. What worries me is that the vaults are just 6.8 MB and took about three seconds to make. How is it possible to back up a massive 385GB library in such a tiny vault? Is this safe? If something goes horribly wrong, will I really be able to restore my aperture library just from that vault? I just can’t believe that anything in life is that simple

When you create a vault, it will initially not hold any photos.  The first thing you need to do is to update the vault. At least once That will backup your images in the vault.  The size of the vault should be just slightly less than the size of the Aperture library.

If your Aperture library is referenced, the vault will not include the original images files. You will have to back them up separately.

See this page in the Aperture User Manual:   http://documentation.apple.com/en/aperture/usermanual/index.html#chapter=27%26se ction=5%26hash=apple_ref:doc:uid:Aperture-UserManual-91292BAC-1014392

Updating Vaults

You can have Aperture update your vaults at any time. You can determine which vaults need to be updated by the color of the Vault Status button next to each vault. You can have Aperture update a particular vault or all of your vaults at once.

After you import new images into Aperture, you should make an immediate backup to ensure that the digital files exist in more than one place. You can make an immediate backup of your imported images by updating an existing vault.

 

To update an existing vault

1. Do one of the following:
   • Choose Window > Show Vaults (or press Shift-R).
   • Click the Vault Pane button.
2. Select the vault you want to update.
3. Do one of the following:
   • In the Vault pane, choose Update Vault from the Vault Action pop-up menu (with a gear icon).
   • Click the Vault Status button beside the vault name.
4. In the dialog that appears, click the Update button.

If something goes horribly wrong, will I really be able to restore my aperture library just from that vault? I just can’t believe that anything in life is that simple

Once you update your vault, it will be essentially an Aperture Library.

You can restore the library from the vault, or simply change the filename extension of the vault from .apvault to .aplibrary.  Then Aperture can use the vault like your Aperture Library.

You're welcome, David.  It is good that you have been cautious and checked the vault. Some users have been trapped by this "feature".

I don't bother with vaults any more.  They are from a time, when Time Machine could not backup Aperture Libraries well.  Now I simply include the drive with the Aperture Library in my regular Time Machine backup and occasionally make a clone of the drive with the Aperture library as a second backup.

davidfromlondon wrote:

What worries me is that the vaults are just 6.8 MB and took about three seconds to make. How is it possible to back up a massive 385GB library in such a tiny vault? Is this safe?

David,

I had pretty much the same thoughts several years ago. Not only did I question that Vaults were so much smaller than the parent library, but there was no way to verify whether it was a faithful and accurate copy without restoring the library to check. Then you no longer had a vault.

I started backing up entire libraries to new drives using hard drive adaptors. I simply copy my working library to a drive or two and store them in a cabinet. They get updated frequently (usually alternatively) depending on how much photographing I am doing.