Hello
I’m wondering what the best options are to permanently store my Aperture library on a portable external drive.
The main concern is efficient editing on my MBP Retina and it’s hard to find any information about the kind of throughput I should be looking for from the disk (other than simply saying that ‘faster is better’).
2TB would be about right for me and these potentially look good:
http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?id=10599
or
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1240
Can anyone suggest what I should be looking for and if either of these should fit the bill?
Thanks
Ben
well, I now keep my Aperture Library (managed, 275GB about) on an external HD via USB 3.0; spinning disk no SSD. Works alright. The options you looked at are probably going to be much much faster. Nevertheless, consider compatible backup options ( need not to be SSD too) when purchasing. USB 3.0, conventional HD are now very cheap. R.
http://rlfsoso.tumblr.com/
Either of those drives will be more than fast enough. Unless you’re dealing with Nikon D800 images, a 7200 RPM drive in a USB 3 housing will be sufficient. Even if you are dealing with a D800 the lag would be minimal.
www.pixbeatphoto.com
Thank you both.
That’s reassuring - normal working off the portable drive with backups to a networked server sounds like a good way forward.
Appreciate the quick replies.
Ben
Yes that sounds good Ben. Just make sure your backup software is compatible with Aperture as it’s a constantly changing database. You don’t want to rely on a possibly corrupted backup!
I personally use Time Machine, so not really sure what other options are out there.
www.pixbeatphoto.com
Thanks Chris
I just use Vaults on a separate disk (and different machine). No referenced masters in my library, so that seems to work well for me. I use Time Machine for everyone else, but not Aperture!
Note: You CAN use TimeMachine for Aperture – as an additional – and fast – precaution: Just deselect the external drive with your Aperture library in the TimeMachine Options panel for inclusion of the drive (it’s off by default). You might consider selection everything else on that drive for exclusion to save space. TimeMachine makes a very good job to only backing up changes and that works nicely with the Aperture library package.
To speed up backups., consider cloning the drive with the library on it to another drive. I recommend SuperDuper which is – after the initial backup – is very fast in copying only the changed bits and files via smart backup. Good option to to keep a general bootable backup of your startup HD too!
R.
http://rlfsoso.tumblr.com/
Thanks Rolf
What does that mean in terms of a restore from Time Machine? Would you have to restore the entire Library? I’d guess that Time Machine wouldn’t be able to get inside the Library structure to individual projects, etc…
It’s a nice idea to use that in addition to Vaults - just as a secondary and completely automate backup.
well, for backup purposes one would have a current copy of the Aperture library which could be restored. But Time Machine is incremental (thus speedy backing up only the changed bits which is – in my experience – much faster than the vaults- mechanism) and in addition it’s versioned. So one could go back in time and undo changes… I would not mess around with the internal structure of the Aperture library (though everything – like the master files – is there). The easiest way to deal with TimeMachine is dealing through the interface.
http://rlfsoso.tumblr.com/
That makes good sense. So the restore mechanism would be via TimeMachine restoring the chosen version of the entire Library package.
That’s quite a powerful addition to the vaults, I think, because of the versioning - thank you Rolf.
You are welcome – courtesy Apple.Inc ;-) – This is really sth. I stumbled upon when I tried to recover from my MBP break up (early 2008 MBP C2D RIP ) and discovered, unfortunately I didn’t keep my TimeMachine current (for space & time reasons I set it to manual) and in the course of adapting to a new system (MBP Retina) I had a bungled USB 3.0 HUB attached to it which caused data loss in my last remaining bootable backup of my internal HD contents. So I did loose some edits… didn’t matter so much but the masks created for edits could not easily replicated. Made me think really hard about how to set things up now:
For space reasons I keep my Aperture library now on an external HD (1 TB WD Elements) which I clone regularly at workday end after any change to another 1 TB drive (USB 3.0). The Aperture library is backed up to TimeMachine and via Crashplan.com to central storage and to another external HD. Every week or so I copy the library off to one partition of a backup drive, where – in another partition – I keep a bootable clone of my internal HD (smartly updated with SuperDuper).
Things still to cover are: another off-site backup (CrashPlan doesn’t offer restore services via HD in the mail, unfortunately), more redundant backups to more external storage. If I can save the money for it moving to Thunderbold. For now USB 3.0 feels fast enough. My files (I work analog, only) are 15-40MB.
http://rlfsoso.tumblr.com/
Yes…I’ve just gone round the Thunderbolt vs. USB 3 debate and decided that Thunderbolt isn’t worth it for now, unless you can get enough SSD capacity for your Library.
HDDs throughputs seem to a) be limited by HDD I/O and b) high enough anyway with USB3 that there’ll be more effect from cpu/memory, etc. on the Mac than raw data throughput. I don’t see that the ‘bursty’ characteristics of USB would be an issue in photo editing, although I’ve heard that they can be for video, which isn’t my game…
The WD RAID0 Thunderbolt drive is interesting, but RAID0 makes me nervous unless there’s an absolutely rigorous and frequent backup regime…
So what happens when ones TM HD runs out of room? It starts to overwrite older backups. TM is not a good choice for archiving photo libraries but is excellent for system backup. Have I missed something?
I’m converting my referenced libs over to Walters (see below) setup using managed libraries and rsync because it’s just too tempting to go into that external drive and start moving things around absent mindedly or otherwise mess-up the file system. Why work so hard?
When I create the temporary library he mentions I also initiate a TM backup of just that library on my iMac HD for a little more redundancy before merging it into the master library on the Ext HD.
We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. --TS Elliot
If you look at my Photo Storage Management article here on ApertureExpert.com, you will see that my solution includes portable Western Digital MyPassport 2TB USB3 drives. I like them because they require no external power supply (USB-powered), they are compact, and they are commodity drives that I can replace for ~$100 USD if they fail. Pretty cheap insurance.
I use one master drive, and I maintain three backup copies. One backup copy resides at my office. One resides at my home. One goes with me next to my master drive when I’m traveling. Never a bad idea to keep a backup copy with you while traveling since your master drive could fail at any time. If that happens, start using the backup drive as your master drive and buy a new backup drive for ~$100 USD from any large store electronics seller (e.g. Best Buy, Staples, Office Depot, etc). Even traveling abroad you can find them.
I use the command line “rsync” utility to keep my drives in sync, but commercial GUI-based tools like ChronoSync and SuperDuper! also work well.
Photographer | https://www.walterrowe.com | https://instagram.com/walter.rowe.photo
If you’re going to have a managed library on an external HD you will also need to buy at least one other drive to back up that external HD and/or aplibrary. Imagine a failing hard drive. Now imagine a failing hard drive with all your photos on it. You now have scrambled brain.
We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. --TS Elliot
For some security, I also format any new portable drive with encryption.
For Mac Users, it’s quite simple using Disk Utility - Mac OS X Extended (journaled, encrypted)
It’s worth the 5 second inconvenience to type in a password every time I plug-in the hard drive into my laptop. Can’t imagine if my HD got stolen or lost and someone have easy access to thousands of my personal pictures.
NSA already has them.
;-)
We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. --TS Elliot