How to Transition from Referenced Library to a Managed One?

Your referenced images should show an "arrow" badge like this:

See this list in the manual, for how to enable the display of badges:

Understanding Badge Overlays

I want to move it all to a Managed Library on my primary (internal) HD.

I'd recommend to do it in four steps, to do it safely:

1. Back up everything on your external drive before you restructure your library, just in case.
2. Consolidate the liberary: Then select all images in library at once, for example from the "Photos" view, and use the command "File > Consolidate Originals". Select to move the originals. That will turn the referenced originals into managed originals and move them into the Aperture library.
3. Repair the library, before you move it to another drive, see this manual page: Repairing and Rebuilding Your Aperture Library: Aperture 3 User Manual
   Repair the permissions and repair the library. That may take a while.
4. Now you can simply drag the Aperture library from your external drive to a folder on your system drive.

Regards

Léonie

Referenced files have a square with an arrow in the corner to signify referenced. See below.

The other icon signifies adjustments have been made. It's a couple of slide controls. You need to turn on metadata display to see these icons.

To be clear, the location of the library on an external drive doesn't signify it is referenced. It's the location of the original images that counts. If the originals are inside the library package, they are managed. If they are external to the library package, they are referenced.

The originals can be on the internal drive and still be referenced if they are external to the library package.

If your library package is on an external drive you can just copy it to the internal drive using the Finder.

If your originals are referenced and you want them to be managed, do this:

1. Open the library and select all the images in the browser (click the photos icon in the Library tab of the inspector. Make sure the browser is set to Show All. Select all the images by clicking one and typing command-A)

2. Select File->Consolidate Originals...

3. Tell Aperture to either move the images or copy. If you copy, the originals will remain in whatever folder they existed before the command was started.

You need to be fast to beat Léonie to a post...

You need to be fast

😀 I have a Time Machine - compare the times of our posts.

Maybe that time marks when you click the reply button, not when you finish typing?

Maybe that time marks when you click the reply button, not when you finish typing?

The time stamp changes, when a post is edited. I had to edit the post to add the screenshot. It wold not upload at a first try. The sort order opf posts does not change after editing, but the time stamp does.

daikambu65: just in case you are seeing copy errors, when you copy the consolidated library to your internal drive, check the formatiing of your external drive, if it is MacOS X Extended and post back.

They're called badge overlays and there's many more of them. All explained here by Apple.