Vault question for you - realized I hadn't backup my managed library in a LONG time… up to 680gb… had a spare 2tb drive .. formatted.. installed it in the MacPro.
In the past, I would just make a point of a monthly “manual” copy.. i.e. drag and drop… from one drive to another.
Any pro's vs cons on that vs running vaults..
Thanks!
Once you create a Vault on your 2 tb drive updating that Vault will only write new and changed file updates and takes a lot less time than copying the entire Library every month.
John Waugh, Photographic Images • Apple Certified Trainer• Sport Action Lifestyle Photography
There are other ways to do “incremental” updates to your copy. Vault saves more than just a copy of your Library, if I recall correctly, but if you ever need to restore it will completely replace your library with the contents of the vault. You cannot open the vault and just get some things you accidentally deleted, for example.
If you are willing use Terminal, you can use rsync to manually update your copy. It will only update changes.
# rsync -av –delete </path/to/master/library> </path/to/copy/>
For example, I have one master disk and three backup copies. I use this sequence of commands to update my backup copies from the master library. My master library is a managed library containing all of the master files, adjustments, metadata, everything.
# rsync -av –delete /Volumes/ApertureMasters/Aperture.library /Volumes/ApertureBackup1/
# rsync -av –delete /Volumes/ApertureMasters/Aperture.library /Volumes/ApertureBackup2/
# rsync -av –delete /Volumes/ApertureMasters/Aperture.library /Volumes/ApertureBackup3/
If I navigate to any of the backups disks in Finder, each will have the same Aperture library. I can open each one as though it were master if the master disk gets corrupt. Using rsync from the Terminal window you will see exactly what gets copied from the master to each of the backups. Sometimes I have had each of the backups at a different degree of “out of sync” with the master. Once I have run these three commands, all are exactly identical.
The benefit is I can open any of the copies, export a folder, project or even a single image to a new library, and import it back into the master copy if I have made a mistake with the master since the last time I sync’d my copies. Of course, once I have sync’d my master to my copies, the mistake is permanent, but until then I have a recovery method that is much cleaner and faster than restoring the entire library from the Vault.
All my library copies and master are on external WD MyPassport 1TB USB3 drives that are USB powered. I have over 40,000 images in my library including many PSD and TIFF files from before I was saving raw files.
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Just a quick note to anyone using rsync. The above directions are good except that if you ran ..
# rsync -av –delete /Volumes/ApertureMasters/Aperture.library /Volumes/ApertureBackup1/
I would create a new directory and then copy the entire library not just the updates.
So the first time rsync -av –delete /path /destination This created the directory “path”
From then on it is rsync -av –delete /path/ /destination notice the “/” after the word path. Without this / it would create a new directory /path/path which would be empty and require a full copy of all data again.
Since “a” is archive” it may include the recursive but I usually use “rsync -arv” to be sure all sub directories are copied. I doubt you actually need it.
Regards,
Kelly
Yes, the “a” for archive includes “r”. You are also correct that you should leave off the trailing “/” in the source for the first time you run rsync to each target. Thanks for the followup clarifications to my initial post.
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Minor comment on Walter’s first paragraph. You can retrieve part of a vault without restoring the whole thing to a new library. Take a look at Joseph’s article on Aperture Vault’s File Extension Secret.
Thomas