with larger batch sizes of photos, and other apps running in the back ground, I have seen the Free memory go nearly to Null, and Inactive grow to a very large portion of the total 10 GB of RAM, still without significant pageouts, until possibly near the end of the session.

Ernie

Ernie-

I do not doubt your observations. Just that although it may be interesting (and be describing memory leaks) IMO none of it matters to performance until page outs occur.

-Allen

Allen,

I believe the finding to be made from my observations is that the point of sluggishness need not happen if OSX would simply surrender the Inactive memory that is building up during long sessions of activity in Aperture. My data shows that with large files and large number of images to process, eventually there can never be enough RAM to keep the point of trouble from happening even when perfectly adequate with lesser task size.

Ernie

What was the update on your issue? Did you get everything working properly again?