I have a question about manual backups of my Aperture library. My entire computer is already double backed up. Locally via Time Machine… and Cloud via Crashplan.
I bought a couple of 1.5TB HDDs that I have been using as “manual backups” using Aperture Vaults. I rotate these HDDs such that one is always off-site (my corporate office).
Since I had extra space on the HDDs… I also used Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to backup my entire Aperture library (managed)… hence the drives contain both the vault plus the entire Aperture library.
I finally came to the conclusion that since I have a full clone of my Aperture library, then the vault really added no value, so I stopped taking the time to run the vault backup, and just clone the entire library.
My question: Am I missing anything? Does the vault offer any additional protection over a cloned library. I do not think so… especially since I tested that I can actually run Aperture using the cloned library.
Thanks.
/Jim
I have just used the file-extension tip to convert a Vault into a Library so that I can turn the Vault into a cloned back-up using ChronoSync. Very helpful.
I had two Vaults and two Library clones, but I’ve discovered that the clones are much more useful, especially if they are on mini-drives. With a clone, you can carry the whole library to use on a laptop (just double-click on the clone and Aperture opens with that Library showing), or other machine, that doesn’t have room for the whole library. You can’t do this with a Vault.
And I discovered today that the Vault is MISSING some elements of the clone—for example, the iPad and iPhone folders of the files used for synching the Library with my portable devices. And there was a data file in my clones which was not in my Vaults. ChronoSync is clearly picking up stuff that is not included when the Vault is done. These other bits are in the original Library, but they’re not in my Vaults.
I’ve been an Aperture user since Aperture’s first release and I’m a religious backer-upper of all my main disks—system, applications, data, Aperture.
In my view, my Ap Library clones are much more useful and more thorough than the Vaults.
jsamu50901
Thanks for validating my thoughts.
I also like that updating a cloned library (using CCC) is MUCH faster than using a vault update via Aperture. Not too sure why that is the case, as the amount of data transferred should be similar.
For a while, I was updating vaults & clones (since my pair of external HDDs had enough space. I finally stopped using vaults several months ago and only use CCC clones now.
/Jim
/Jim Pappas
Jim,
ApertureExpert.com has an article titled Aperture Vault’s File Extension Secret where you will learn that the Vault is nothing more than a “special” library. So creating a Vault and cloning your managed library are effectively doing the same thing. I prefer cloning the library. I can open the cloned copy, export anything I accidentally deleted from the master, and import it back into the master. Vaults force you to recover the entire library, possibly losing newer work as a result.
In Joseph’s article linked above he shows you how to change the suffix of the Vault and convince Aperture it is just a library, export things you accidentally deleted from your master library, and change the suffix back to the proper Vault extension. This a bit more complicated, and there is some risk that Aperture will detect you did something with the Vault, so I prefer my method of cloning the library.
Walter
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Walter,
Thank you for the confirmation. I started off using just vaults… but I switched to making library clones. I just wanted to make 100% sure that I wasn’t leaving something behind inadvertently.
/Jim
/Jim Pappas