Will this work - Maybe?

Question

Level 8

37,591 points

Will this work - Maybe?

Been thinking for some time of the prudence of getting my critical Aperture library migrated to something I can use into the far future to access the roughly 145,000 images amounting to over 5 TB in storage requirement, while having the basic organizational structure as in Aperture. I have already had to switch to Lightroom to handle all my new photos because many of them are being shot with my Nikon D850 (hoping to find Luminar's DAM superior if they ever get it out.) Had settled on checking using Photos to do this, but had not tried that due to the size of the task.

Yesterday I was checking the contents of several older SATA drives, and ran across on a 750 GB drive an old Aperture library from 2010 that was only about 525 GB in size with about 35,000 images. Decided to open it with Photos (without bothering to first open with Aperture and upgrade) to see what would happen. Seemed to take forever to get anywhere, and then seemed to stick on 34% done for another forever. Then all at once photos started to appear as thumbnails were built in a Photos display window. All the photos seemed to be present, and in a structure similar (maybe identical) to that in my continuation Aperture library up through the applicable date.

The resulting volume now has both an Aperture Library, and a Photos Library package. The latter is slightly larger when checked than the Aperture Library, but it is one of those Apple magic tricks has both packages sharing many of the same subfolders, and the total data on this volume (exclusively the A Library and derivative) is only a bit more than the size reported for the Photos Library.

So I am at present letting SuperDuper copy the nearly 6 TB ALib from its 6 TB drive to a new 8 TB USB3 drive, and will subsequently try to open that A Lib in Photos hoping there will be enough room to allow the conversion. From experience I know this first step will take over 36 hours (maybe more) and then it will take some unknown time to then try to open in Photos.

Btw, this huge Aperture Library, while still working in Aperture, in 10.13.4, has gotten very sluggish to access. With smaller libraries Aperture seems to be working at a normal speed.

Ernie

Posted on May 25, 2018 9:03 AM

Reply

Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,653 points

May 28, 2018 1:23 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

I'm glad it worked 🙂

I will need to explore Photos more, especially since I seem to have lost the alphabetic sequencing of the Projects (now called iPhoto events) I had in Aperture.

The iPhoto Events are just albums, one album for each project you had in Aperture.

If you now are running Photos 3.0, you should be able to sort these albums alphabetically. Ctrl-click the folder "iPhoto Events" in the sidebar and use the command "Keep arranged by ..."

To get started with Photos you may want to look at or collection of Photos User Tips:

Thematic Index to Photo Related User Tips: | Communities

Good Luck!

Reply

Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

194,653 points

May 25, 2018 8:05 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

So I am at present letting SuperDuper copy the nearly 6 TB ALib from its 6 TB drive to a new 8 TB USB3 drive, and will subsequently try to open that A Lib in Photos hoping there will be enough room to allow the conversion.

Ernie, is the file system format of the destination drive MacOs Extended (Journaled)? And not case-sensitive? If Photos does not accept the file system format of a drive as compatible, it will create the migrated library on the system drive, and not on the drive with the aperture Library. If the library is too large for the system drive, the conversion will not get through. Others use, it should work.

Reply

Answer 3

Ernie Stamper Author

Level 8

37,591 points

May 25, 2018 8:12 PM in response to léonie

Yes, I reformatted the new drive as simply MacOS Extended (Journaled). Will be copied by tomorrow morning, I think.

With the test conversion I did, the two packages now on that drive are named the same as before for the ALib, but with a Get Info, the Kind is reported to be a Migrated Aperture Library with that icon, and the other has the same name except to substitute the word Photos where the word Aperture had been. Its Kind is reported to be a Photos Library. Must I keep both of these Packages?

Ernie

Reply

Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

194,653 points

May 25, 2018 11:19 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

the Kind is reported to be a Migrated Aperture Library with that icon

You can change the filename extension back to ".aplibrary" and Apertur will be able to open it again.

You do not need to keep the migrated Aperture library, if you still have a backup copy of it, but it does not need much storage, if it is on the same drive as the Photos Library. And I found it convenient to be able to open Aperture and Photos concurrently, to be able to compare , if everything went well with the migration.It also helped to recreate the smart albums and the project or missing titles.

Reply

Answer 5

Ernie Stamper Author

Level 8

37,591 points

May 26, 2018 7:51 AM in response to léonie

Well, it turned out that only 15 hours was needed. Source drive was TBolt and I have found going from that interface to USB3 more efficient than other combinations. Based upon the test volume I converted, I calculate that only about 7 TB of the 8 TB drive will be needed to host the packages in the conversion of this 5.6 TB Aperture library - fingers crossed.

I will have the original drive, plus two more USB3 6 TB with clones in reserve.

But is there any way to direct where it would seek extra space?

Thanks,

Ernie

Reply

Answer 6

léonie

Level 10

194,653 points

May 27, 2018 8:16 AM in response to Ernie Stamper

Sorry for the late response, Ernie. I am traveling and rarely online.

But is there any way to direct where it would seek extra space?

There is no way in Photos to distribute a library over several drives. You would have to take the Aperture Library smaller before the migration by making it a partly referenced library by relocating originals to a different drive. Then the Photos library will also be referenced. Only, Photos does not have much support to handle a referenced library. The only thing you can do with referenced originals is consolidating them. But if you need to reconnect the referenced originals, it will be a lot of work.

Reply

Answer 7

Ernie Stamper Author

Level 8

37,591 points

May 28, 2018 10:52 AM in response to léonie

Somewhere between 36 and 48 hours the conversion finished. I would call it a success! I can now access the 164,000 plus photos on this library (I had understated the number previously due to incomplete memory) with an application that should be supported long term by Apple. Curiously, the full extent of the use of the space on this volume increased very little - 5.64 TB vs 5.61 TB on the original TBolt drive. I can surmise that the apparent overhead seen in the test conversion of the much smaller old ALib was probably due to some sort of upgrade of the old version library during that conversion. I may elect to clone it to one of my 6 TB drives I have been using to backup the TBolt drive for the huge ALib, since I am unlikely to add photos to this archive . I will need to explore Photos more, especially since I seem to have lost the alphabetic sequencing of the Projects (now called iPhoto events) I had in Aperture.

Many thanks to Leonie for holding my hand.

Ernie

Reply

Answer 8

Ernie Stamper Author

Level 8

37,591 points

May 28, 2018 12:42 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

After reviewing some file dates, I think the conversion completed after about 45 hours.

Reply

Will this work - Maybe?

Similar questions