Q: I try to copy my aperture library to an external hard drive.. but I got this message !!

There's a few things that could be happening. Are you able to copy other files to the external drive? If you can, then you may have a permissions problem on your own hard drive.

To check for that, use Disk Utility, which you can access from the "Utilities" folder in your Applications folder, or hit Command-Space and type in "Disk Utility". In there, select your main hard drive, which should be on the top of the list, and click on "Repair Disk Permissions".

You could try repairing the drive as well, just in case, but make sure you have a backup first, if possible.

Just to be sure, have you also checked the permissions on your main (not the external) hard drive with Disk Utility?

You could also try doing a permissions repair within Aperture itself. If the problem library is the one that's currently being used by Aperture, then quit the program, and open it again with the "Command" and "Option" keys held down. Then select the "Repair Permissions" option.

How is your external drive formatted?

!.... my aperture library starts to be copied but after 3/4 of the file i get the message !...and the file its imcomplet !.

This frequently happens, when you are copying between drives with different filesystems, because filenames with national charecters or similar may cause conflicts. Some of the files can be copied and suddenly the transfer will stop.

Check the formatting of your external drive in the Finder or in Disk Utility. To be used with an Aperture Library it needs to be formatted Mac OS X Extended (Journaled).

If you select your external drive in the Finder you can see the formatting in the "general" brick of the "Get Info" panel (File > Get Info, or ⌘I).

If the formatting should be still the default MS-DOS (FAT) save whatever you have on the disk to a backup location and reformat the drive to MacOS X extended using Disk Utility. Otherwise Aperture may not be able to work with this library and you are risking to corrupt the library (Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library)

Also it would help to know, which file exactly in the Aperture Library cannot be copied and is causing the problem. If you ctrl-click your Aperture library or the copy on your external drive, then select "Show package contents" from the pop-up menu, you can see all files inside the library. Compare, what has been copied, and see, which file should have been the next to be copied. Please post the name of the file here. This may tell us, which part of the Aperture library will need fixing.

Regards

Léonie

This sounds like an OS issue. I'd reboot to your recovery partition by holding Command-R when starting up the machine and try reinstalling the OS.

Hector, can you copy an Aperture Library to your external drive at all ? Have you tried to create a new, empty Aperture library and tried to drag this to your external drive? Does it work? If yes, then the problem is with your main Apertzre library and with the drive.

In this case I'd try to repair your Aperture library - repair  permissions and try the opter trouble shooting fixes:

Aperture 3 User Manual: Repairing and Rebuilding Your Aperture Library

Did you run the Aperture permissions repair (look at the link Léonie provided). The error is happening on the source library.

Can you open this library in Aperture? What hapens when you open it in Aperture?

The error is happening on the source library.

That is what I meant, Frank

But I see, that JIVE randomized the letters in my post and it is barely readable now:

What I wrote was:

If yes, then the problem is with your main Aperture library and with the drive.

 

In this case I'd try to repair your Aperture library - repair  permissions and try the other trouble shooting fixes:

Yes I know that.

It's just that this is what the OP should have done from the very beginning. Doing all the other stuff really just clouded the picture. Things like Disk Utility permissions repair will never fix this issue (not sure it really ever fixed any issue )  and worrying about the format of the destination drive in this case was unlikely to have any positive effect.

Again until the Aperture permissions repair is run on the library doing anything else is a waste of time.

regards

You are welcome. I am glad the rebuilding did the trick, and I am sorry that I did not think of this option earlier!

Léonie