I upgraded my iMac to Lion from Snow Leopard recently. Unfortunately, things have slowed down to a crawl so I want to do a full reinstall of Snow Leopard (and maybe upgrade again to Lion lately).
I use Aperture 3 and my files are referenced. The master files are on a Drobo. Do you know of any trustworthy articles out there that can guide me through the reinstall as the my Aperture stuff?
I believe all I have to do is copy the Aperture library file and transfer it to the computer after reinstalling SL and pointing a few images to the referenced file and the rest will take care of itself?
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
If it helps, the specs on my iMac:
Processor: 2.66 GHZ Intel Core i5
Memory: 8GB 1067 MHz DDR3
is it the fact the mac has overall come to a crawl or just aperture?
Everything has slowed down not just Aperture.
Have you tried shutting down the computer and on boot up holding down the OPTION key. Then, select Recovery HD and click on the arrow. Select Disk Utility. When it’s opened, select your Mac HD. Click Repair Disk then when that is finished click on to Repair Disk Permissions.
Just thought that this might help your experience of OS X Lion and save the hassle of going back to snow leopard.
If you are planning on going back to snow leopard and then back to lion it might be worth while just doing a clean install of Lion from a DVD. You can create your own, as apples usb key is a bit of a rip off, this guide was very handy http://www.cultofmac.com/how-to-make-a-bootable-install-disk-of-mac-os-x-lion/105527
You are right though about copying the aperture library, once you have dropped it back on to your mac you need to find the referenced files again:
Click on the Photos icon in the Library tab of the Aperture Inspector.
Click on one thumbnail, then choose Select All from the Edit menu.
Go to Locate Referenced Files under the File menu.
Establish one photo match between the top and bottom pane of the interface (as shown in the illustration). The top pane is your Aperture library. The bottom pane is the new hard drive with the master files.
Click on the Reconnect All button.
Thanks for the input - I took the plunge and wiped the drive and reinstalled Snow Leopard. A3 is up and running - I didn’t even have to point A3 to the masters as they remained safe and sound on the Drobo.
I was expecting absolute chaos and nothing chaotic happened. ;)