current thoughts on iDefrag/ the "Doyle Papers"?

Hoping others would reply, but since no-one has, I will, with the primary intent of giving this a bump.

I got nothing measured. Up through 3.2.x all of my Libraries were less than robust. As part of regular maintenance I copied them from one drive to another, with the expectation that this would help not just performance but also robustness. It seemed to help. I used Drive Genius 3 to measure fragmentation, but rarely used it to defrag. I think I tried iDefrag once and, for reasons forgotten, abandoned it.

Since 3.3 all of my Libraries (about 10, of greatly different sizes, contents, and uses) have been robust. I regularly run "Repair Database" on all of them (at least 1/mo). I have stopped copying the Libraries to other drives in order to force a defragmentation, and haven't even measured the degree of fragmentation in months. If I get a chance, I will measure a few later today and report back.

My hunch -- no more than that -- is that OS X and Aperture fell behind in file/drive maintenance, but have now caught up. OTOH, I am now using a machine that is fast enough (rMBP, 16, 500ssd) that I may not notice drive fragmentation issues. (Is fragmentation even an issue with SSDs?)

In short, I recommend regularly running "Repair Database". IME, that is more important and useful than regularly defragging the drive holding your Library.

I think defragmenting a library would be a waste of time. Mainly for 2 reasons:

1) The database part of the library is constantly being written, read, and rewritten. About 20 minutes after a "defragement" much of it will be rewritten and the whole operation would be for naught.

2) The photos part of the library (i.e. the RAW files themselves) are read quite infrequently and written only once. Given reads are so infrequent, nothings likely to matter here, so the whole defragment operation would be for naught.

So I think it's of marginal to no value. Also, with an SSD you would NEVER want to use any automated defragmentation software (and any that purported to do so would likely be scamware or downright damaging).

To allow this level of access to third party software is really asking for trouble. So first off it you are going to use any defrag software make very sure you have a good working backup.

Having said that I agree with William and would take it a step further, defragmenting any drive is a waste of time. With modern OS's and drives the whole iea of fragmentation has little meaning. And if this did somehow turn your plodding Mac into a super speed computer don't you think Apple would supply the tool? Or better still build it right into the OS as they have done with the Fusion drive?

The best thing you can do to maintain good drive access speed is to make sure you don;t let the drive get to full.

regards

Agree with Frank & William. Any notion that the physical location of the images or database have any relation to the robustness of Aperture is false. If your disk passes "Verify Disk" in the "Disk Utility" application and you don't 'run it into the wall' (i.e. you keep 20-30 gig of free space) then Aperture has no concerns with where the actual database and images reside. Running "Repair Database" should be harmless but is advised if you had to Force Quit for one reason or another. Multiple backups of everything is important.

For large libraries, Referenced libraries are generally preferred because the image files are more static and can be backed up in a number of ways --- then Aperture Vaults are much smaller and more easily scattered among several disks.

Back to DLScreative, "wiping" an otherwise healthy drive (per Disk Utility) should have no benefit for a Library or a Vault. Nor any effect on a Vault update that hangs. Does your Library pass "Rebuild Database" and/or "Repair Database" in Aperture? Can you create a new Vault? If your Vault is from a few Aperture dot-versions ago it has to do a substantial update to the Vault (at least it reports several steps). I have had no problems with updates but YMMV.

Fwiw ...

DLScreative wrote:

Still, as a documentary photographer, I have to think about the longterm (e.g., after I'm dead) and I can't have all my eggs in one basket.

... I have in my papers instructions to export from specified Aperture Libraries all specifically marked Images to 16-bit, full-size TIFFs, and to collect these separate from and exclusive of anything else. These are my artistic legacy, photography edition, digital files sub-set. As a documentary photographer your obligation to your work is slightly different, but -- to me, at least -- your response should be substantially the same, viz.: Images selected by you should be converted to TIFFs and these TIFFs should be made a singular collection on your death. No?

But who's to say TIFFs or the media you put those TIFFs on will be readable in the future.

I had 8mm analog tapes from when my kids were growing up. Try to find a camera or player for those now, impossible. I was lucky enough to secure one of the last SONY decks for these.That technology isn;t that old and already it is unreadable,

I can go to the shelf and pull down 8mm film and slides that my father took in 1947 and view those with no problem but tapes made a few years ago?

Digital has its good points but long term storage and retrieval is not one of them. Not sure what the answer is but I know my kids and any kids they have and on will not have the same access to what we are producing now as we have to what was produced pre-digital.

Frank Caggiano wrote:

But who's to say TIFFs or the media you put those TIFFs on will be readable in the future.

That's not the point. I fully expect TIFF and the media of the day to be replaced. And either I will be change the instructions, or those who maintain the files will adapt them to newer formats (or not, depending on the value they place on them relative to the resources required to keep them viable).

But that's just the "digital files subset". Important work I will have already printed.

More broadly: it's enough. Anyone who thinks that durability will ensure perdurance is fooling themselves.

Of interest: _all_ five hundred year old paintings are significantly restored (or else damaged). Stuff doesn't last without care. Stuff in museums has received a tremendous amount of care.

That's not the point. I fully expect TIFF and the media of the day to be replaced. And either I will be change the instructions, or those who maintain the files will adapt them to newer formats (or not, depending on the value they place on them relative to the resources required to keep them viable).

I think that's exactly the point. I didn't have to do anything to the old film and slides and negatives sitting in the shoebox (other then maintain a reasonable environment all these years). I didn't have to go through it all every ten years deciding if it was worth keeping and then spending considerable time transferring it to some new storage medium.

Of interest: _all_ five hundred year old paintings are significantly restored (or else damaged). Stuff doesn't last without care. Stuff in museums has received a tremendous amount of care.

But again the point is digital is different.

As badly damaged a 500 year old painting might be you can still see something without anything more then your eyes. The same with film I can see those old slides and 8mm film with noting more then my eyes.