Restored Aperture Library from Time Capsule - lost folder structure, tags, ratings, etc.

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c1nick Author

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Restored Aperture Library from Time Capsule - lost folder structure, tags, ratings, etc.

iMac 21.5" (2013)

OS-X 10.10.3

Aperture 3.6

Time Capsule (2012)

Yesterday I found that after a run of "CleanMyMac 3" at least one of my latest Projects in Aperture was missing. The CMM3 user interface only ever speaks of iPhoto, not mentions Aperture, but that's a different story. So I turned to Time Machine to simply restore my Aperture Library from one of the latest backups. It took half the night (as it's connected via WLAN) and did bring back the lost pictures but this morning I was shocked to find:

Hundreds of projects with ca. 20.000 pictures have merged into a single project and no albums
Thousands of deleted pictures re-appeared
No picture has maintained the edits I made over the years
No picture has ratings, keywords, faces, etc.

I'm hesitant to do anything more from here.

In principle the above information should still be somewhere on my Time Capsule - but I need help to do the restore better than my first try above. It's worth many years of work...

Hoping for your help. Chris

Aperture 3, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Jun 24, 2015 12:15 AM

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Answer 1

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léonie

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Jun 24, 2015 12:22 AM in response to c1nick

. So I turned to Time Machine to simply restore my Aperture Library from one of the latest backups. It took half the night (as it's connected via WLAN) and did bring back the lost pictures but this morning I was shocked to find:

How did you restore from Time Machine?

Did you launch Time Machine and restored using the Starwars display Time Tunnel or did you copy the Aperture library from the Time Machine drive? You need to restore by entering Time Machine.

Quit Aperture
Connect your Time Machine drive.
In the Finder, open the folder containing your Aperture Library. Unless you've moved your Aperture Library, it can be found in Home/Pictures/ApertureLibrary.
Enter Time Machine. (Time Machine can be found in the Dock or in the /Applications folder.)
Choose your desired backup. The timeline on the right side of the screen displays a purple tick mark for each of the backups stored on your Time Machine drive.
Select the Aperture library you would like to restore, and click the Restore button.

Aperture may prompt you to repair your library if there are some inconsistencies in your files.

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Answer 2

c1nick Author

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Jun 24, 2015 12:46 AM in response to léonie

Thanks léonie - I think that's what I did except that I may have had Aperture running during the process.

Which was probably not the very smartest thing...

I will now:

Quit Aperture
Move the Aperture library to my desktop
Repeat your suggested steps

I'll let you know if that worked. Oh - and I'll connect my Time Capsule via cable to make the process a bit faster...

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Answer 3

léonie

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194,743 points

Jun 24, 2015 1:42 AM in response to c1nick

The symptoms you are describing - all photos in one big project, metadata missing - are very typical for a library corruption, where the connection between the edited versions and the original image files has been lost. Then all originals will be collected in one big "recovered items" project. This can happen with cleaning software like CleanMyMac. I only tested Clean My Mac 2 and not version 3, but both versions state, that they will remove redundant "Service copies" from the library, meaning, that it will replace the original image files by the JPEGS of the edited versions. This will go dreadfully wrong, if you are creating new versions when editing. Then the links will not be correct. In any way, your originals will be lost.

Did you go back far enough in time in Time Machine, to a date before you ever run Clean My Mac? You should try to restore a library,, that has not been touched by Clean My Mac.

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Answer 4

c1nick Author

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Jun 24, 2015 5:02 AM in response to léonie

Thanks so much léonie. Makes a lot of sense - now that I'm aware... The Mac is now restoring the Aperture Library back to my Pictures folder and I've made sure to pick a version that's been made prior to my first run of CleanMyMac3. I am sure though that I had not performed the iPhoto services in CMM and I've even checked that CMM only lists the iPhoto library and not the Aperture library as a target - so I'm still unsure where the issue actually came from. I'll be double careful though before I run CMM again, consult their forums and tripple check all checkboxes...

I'll report how things have worked once TM has done its magic. Will take a while...

Thanks again, Chris

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Answer 5

léonie

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Jun 24, 2015 9:23 AM in response to c1nick

Good Luck, Chris.

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Answer 6

c1nick Author

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Jun 25, 2015 11:55 PM in response to c1nick

Still copying... 330GB over WLAN... Couldn't physically move TC or iMac... 1 day to go, it says...

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Answer 7

c1nick Author

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Jun 26, 2015 1:09 AM in response to c1nick

Does anyone know if I can safely switch Time Machine to "off" in the System Preferences while it's restoring my file? I'd hope this would allow TM to work faster as it would not need to simultaneously read and write to Time Capsule...? Or does the "on/off" switch relate to both, the backup schedule and the restore process and hence also interrupt the restore process? Need to be double sure after days of copying 220 GB so far and 110 GB still to go...

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Answer 8

léonie

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Jun 26, 2015 2:24 AM in response to c1nick

I don't know. But I would not risk it.

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Answer 9

c1nick Author

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Jun 26, 2015 11:23 PM in response to léonie

Now Time Machine did what it was supposed to do. Everything back to normal! Thanks léonie for your help with kicking off the restore process correctly after my first (wrong) attempt! As we replaced the entire 330 GB library it took 4 days but 20.000 pictures are sooo worth it...

After consulting with CleanMyMac it also looks like your explanation was spot on. Funny enough I had already planned to switch from Aperture.app over to CaptureOne.app over a month ago, but just did not get to it yet. I'll now make a fresh backup of my library and then finally make that transition. Having tested CaptureOne for a while on my other Mac I'm very impressed with it and I can only recommend anyone who's hesitant to step into Lightroom and the Adobe universe to have a look at CaptureOne. They've got extensive online tutorials and even run live webinars.

Thanks again for your quick and spot on help. Much appreciated. Saved years of work and memories... If you ever come to Hamburg, Germany, give me a shout at Twitter chris holscher without space and I'll buy you a coffee! Thanks!

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Answer 10

léonie

Level 10

194,743 points

Jun 26, 2015 11:32 PM in response to c1nick

Now Time Machine did what it was supposed to do. Everything back to normal!

You're welcome, Chris!

It is good to know, that Time Machine could rescue your library.

After consulting with CleanMyMac it also looks like your explanation was spot on.

Thank you for that confirmation. It is the first time I hear that MacPaw is confirming what they are doing to iPhoto and Aperture libraries when "cleaning".

And thanks for the invitation. Maybe one day 🙂

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