I have been using vaults since I began using Aperture and update them assiduously. I bought a new external HDD and have tried to set up another vault to be kept off premises but have had no end of problems with it. My library is 750GB so reasonably large. I have tried setting it up three times to no avail. I have left it running for up to 3 days and when I check the file on the HDD it always stops at about 140GB, the spinning progress marker stating that it is sill copying originals. If I try and use anything else on the computer they all malfunction. firstly Safari can not be quitted and the windows disappear, then the Finder needs to be relaunched but fails to do so. the only way of proceeding is to hold the power button in for 5 seconds and restart the machine. I have used disc utility to repair permissions but to no avail. It seems that Aperture cannot backup a library of this size. I have just copied the actual Aperture library file with the finder and at least this will give me some sort of backup. I was also thinking of renaming the extension to a vault and see if it will function as one and update.
Any assistance would be gratefully accepted as this is a major part of Aperture and if it does not function I guess I may have to look at Lightroom or some other programme.
paddy
Patrick,
I’m not sure the Vault and Library should necessarily be the same size; I think that even though the Vault is essentially a copy of the Library, through the course of updating it will grow in size. I honestly couldn’t tell you why, but I’ve never had the experience where their sizes were identical.
As far as the two different vault sizes; were they created at the same time? If not there will be differences between them. Also I think that differently formatted drives, or drives of different capacities, can report different file sizes. Something to do with bits and bytes. Oddly I just tested it and disproved that theory, but it’s something from the dark recesses of my brain on how hard drives report file sizes. Maybe that’s old tech. Maybe I’m just wrong. Maybe I need more sleep.
-Joseph
@PhotoJoseph
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Oh sorry… I’m not sure I follow the colored Vault update arrows issue — can you share screenshot please?
-Joseph
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Joseph,
Thank you for your reply. I guess that makes sense about the Vault sizes.
The bars that represent the Vaults on my computer have changed colour. I found the answer: apparently the bar is green when there is a lot of space on the drive, turns to yellow as the vault gets larger and then red as the drive is getting close to being filled. However I cannot seem to get any stats on this. I am not sure when each colour kicks in. In other words what percentage of the drive has to be used up before the colour changes.
This little alert is useful though.
Patrick
Ah I see, the bars, not the arrows… got it.
Right that’s drive space availability. Don’t know the percentages either but I guess it doesn’t matter; as it goes from green towards red you know you’ll be needing more drive space soon!
@PhotoJoseph
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Patrick,
As far as I know that won’t work. If you read the recent article Aperture Vault’s File Extension Secret you’ll see I mentioned that I tried this but I wasn’t successful.
@PhotoJoseph
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I have just tried to backup my library using Carbon Copy Cloner and it too slows down and stops around 200GB! Admittedly it is at a slightly different spot to the Aperture backup but still this is a mystery.
If this is a problem that Aperture has (as opposed to a problem that only I have) then it is a major one.
Help
Patrick
Patrick
Patrick,
Sounds more like a drive issue to me now. Can you copy the Library to another drive, erase from the current drive, then copy it back again?
(Needless to say, please verify the copy works before deleting the original!!)
@PhotoJoseph
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When I reformatted the drive with Disk Utility it wiped the Seagate software off and I did not install it. I downloaded it from the net and installed it and all seems to be fine now. This is the first external drive that I have had to use the software with in order for it to work. Seems to have something to do with ‘sleep’ settings I think.
With that resolved I now notice that after my two Vaults are synchronised 2 things: The Aperture Library (787.86GB) and the two Vaults (830.57GB and 872.14GB respectively) are 3 different sizes, and secondly that the Vault bar (rather than the circular arrows in the Vault indicator in the bottom left hand corner of Aperture, are yellow while the top vault is red. The circular arrows are both black indicting that they are up to date.
These little issues make me nervous as I cannot be sure if all my pics are backed up properly.
Patrick
Patrick
I’m getting similar symptoms with programs one at a time suddenly getting the beach ball and then eventually nothing responds and I need to hold the power button. But it happens with or without Aperture running. At first I thought my 4.5 yr old Mac Pro was starting to fail. But the problem started appearing not long after the MacOS 10.8 upgrade. So maybe it is SW. It doesn’t kernel panic, it just stops responding.
The last thing I tried was to update the DropBox SW to the latest version. Haven’t seen the problem since but it is random so it still might come back.
Thomas
It is interesting to note that when I upgrade my present vault with often up to 1000 new RAW images there is no problem and it only takes a matter of perhaps 10 minutes or so. However, trying to form a new vault causes not only the vault to stall at about 140gb or so but then causes other programs to stop functioning. Even the Finder will not relaunch.
Last night I opened the Aperture library contents package and tried copying the components in smaller bundles but this still stalled and would not copy to the HDD. I have had very few problems with other programs on this new 27” iMac.
Still puzzled over this.
Paddy
Patrick
Patrick,
Is the external drive formatted HFS+?
Thomas,
You’re not using Drop Box to sync your library, are you?
-Joseph @ApertureExpert Have you signed up for the ApertureExpert mailing list?
@PhotoJoseph
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Joseph
Seagate Goflex External Drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I reformatted it using Disk Utility.
Patrick
Patrick
I have reformatted the Seagate drive once again as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and at the moment I am trying to copy the Aperture library file onto the drive. This time it has succeeded in copy the file at least half way. I’m crossing my fingers!
I thought if it completely copies the file, if I change the file extension from library to vault, maybe I am able to search for it and get it to show up in the list of vaults and then it may update.
Not sure if this is a viable solution.
Patrick
Patrick