You are here

14 posts / 0 new
Last post
Recovery from vault #1
frosty's picture
by frosty
May 9, 2014 - 6:24pm

I’m currently using Aperture 3.5.1 and OSX 10.9.2

I recently had a hard drive crash and after restoring from my Time Machine backup, (which doesn’t include my aperture library) I attempted to restore my aperture library from a vault.

Once restored, the library is about 170GB in size. However there are no projects shown in Aperture and no photos to see anywhere in the GUI.

I can rebuild the library, but it just restores all the photos to a single project called “recovered photos”.

I also tried restoring from a slightly older (January 2014) vault from an offsite backup, but with the same results.

I have also tried just copying the vault and renaming it to “Aperture Library.aplibrary”, but the result is the same.

Just wondered if anyone had any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

Cheers

Rolf Schmolling's picture
by Rolf Schmolling
May 10, 2014 - 8:09am

Hi,

first things first: make shure your vault is safe: duplicate it some place!

Your try with changing the ending might show that the library you started with creating the vault was having issues beforehand.

You might try to create a new (empty)  library and import that previously (from the vault) created library.

Look at the FAQ for general and specific trouble shooting.

Sorry, nothing more right now…

Rolf

Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
May 11, 2014 - 1:40pm

I think what Rolf is suggesting is make a safe copy of your “vault”, change the suffix of the vault to “.aplibrary” (because it is really just a library), create a new empty library, and import the “vault” library you just renamed. I would suggest one more step in the middle. After changing the suffix of the “vault” to “.aplibrary”, try opening it with Aperture to see whether it has all of the structure and pictures it is supposed to have.

frosty's picture
by frosty
May 11, 2014 - 8:35pm

Thanks for your suggestions.

I have tried tried changing the suffix to .aplibrary and loading it directly into aperture. In which case there is still no structure present (i.e. no projects)

If I try importing the renamed .aplibrary into a new library then the new merged library remains small in size (only about 235MB) up from 8MB and there is no structure. This is different to recovering the vault because then I get a 160GB library with no structure of pictures present unless I repair the database, in which case they all get put into the recovered album.

All but my last years photos are held on an external NAS, so I’m guessing if I start from scratch and reimport them I will loose all the editing that I have done, plus the metadata?

 

Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
May 11, 2014 - 8:38pm

If the vault has no structure, then that probably means it is corrupt. It would be interesting to do a database rebuild on the vault (assuming you made a backup copy before changing the suffix).

Question .. you didn’t restore your vault from time machine like you did you library, did you? Where is your vault? If you restored it from a time machine backup, it might not be complete or in-tact. Vaults should always be stored on separate, external drive.

frosty's picture
by frosty
May 11, 2014 - 10:36pm

I have two vaults, one is on a USB drive which I keep at work and one is on a NAS.

I can’t restore either vault.

I have tried doing a database rebuild on both, but I just end up with a single album of recovered photos.

Rolf Schmolling's picture
by Rolf Schmolling
May 12, 2014 - 10:01am

Sorry if my reply has not been so clear (English is not my first language). I am afraid too that the vault(s) are corrupt. To get as much as possible out of them: is your work on the individual master images, your processing still there? If yes, you might try importing them into a new library and tell Aperture to split them up in import by date, and later start the tedious business of trying to recreate your project structure.

Anyway this illustrates the great importance of a) having backups and b) testing them, before relying on them.

I am not sure about NAS as file system for keeping Aperture libraries or vaults, I believe to have read sth. about issues and incompatibilities…

Best of luck,

 

Rolf

Joseph Samuels's picture
by Joseph Samuels
May 12, 2014 - 4:14pm

I have stopped using the Aperture Vault to back-up my Aperture Library (some 25000 images, 700GB).  Instead I have four clones of the library using ChronoSync.  The clones are much easier to work with than the Aperture Vault.  

Firstly, the clones are full libraries themselves, so, if something happens to my original Aperture Library, I simply choose a clone and I’m up and running in moments.  There’s no need to do a restoration to use a clone.  This whole restoration process was always a problem with the Aperture Vault, in my view.

Secondly, I update my clones sequentially, so I always have a completely up-to-date clone and three that reflect earlier stages of my Aperture Library. This way, if my Aperture Library becomes corrupted, I still have a clone of the Library before it became corrupted.

 

Over the years, I have lost my original Library several times, when the drives on which I had the Library failed (and once when my computer was stolen, losing the main drive which had the Aperture Library on it).  No problem.  I simply promoted the latest clone to be my new original Library and I bought a new drive and did up a fresh clone.

I also have four clones of my main drive (I use Carbon Copy Cloner for these).  Again, this system has served me well when my main drives have failed, or I’ve had a computer stolen.

jsamu50901

Rolf Schmolling's picture
by Rolf Schmolling
May 12, 2014 - 7:38pm

I’ve been using Chronosync in the past to keep other files than Aperture libraries in synch and it worked quite well. When I tried this with my Aperture library (160GB) to synch it to a backup drive partition (200GB) it did fail frequently. Apparently one needs a lot of free space in addition to the space for the file itself (the Aperture library), my guess is as much space as the whole library again, for the  synch to work properly. Currently I clone my drive (external USB 3.0) with SuperDuper, smart update which is FAST and reliable whenever I’ve done changes…

 

R.

frosty's picture
by frosty
May 17, 2014 - 3:46pm

Thanks for the backup suggestions from everyone.

I had originally thought that having two vault type backups, one off-site and one at home would be sufficient. I have recovered from a vault before when I had a hard drive failure. It sounds like it isn’t safe to solely rely on vaults or certainly large vaults of everything. I hadn’t been using time machine on my aperture library because it wanted to backup the whole library every time the slightest change was made.

I will consider all of your suggestions and come up with a new backup scheme once I have recovered my photos into some king of useable state.

Another interesting thing to note when I try and recover from either of my vaults is that the vault doesn’t appear in the list of vaults after it has been recovered from, so it sounds like something must break during the recovery, but no error is reported. I think I may try getting someone else to try and recover from my vault and see what happens.

I think the worst thing is that I seem to have lost all of the adjustments and key wording  done to about 10 years worth of externally referenced files.

Thanks again for all of your suggestions.

Rolf Schmolling's picture
by Rolf Schmolling
May 18, 2014 - 9:13pm

I am sorry to hear about your predicament, unfortunately I cannot offer a solution.

I’d like to add, that quite recently I had more luck with ChronoSynch, the option “look into packages” was the key. Now my folder with Aperture in it was kept in synch (8GB changes) in like 5 minutes! 

 

Rolf

frosty's picture
by frosty
May 26, 2014 - 10:05am

One piece of potentially useful information that I have come across whilst attempting to restore my library, is that when I tried to export recovered photos from my NAS stored vault, I was only able to export around 6000 out of 10000. However when exporting from my recovered USB vault I was able to export all 10000.

I think this adds weight to Rolf’s earlier comment about file system incompatibilities.

Another thing that has helped me recover some of my more recent photos was to run photo recovery software on my memory cards.

Stuart's picture
by Stuart
May 26, 2014 - 7:42pm

I am like some of the others here as I have stopped using the Vault. Instead I use SuperDuper to clone my Library. Like Joseph Samuels stated if you have a drive go bad all you do is plug in one of the backups and you are up and running. No waiting for the Vault to restore. My main drive is a Seagate Thunderbolt (3TB). Have three USB 3.0 (3TB) for backups. Keep one off site. Look to move to a new system that has Thunderbolt 2 soon and looking at the Promise Pegasus Thunderbolt 2. However all this depends if we see a MAJOR upgrade to the current Aperture.

Rolf Schmolling's picture
by Rolf Schmolling
May 26, 2014 - 7:52pm

Hi frosty, I am really sorry to hear about your ordeal.

Well, cannot be helped. Even when your are now in step 1) recovering your masters and still would need 2) recreate processing…  

 

Best of luck! R.

You may login with either your assigned username or your e-mail address.
Passwords are case-sensitive - Forgot your password?