Where Are My Missing Master Images?

Frank Caggiano wrote:

The masters in a managed library are stored by import date not creation date.

Ah, that would explain a lot. All my images were in a different cataloging app until Aperture was released.

But I'm digging around inside the package and still puzzled -- images inside the folder Aperture Library.aplibrary -> Masters -> 2009 -> 06 -> 14 -> 20090614-214439/ were indeed shot on June 14, 2009. So it appears that those various level folder names reflect image creation date, not the import date.

But I'm still digging around.

Kirby Krieger wrote:

Anticipating the next question:

OP: why does it matter? what problem are trying to solve? (Note that the Finder itself is just another logical index -- knowing where in Finder your files are tells you very little about where the data is except what drive and volume it is on.)

I keep my Aperture library as managed so I don't have to think about any of the files. But after this upgrade to the latest version 3.3, I had some flakiness with the backup vaults, so I dug into the packages to see if the backups were complete. That's when I discovered that I couldn't account for files before 2008, though as I said, the original RAW camera files successfully export from Aperture...

SierraDragon wrote:

joeholmes wrote:

I keep my Aperture Library as a "managed" library rather than "referenced, so every master image is kept inside the Aperture Library icon.

Not really. The images are all over the drive that the Library lives on. Aperture just points to them as if the Library was a bucket containing the (managed) Masters, but it does not physically do that.

-Allen

One thing that lets me sleep well at night is the knowledge that, no matter what happens, the original master raw files are tucked safely away in that Aperture library (and in the backup vaults I keep). But I won't sleep as well if there's no way for me to recover those files as a last resort. All the image files from 2008 on are easy to find, but the rest are a total mystery to me.

Frank Caggiano wrote:

Strange, I'm not aware of a change in the way Aperture storees the masters. I just looked in one of my libraries that I updated to 3.3 and it still appears to be doing it the way I described.

When were those imported and were they imported from a camera or from the file system?

Also when did you start using Aperture (any version)?

It's possible we're both right -- the reason the images are filed by the date of their creation is probably because I imported them the same day I shot them. So it would only look like the folder structure was based on image creation date.

Still, digging around through the folders, so far I can't find any that are older than the 2008 files.

I'll see if I can use a terminal command to search for the filename of some file from earlier than 2008. Once I find one, I'll probably find them all.

(Amd the bottom line is: the image files are all definitely there -- I can export them successfully from within Aperture. So all this is really just for my peace of mind.)

Thanks again.

Aha! Found them.

I used Terminal to search for an old image file, using this command:

sudo find / -name DSCN0212.jpg -print

It turned up the file in a September 2008 folder.

That's when I must have gotten around to importing all the old images from previous catalog apps.

There in the same folder are tons of old images.

So Frank, you had the solution from the start. But now that we've had this long discussion, there's no longer a button to click to show that you provided the solution. Want to reply one more time? And I'll click the button there.

Thanks EVERYONE for all your help -- great ideas all around.