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Backing up Aperture vault in dropbox #1
Ben's picture
by Ben
May 23, 2014 - 7:15am

I know there have been a few posts about this, but couldn’t find a specific answer to this question.

I want to use dropbox as an offsite backup for my aperture vault. I know it’s not a good idea to put your library in dropbox because it can become corrupted. But has anyone had experience storing a vault in dropbox? Two specific questions:

1. Will this cause any corruption issues with the vault?

2. When I update the vault using aperture, will the entire vault need to resync to dropbox, or only the changes (my vault is about 100GB so too big to resync the entire thing every time).

Thanks

Russell's picture
by Russell
May 23, 2014 - 9:29am

Hi Ben

I haven’t risked saving any database type files in DropBox since it stuffed my iBank database file.

I don’t think DropBox plays nice with database type files which ultimately, is what Aperture is.

I’ve just remembered that DropBox didn’t like my iWork Pages files either. They’re different to .doc(x) or .txt files in that they’re basically PDFs in a proprietary wrapper, also containing a version database.

I think (but I’m not sure so am happy to be corrected) that files get corrupted because of the way that DropBox handles versioning.

Things may have changed recently but I haven’t been brave enough to try again.

Russell

Ben's picture
by Ben
May 23, 2014 - 10:49am

Thanks for the reply Russell. 

What do you think about a vault, as opposed to the working aperture db file. I guess I was thinking that the vault file would be completely static until you choose to update it, and then also remains static as it is syncing to drop box, which means it might not have the same issues as you describe?

Cheers

Russell's picture
by Russell
May 23, 2014 - 11:08am

The vault is still a db file, though.

In fact, you can just change the filename extension from “.apvault” to “.aplibrary” if you ever need a quick and dirty backup restore of an Aperture library. 

Others may have more recent successful experiences with DropBox and db versions than me; I got burned so am wary.

 

Russell

Ben's picture
by Ben
May 23, 2014 - 11:19am

Ah ok, I think that’s the bit I’ve been missing. Makes sense, thanks.

Scott Davenport's picture
by Scott Davenport
May 24, 2014 - 1:51am
I agree with others that Dropbox and database/package files don’t mix well (disclaimer: I have lited experience with Dropbox). You could try compressing the vault and saving the zip file to Dropbox. Once compressed, it’s a single file. Certainly test your restore and recovery procedures before considering Dropbox, or any cloud service, as your solid, viable backup plan.
Ben's picture
by Ben
May 26, 2014 - 6:41am

Compression is something I hadn’t considered. I’ll test this out to see if it works.

I’m not 100% on how dropbox handles compressed files? Would it allow incremental backup of a compressed file? Or would I need to re-upload the entire file every time I updated the vault and re-compressed it?

Russell's picture
by Russell
May 24, 2014 - 7:29am

I think that if you encrypt the vault as a sparse bundle or convert it to a disk image, DropBox can handle it too. It’s not exactly a convenient or seamless workflow, though, especially with a large vault.

Russell

Bob Decker's picture
by Bob Decker
May 24, 2014 - 7:36pm

I tried Dropbox for backing up my Aperture library.  It did not go well.  The size of the library on Dropbox was huge (many time bigger than the actual library).  It was not workable at all.

Based on Joseph’s recommendation I am now using Back Blaze.  $5/month.  It is slow to get the initial backup. Then it works in the background to keep all of your data files synced.  I tried several iterations of test files with Back Blaze.  I was able to back up a test library and recover just fine.

 

Alex Leung's picture
by Alex Leung
May 25, 2014 - 3:21am

Does anybody know if Google Drive handles the Aperture db the same as Dropbo? Or is Google Drive any better? Coz Google Drive storage prices are lots cheaper than Dropbox. >,<

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