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Level 1

8 points

Why does "update vault" NOT include auto imported photostream images

Photo Stream is great. Take some photos with iPhone, iPad, whatever and with Auto Import checked in Aperture's Photo Stream preferences the images will automatically be ..., yes what, moved or copied or referenced into automatically created albums?

To test what really happens I took two photos, one from an iPhone and one from an iPad. Later that day when I started Aperture I could see that there was a new album created for me: "oct 2012 Photo Stream", and that album contained my two images. Great.

My strategy is that whenever I change something in Aperture I will directly update a vault, just in case something crashes. Today was no exception, the update was performed and by that I really made sure that my newly taken images were safe, at least that was what I thought!

I wanted to test a restore, you know, what is the meaning of a vault/restore mechanism if you do not train regularly? So ahead I went, started Aperture on my second Mac, and began the process of "Restore Library". I chose my newly updated vault, and several hours later the restore completed. I did make a note of the number of pictures in the original library and wanted to check that it was the same as in the restore library. But NO! Two images less in my restored library!

The album "oct 2012 Photo Stream" was there all right but NO IMAGES! WHY?

Is it a bug or did I miss something along the road? Are auto imported photo stream images handled differently than images imported from e.g. a camera?

Could anyone clarify or give hints on what is wrong?

I use two equally configured Mac Minis, everything up to date: OS X 10.8.2, Aperture 3.4.1, 8 GB memory, vault resides on a NAS. My iDevices use iOS 6.

Posted on Oct 31, 2012 8:21 AM

22 replies

Nov 1, 2012 3:00 PM in response to Thomas Emmerich

Aperture 3.4.2: In my limited testing of 3.4.2, newly added photo stream photos now get backed up to the vault. But those that were skipped by 3.4.1 still do not unless you create a new vault.

Note this issue is not one of the documented fixes in 3.4.2 so it could be a side effect of other changes made in the code.

MacValley Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 3, 2012 6:51 AM in response to Thomas Emmerich

OK, having finally been abled to download 3.4.2 directly (did not work in Software Update as many other have discussed in other threads) it seem to work for me as well. As Thomas says it looks like a side effect of other changed code (nothing documented about this particular bug).

Lessons learned is that I will never entirely rely on the mechanisms in Aperture for backup. Once in a while I will just copy the whole library to a backuo storage somewhere, This task could easily be scheduled in e.g. Carbon Copy Cloner, a program that could be useful in many other backup situations.

léonie

Level 10

195,013 points

Nov 3, 2012 8:39 AM in response to MacValley

Lessons learned is that I will never entirely rely on the mechanisms in Aperture for backup. Once in a while I will just copy the whole library to a backuo storage somewhere, This task could easily be scheduled in e.g. Carbon Copy Cloner, a program that could be useful in many other backup situations.

Time Machine also works well with Aperture, and you get a version history. But it is a good idea to have several back-ups. I make bootable clones of the system before each software update (Carbon Copy Cloner works well, and also Super Duper is highly recommended).

Nov 3, 2012 4:49 PM in response to léonie

I've got a hard drive with two partitions, SuperDuper backs up a bootable clone to them alternating each night. I thought I was paranoid doing this on top of vaults and time machine and offsite backups, but having seen that my wife (who's business this is) hasn't backed up her vault since JULY, I don't think I'm that paranoid after all!!

Isn't there a saying, something about two sorts of people, those that are paranoid about backup and those that lose all their data?? Something like that anyway !!

léonie

Level 10

195,013 points

Nov 4, 2012 1:57 AM in response to Shuttleworth125

Two current backups is a minimum.

I once had a power failure (caused by a lighning during a thunderstorm), that struck while I was backing up. It killed both the backup drive and the mac in one go. I was very glad that I still had a month-old clone of my mac and my most impotant files on my iDisk.

Aye Es Oh

Level 2

330 points

Nov 5, 2012 10:27 AM in response to léonie

If you're using Time Machine, or any other backup program, make sure and quit Aperture before your scheduled backup occurs. Since Aperture is, at heart, a database program, it should have its database in a stable state when it's backed up. The only way to ensure that this happens is to quit Aperture to ensure that no information is being updated in the library, otherwise, the backup could be saved in a transitional state, which could be difficult to recover from.

léonie

Level 10

195,013 points

Nov 5, 2012 11:07 AM in response to Aye Es Oh

Aye,

Time Machine and Aperture 3 work well together. You can rely on database transactions being completed, before the backup will be written. This used to be a problem with older MacOS and earlier versions of Aperture. The problem may still be with restoring an Aperture library while Aperture is running, but not with backing up.

See for example:

Aperture: Using Time Machine to backup a library

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1878

Also, it used to be necessary to quit Aperture when backing up, to be able to make an incremental backup, but this also has been fixed, 🙂 see:

Mac OS X v10.5, 10.5.1, 10.5.2: Time Machine may back up the entire Aperture Library each time

Regards

Léonie

Why does "update vault" NOT include auto imported photostream images