Apple Aperture archiving?

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Burningflan

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Hello everyone :D

The HDD on my MacBook is closer than I'd like to being totally filled! the main culprit is, of course, digital photographs.
My ideal solution would be this...

  • Big external HDD for an aperture archive. Once I have finished processing/editing images and exported a copy for web use/printing etc the files would get archived off on to this HDD.
  • Bigger external HDD for Time Machine backups.

My query is this - is there a fairly painless way to import new photos to aperture on the local HDD so I can work with them at the maximum possible speed/with minimum lag and then when I've finished working with them, move them off to the external HDD archive? I'm not sure how aperture stores the files and 'versions', and if they are easy to access and copy off to elsewhere without upsetting aperture?

Any info and/or help would be fantastic :thumbs:
 
Can move files easily to ext drive by making it the new destination, this would then mean all new pics would go there too though. Only other thing looking at what you're proposing is there is no backup of the files, as there is some questions still over time machine and Aperture files. May be better with back up drive to partition and make major part aprture vault and other part time machine. 2TB ext, 1.5 for Pics, 500gb time machine.
 
Which version of Aperture?
Are you letting Aperture manage your files, or using referenced masters?
 
Can move files easily to ext drive by making it the new destination, this would then mean all new pics would go there too thoug
Click to expand...
That wouldn't be a problem as long as there was no noticable slow down, I assume working on large files accross USB would introduce a noticable lag?

Jim.R:
Version 2.x
Letting Aperture manage I assume, I just create a new folder/project in Aperture, import the RAW files into it and get working!
 
Just to add sauce to the conversation ... does anyone have a link to some PC software that can do external backups to a USB HDD and/or network HDD? I' having the same problem on my Win7 system and copy/pasting the info is a nightmare.
 
Burningflan said:
That wouldn't be a problem as long as there was no noticable slow down, I assume working on large files accross USB would introduce a noticable lag?

Jim.R:
Version 2.x
Letting Aperture manage I assume, I just create a new folder/project in Aperture, import the RAW files into it and get working!
Click to expand...

I think once the file has opened it should not be too bad, as long as it is USB 2. I use a firewire ext drive for my pics, and it is as fast, and a usb drive before that, again with not too much slowdown. there is some, but nothing to worry about unless you are very impatient. Only other options would be larger drive in the computer.
 
OK, managed files is easy as everythings contained in one "file".
The simplest way to do this would be to simply archive (ie. move) your Aperture library onto the external drive, removing the copy on your local drive.
Next time you start Aperture it will create a new library on your internal drive and you start afresh.
If you want to access the old library, you can change the library location in Aperture preferences to point at the one on the external, restart, and BINGO!
Apertuer 3 makes this all a lot easier as you can switch libraries from a menu option.
I think you can also export presets, keywords etc...
 
Oh, and as Carl mentioned, a larger hard drive would help as well. I stuck a 500Gb 7200rpm one in my Macbook, cost about £80 for the drive and an hours work to fit it and restore OSX from a TM backup.
 
Yeah, I think I'm just gonna upgrade the HDD in it and retain the simplicity of having one 'live' HDD in the machine and an external one for backups. I think ths will remove a layer of confusion with regards to archiving files off and remembering to back up another external drive etc.
 
This is doing my head in... I have a Macbook Pro with a 128gb SSD so naturally I'm running out of disk space after every other import. How can there be no "archive this project..." function to simply move projects to an external drive? Or even nicer the built-in ability to move Projects between Libraries so you could have one with work to do and one with work done for instance.

The closest I've come clicking around for an hour now is exporting each project as a library by right-clicking it -> Export.. -> Project as New Library. Consolidating multiple projects into libraries I would then save externally would put me in a tough spot looking for file names and into an even tougher spot in a year or two when I want to access these files again...
 
What I do is use my laptop in the feild then my Imac in the office. Thusly I have two librarys. If you had your main library on the External HDD then just your processing library on the laptop you could free up a boat load of space. Also you don't have to export the images out of one and back into the other, you can just move the entire project.

on the laptop

To do this close aperture, Open the Apeture libary in Finder right click on it and go "show package contents" find the Project (.approject) that you want to move, apple click Copy.

On the External HDD

Open the external up in finder. Right click Paste (it doesn't matter where just some where easy to find as you'll be trashing this in a moment.

Back in to Aperture
*Click Aperture - Prefrences - Library Location point the location at where you want the library to be on the HDD.
Quit Aperture and Relaunch.*
Next File Import Project
Find the project you copied onto the external HDD.
Import that, check to make sure its all there then delete the copy off the External HDD

I assume you can figure out how to change back to your internal HDD library

Rinse and repeat as much as is needed

*thats just made your new library you only need to do that once
 
Thanks, something similar is what I'm doing now.. I use two libraries in Aperture 3, one located on the SSD and one on the FireWire. It is really easy to switch between them in Aperture 3 but to move files from one to the other I have to do most of the steps you described. I just don't understand how they don't include this very basic feature.
 
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