Transfer Speeds: Moving Aperture Library from External to Internal

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Level 1

4 points

Transfer Speeds: Moving Aperture Library from External to Internal

Hi guys!

Lately my workflow has involved using an iMac with an external drive that held all my Aperture libraries. I keep my professional work seperate from my personal. My client library is 250GB and my personal is 110GB. These have all been held on a external which wasn't a problem because the iMac never went anywhere.

Well now I've switched to a Macbook Pro and upgraded my internal HDD to 1TB. I want to move the aperture library to my internal so I don't have to be connected to the external drive (which would just defeat the purpose of using a MBP) but it's taking FOREVER.

My MyBook 3TB drive is connected to my MBP via Firewire 800 and transfering my client library of 250GB is estimated at 19 hours! Is that correct? At one point it said it would take over 30 hours!

What should I expect for this to take speedwise? I need the MBP for a client meeting tomorrow at noon and I don't want to interrupt the transfer.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1), 16GB RAM 1TB HDD

Posted on Sep 9, 2012 11:23 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Ape Simpson

Level 1

10 points

Sep 10, 2012 2:29 AM in response to bryanlanning

Hei Bryan,

the maximum real life transfer speed of FW800 should be around 50MB/s. With this speed it would take ~1,5 hrs to transfer your 250gb.

BUT this is for big files (sequential reading/writing). But the Aperture Library is a big folder with farely big files (your pictures) and lots of small files (your changes to the pictures, databases, etc). So the Harddrive needs a lot more time to transfer those.

19hrs for 250gb mean your drive transfers ~3,5MB/s. Thats not very good, but still realistic.

In short: be patient 🙂

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Answer 2

Sep 10, 2012 3:05 AM in response to bryanlanning

I copied a 212Gb library from external drive to a new internal drive via Firewire 800 and had the same estimates. It actually took a bit less (about 15 hours from memory) ... but my issue was corrupted thumbnails when it got there.

I chose to do it all again (from another internal drive that I was swapping out rather than the external back-up) and cloned rather than copied - that worked.

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Answer 3

bryanlanning Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 10, 2012 1:40 PM in response to bryanlanning

Thanks guys for your responses.

It actually ending up only taking 3 hours! The estimated time went from 30+ hours to a little under 3 and finished close to that. Very happy with those speeds. haha It said the larger estimate for about 20 minutes before it began to change and I noticed it was working much faster, gradually almost.

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