upgrading library from Aperture V3 & earlier

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upgrading library from Aperture V3 & earlier

i am posting this as i struggled to find the answer here or anywhere

i, foolishly in hindsight, have been saving each client's photoshoot to a library on a DVD - a pre Dropbox 'world' arrangement

then when a client asked for an image from one of these old shoots i inserted the DVD into my Macpro and it didnt even show any files on the DVD

so i put the DVD into my laptop & all the file structure was present and correct

i tried various things like dragging & dropping from my laptop to the desktop of the MacPro but then it said I lacked the necessary files permissions, etc, etc

in the end i solved it by going the other way and getting on the macpro and doing a screen share from my laptop to the Macpro

i was able to select the DVD sitting in the drive of my laptop from the Macpro

then i was able to do what Aperture says, which is to hold down the Option key ('Alt' on my keyboard) & the command key simultaneuously whilst i double-clicked the Aperture library icon

Because i was accessing from the Macpro where the Aperture software sits Aperture had no problem in handling the situation

i.e. it says this library was created in an older version of Aperture and needs to be upgraded, so you select yes, wait a bit, then off you go

The moral of the story is dont save Aperture libraries to DVD as Aperture is likely to struggle if you ever need to rebuild the library

Aperture 3, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on May 19, 2012 6:39 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,723 points

May 19, 2012 7:46 PM in response to lespresso

The moral of the story is dont save Aperture libraries to DVD as Aperture is likely to struggle if you ever need to rebuild the library

Thank you for sharing the lesson learned with us. This certainly will be useful for other users. I'd like to add a little bit of clafification to your observations, however. I think your problems are partly due to the fact, that youhave been using DVDs not only to backup your clients's Aperture Libraries, but also to use these backups as the current library to be working from. For an Aperture Library to be used as the current working library different requirements apply than for using a library as a backup.

Using iDVDs as an additional backup media is fine, as long as they are not your only backup, and you remember that iDVDs may get corrupted and unreadable over time.
But using the librarry on a DVD as the current library iscompletely different story, for Aperture needs to be able to modify the current library; and most of all, if the library needs to be upgraded. So before using the backup of an Aperture library as the current working library, you have to ensure that you have read access and write access priveleges, and thatthe library resides on a local, MacOS X formatted volume, see this support article by Apple:

Aperture: Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3252

So, imho, the safest way to open an Aperture Library stored on a DVD would be copy the library to a locally mounted volume, and then open and upgrade the library on that volume, not on the DVD. After working with it create a new backup of the converted library.

This is my very personal view of the problem comments please by others?

Regards

Léonie

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