Split a huge photo library in aperture 3 ?

I strongly agree with Léonie that larger Libraries are more desirable to allow global access to all image data.

Please advise your exact mass storage (hard drives and SSDs) setup and how full each drive is as a percentage. Hard drives slow as they fill so I strongly recommend an arbitrary maximum 70% full.

USB connections can be problematic under certain setuo scenarios so test-replacing USB connected drives with Firewire or Thunderbolt-connected drives is one possible troubleshooting step.

As others have said, using the Referenced-originals approach virtually any size Library can be reasonably fast. I recommend that the Library be on an internal drive, all hard drives remain less than 70% full and be directly connected as opposed to network-attached.

Some folks have had slowdowns with large individual projects so I suggest FWIW that any Projects larger than ~500 images be split into multiple Projects.

Does performance change after a restart and with only Aperture open?

-Allen

Hello leonieDF, thanks for your help.

1. I tried that tool without improvements.
2. For the free space, I moved some originals outside Aperture and on an external drive so now my internal disk have 80 go free on 500 go. It's not better. I will try to save around 70% to see what happens.
3. In the Activity popup, i don't notice anything strange.
4. In the Console, i don't know if there is something wrong :

Hello Allen, thanks for your help.

Even after a reboot, it's slow.

I splitted every project bigger than 500 pictures, and Aperture doesn't become more fast.

Anyway if all the computer exeperiences slowdowns it's probably not just an Aperture issue. I'm going to look at topics on this subject (even if I already tried many things with onyx or reset NVRAM) but i'm really thinking i'll downgrade to Snow Leopard, or add an SDD instead of the SuperDrive, and install Mountain Lion from zero (on an empty disk).

Window Server: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by Aperture

That does not look good.

You'd better post this question in the Mountain Lion forum.

This message could be caused by several problems, and the Mt. Lion forum will be bettera ble to help you.

• Either the access to your image files is really so slow, that loading an image file and displaying it takes more than a second.
• Or you have incompatible kernel extensions installed and find and remove the culprit or to reinstall the system.
• Or you have a hardware problem.

Hi Everyone

I recently bought a blu ray writer. Using toast to create a backup of a library is easy... Even if it spans two or more disks and needs more than 20gb data.

Eport a project in aperture. Drag and drop this into toast and write. Toast will automaticaly create a file structure as it writes to allow easy reinstaling

I just ordered a 1TB drive for my Mini with the idea that I would consolidate my 600GB of Aperture libraries. Presently divided into 3, I would like 1 master library. I want all my photos together so I can create multiyear projects. I thought that Aperture is faster with smaller libraries. But I am encouraged to see that maybe I can get away with one master library. Any comments? BTW Mac Mini is 5,2 (mid-2011) with Intel Core i5, 8GB memory and 2 drives -- a 120 SSD (in the OWC data doubler spot) and soon to be a 1TB hybrid drive.

Here's another reason to split a library: My library is about 60 gb referencing about 500 gb of photos on a 1tb external hard drive. With Apple killing off Aperture, I wanted to try Lightroom. There is a plugin in Lightroom to import an Aperture library, but it didn't work. After an hour and a half on the phone to New Dehli (with a very nice, helpful agent) we had tried changing various permissions, coping the Aperture3 library to the external drive, and other things. Finally, the agent suggested I create a new Aperture with only a few photos. The new library imported into Lightroom almost instantly. The conclusion was that my Aperture library was too large, and Lightroom was choking on it. I'll try splitting off several portions of the Aperture library to import singly. I'll keep Aperture running as long as Apple allows (at least through Yosemite, I hear), but I know I'll miss it when the time comes.