Dimitrios Varthalitis

Q: Aperture vault and wd my cloud

Hello,

 

i am trying to create an aperture vault on WD my cloud drive. I fail to do so since aperture seems to freeze. Then i read in apples website that the HD for the aperture library and vault has to be formatted in HFS+ because of the filenames or something.

 

 

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3252

 

What I wanted to ask is if it is possible to create a sparse bundle image (which is hfs+j right?) inside the wd my cloud and store the vault there without any problems by using for example a procedure like this:

 

http://code.stephenmorley.org/articles/time-machine-on-a-network-drive/

 

Creating the sparse bundle

5. Create the sparse bundle:

5a. Type hdiutil create -size 100g -fs HFS+J -volname "Time Machine" NAME_XXXXXXXXXXXX.sparsebundle and press enter, where NAME is the name of your computer on the network (as determined in step 2c) and XXXXXXXXXX is your MAC address (as determined in step 4a) without the colons. This will create a 100 gigabyte sparse bundle; to create a sparse bundle of a different size replace 100g with a different value. [show screenshot]

5b. Type rsync -aE NAME_XXXXXXXXXXXX.sparsebundle /Volumes/DRIVE/. and press enter, where DRIVE is the name of your network drive. This will copy the sparse bundle to the network drive, and will take several seconds. [show screenshot]

5c. Type rm -rf NAME_XXXXXXXXXXXX.sparsebundle and press enter. This will delete the copy of the sparse bundle on your computer. You can now close Terminal. [show screenshot]

 

Thank you in advance!

Posted on Aug 29, 2014 9:35 PM

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Q: Aperture vault and wd my cloud

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  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Aug 29, 2014 10:40 PM in response to Dimitrios Varthalitis
    Level 10 (107,942 points)
    iCloud
    Aug 29, 2014 10:40 PM in response to Dimitrios Varthalitis

    You can use a writable sparse bundle formatted MacOS Extended to store your vault on MyCloud drive as described above.

    But the file system is not the only problem with a NAS. The second problem are network dropouts. The document you linked to (Aperture: Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library) recommends locally connected drives to store an Aperture library, because using remote volumes may be causing library corruption and data loss.  And a vault is essentially an Aperture library

     

    So you will have to move the vault to a locally connected volume to be able to update it, which would be cumbersome to do routinely.  If you try to update the vault over the network, you cannot trust it, and what good is a backup, that you cannot rely on?

  • by Dimitrios Varthalitis,

    Dimitrios Varthalitis Dimitrios Varthalitis Aug 30, 2014 1:36 AM in response to léonie
    Level 2 (215 points)
    Aug 30, 2014 1:36 AM in response to léonie

    Thank you very much for the reply. You are right but on the other hand time machine backups over the network is what normally happens via airport etc and it takes place in a sparse bundle partition in time capsule.

  • by léonie,Helpful

    léonie léonie Aug 30, 2014 1:51 AM in response to Dimitrios Varthalitis
    Level 10 (107,942 points)
    iCloud
    Aug 30, 2014 1:51 AM in response to Dimitrios Varthalitis

    backups over the network is what normally happens via airport etc and it takes place in a sparse bundle partition in time capsule.

    That is why storing the vault in a correctly formatted sparse bundle will work, but it will not help, when you want to update the vault. Time Machine has been built to support network access to the Time Machine database, but Aperture not. Aperture has not been designed as a network database, so the transactions in the internal databases can go wrong and leave the vault in an inconsistent state. See the last paragraph in the document I linked to.

    Also, it is strongly recommended that the Aperture library be stored on a locally mounted hard drive. Storing the Aperture library on a network share can also lead to poor performance, data corruption, or data loss.

    If you want a network backup, include your Aperture library into your Time Machine backup.

  • by Dimitrios Varthalitis,

    Dimitrios Varthalitis Dimitrios Varthalitis Aug 30, 2014 2:03 AM in response to léonie
    Level 2 (215 points)
    Aug 30, 2014 2:03 AM in response to léonie

    The problem is that my aperture library is located in an external hard drive. I already have set up time machine for my internal drive and I can not set it up for a second drive as well (as far as I know). So the problem that I m facing is that my aperture library is not getting backed up. Another problem is that my aperture library is located on the same drive that the time machine backups take place (different partition) so including it in the time machine backups is pointless since a drive failure will cause both to be lost.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Aug 30, 2014 2:08 AM in response to Dimitrios Varthalitis
    Level 10 (107,942 points)
    iCloud
    Aug 30, 2014 2:08 AM in response to Dimitrios Varthalitis

    You can include your external drives into the regular Time Machine backup, if your backup drive is large enough.

     

    In the Time Machine Preferences click the "Options" button.

    Make sure, that the external drive is not listed in the "exclude" list.If it is, select it and press the "-" button.

     

    Screen Shot 2014-08-30 at 11.05.26GMT+2.png

  • by Dimitrios Varthalitis,

    Dimitrios Varthalitis Dimitrios Varthalitis Aug 30, 2014 2:12 AM in response to léonie
    Level 2 (215 points)
    Aug 30, 2014 2:12 AM in response to léonie

    But as I wrote above the time machine backups and the aperture library are both located on the same external hard drive. So including it in the time machine backups will not help in case of a drive failure

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Aug 30, 2014 2:24 AM in response to Dimitrios Varthalitis
    Level 10 (107,942 points)
    iCloud
    Aug 30, 2014 2:24 AM in response to Dimitrios Varthalitis

    Sorry, I missed the second part of your post. if you need to keep your Aperture library on an external drive, don't use the Time Machine volume for it. You could include the partition with the library into the Time Machine backup, but as you say, that will not protect from a drive failure. I'd recommend to get yourself a separate drive for Aperture and enlarge the TimeMachine partition.

  • by Dimitrios Varthalitis,

    Dimitrios Varthalitis Dimitrios Varthalitis Aug 30, 2014 3:39 AM in response to léonie
    Level 2 (215 points)
    Aug 30, 2014 3:39 AM in response to léonie

    Thank you for your reply and help. Buying another drive is not an option at the moment unfortunately. As i know time machine supports multiple backups on different drives. But can the drives have different kind of backups? For example is it possible to have a normal backup as i have now to the drive that is connected to the computer and make a second backup to wd my cloud, but in the second backup to exclude almost everything but the aperture library? To make it more clear what i am asking is this: Is it possible to have different exclusion lists in time machine when it is backing up in two different drives?