Aperture: Migration to new Mac (Referenced Library)

Hi,

some consederations you may want to keep in mind. There is no definitive answer for the perfect library setup - it will depend on the size of your Aperture Library, the amount of available disk space, on your workflow, and on your backup strategy.

I currently have a flagging 2007 MacBook (OS 10.6.8; 2.16 GHz, 2MB RAM and only 7GB free of the 160 GB HDD). Aperture is struggling. Time to upgrade.

On that machine you really need to relocate your master image files to an external drive or free disk space in a different way. With only for 4% of empty space on the system drive, even a newer Mac will be very slow. Try to keep 20% to 30% of your system volume free.

My Aperture Library is currently on the Mac and is 'Managed'. I have contemplated moving the 50GB or so of Aperture Library to an external HDD and going 'Referenced', mainly because I still have some images I need to work on (even though Aperture is for obvious reasons ponderously slow with frequent SBOD on this machine) until I decide what to upgrade to (Macbook 15" or iMac with more bangs for the buck) and wait for the latest refresh of the line that I choose.

For best performance the Aperture library should reside on your fastest drive, usually the System drive. If you want to go referenced, relocate the masters, but keep the library on the internal drive. Only if you have a very fast connection to your second drive, or two internal drives, it may be advantegous to move the whole library to the other volume.

Managed, referenced, or mixed?

• Managed: A managed library is easier to handle, as long as it is reasonably small. With 50 GB Aperture Library you can continue with a managed library, as soon as you have more disk space available. The advantage of "Managed" is that you do not have to keep track of your masters on your own, and that they will be included in the vaults. You will need an incremental backup scheme that looks inside the library package however - like Time Machine, otherwise you will need to backup the whole library over and over again, even if you only changed one single image.
• Referenced: If your Library gets larger, and you have several hundreds of GB, then a managed library becomes a nuisance and it is time to go referenced. Very large libraries are difficult to move or copy between disks; It will be wasteful to have several vaults, for each vault will include the same masters over and over again.
• Mixed: The Aperture library on the system drive, most of the masters on an external (or second internal) volume. This setup is perfect for laptops with limited space on the internal drive, but it will require that you have a well ordered strategy where to keep your masters, since Aperture will not manage them for you. There are two pitfalls to avoid: Accidentally deleting or modifying masters from the Finder, or accidentally relocating them to a place where you store other images that are not your masters. When you have several similar images in the same folder, it can be very hard to tell which image is the master that you need to keep and which is a redundant copy.

The "mixed" setup is great, if you are on the road (bt will put mre strain on your memory or master management skills)- you still have your Aperture library with you and the master image files you are currently working on, but not the bulk of your masters. If you create high quality previews, you probably even will not notice, that most of your master image files are still at home.

Upon getting the new machine I plan to use the Migration Assistant to help with app/doc/settings transfer but what about Aperture? I am not sure if it's best to:

1) Get the new Mac now, migrate everything across (including Aperture and its Managed library) THEN move the Aperture library off the internal HDD to an external and going Referenced, or;

2) Go Referenced now. In which case when I eventually do then migrate Aperture to the new machine will it automatically 'point' to the correct location of the external HDD referenced library when what is left of Aperture copies across or is there and easier (or indeed more convoluted) process I will have to go through if I switch to Rferenced before getting the new Mac and migrating?

Accept of course with the new Mac the HDD will be so much bigger so there may actually be no need to go Referenced, at least yet. Try as I might, save for HDD space I don't see that many benefits to Referenced

From my experience, it is less troublesome to migrate a managed library with Migration Assistant. If parts of your Library are referenced, and you migrate the referenced masters as well, you may need to reconnect them, unless you only have to plug in the volume with referenced masters. Then Aperture should reference them correctly without extra trouble.

Try as I might, save for HDD space I don't see that many benefits to Referenced

Then stick to the managed setup until your library really becomes huge. 🙂

On the new Mac front, while I like laptops, I find that the iPad and this Mac do most of what I want (e.g. surfing, mailing and running the odd few apps). While a new MBP would be appreciated part of me still thinks that the more bang for the buck iMac is the better investment. The only thing I MAY need to do is upload the occasional photo shoot on the move (by creating a new project) which, if stripped back to basics, this Mac miight still be OK for until I get back home and move the project to the iMac, reloacting to the masters to the referenced external HDD after.

Any help appreciated.

I am still waiting for my iPad to be delivered - right now I take a MBP on the road. For the new shoots I create a new Aperture library, do most of the tagging while I still remember how the images have been taken, and when back home I import the new project into my main library.

Reagrds

Léonie

I find others tend to not bother with threads marked 'Solved' and it can prevent other ideas / suggestions.

Exactly so! 😎 Keep the thread open.

And I really would love to see the input of our co-posters here - there are so many things to be considered. I don't have a MBA, so we'll wait for others to chime in.

With a 500 or 750GB HDD I suspect the current 50GB library will go across and be able to stay as 'Managed' for some time.

You should have no problem to keep a 50GB library managed, if you feel more comfortable with a managed library.

That is what I have now: 500 GB SSD internal drive in my MBP, and I exchanged the optical drive for a second internal 1 TB disk. Plenty of diskspace and very fast.

Look for Sierra Dragon's posts on the best hardware setup.

Message was edited by: leonieDF, added "managed library"

Apples and oranges to a degree really IMHO. The best comparisons in terms of benchmarking come from the CURRENT machines across the whole range because almost any upgrade, particularly on machine that is 2-3 years behind will almost always mean significant performance increase. But how does that 2011 13" 1.7 i5 MBA, even with its 250 GB SSD, stack up against a 2011 2.8 i7 MBP which even with an upgrade to 8GB RAM comes in at the same price, at least here. That's the issue, not whether an 2011 MBA trounces a 2008 MBP.

You will find that the OS will make a big difference when working with Aperture. The new process system in Lion with "Automatic Termination" added a significant demand on the RAM.

I have several MBPs at work and two private ones:

Compare:

1. MacBook Pro, (15-inch late 2009) Mac OS X (10.6.8), Intel Core 2 Duo, 2,53 GHz, 4 GB:
   on this MBP Aperture works quite well, even with only 4 GB RAM, I don't see the beachball often.
2. MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011), I.Core i7, Mac OS 10.7.4, 8GB RAM, 1TB HD:
   This MBP I had to upgrade to 8 GB RAM after I installed Mac X OS Lion; with Snowleopard no problem with the previous 4GB RAM
3. MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.4 GHz I.Core i7, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, 1TB internal hard drive:
   My current private MBP for music, video, and pictures: For the first time I can keep GarageBand, iMovie, Aperture, and even Safari open at the same time, without noticable loss of performance, also larger image files (60 MB +) load very quickly.

Hi Leonie,

I've been looking all over the Apple forum for days now, and it seems as though you may have a good idea as to how I should approach a similar problem I'm having? Would you mind taking a look at my question here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4095912?answerId=18884904022#18884904022 (i've tried various things after looking all over the Apple Forums; however, have had no luck). Any advice is much appreciated! Thank you 🙂