Has Apple fixed the problems when using Aperture with Time Machine?

[andboom]

Hi,

I've had Leopard since its release and have been too scared to turn on Time Machine since hearing that there were some bugs with Aperture vaults in Time Machine causing some images to get deleted or not get backed up...

My photos are very precious and couldn't face losing them for the small benefit of not having to do manual backups... does anyone know for definite if Apple have fixed this bug yet? One of the main reasons I upgraded was for Time Machine... and I haven't even been able to switch it on yet because of these problems!

Whilst on the subject of Leopard bugs, I have noticed that Disk Utility still doesn't allow me to do a permissions repair since I got Leopard... Anyone else having this problem? This is a major bug and needs attention, Apple.

 

[andboom]

😀 OK... so nobody seems to know! Commenting on my own thread is a new one for me, but maybe this will spark some more information!

Went into the Apple Store on London's Regent Street today and asked one of the geniuses there... He was aware of this problem with Time Machine and Aperture and said that you have to make sure that Aperture's library & vaults don't get backed up by Time Machine, otherwise every time you make one change in Aperture, Time Machine will try to back up the entire library from scratch and continually do this every time, filling up your Time Machine disk in a very short space of time. The work around is this (apparently - I haven't dared test it!):

Make sure that neither your Aperture Library or Vaults are in the root of your drive(s) and are always within some kind of folder. That way, you can tell Time Machine not to back up those folders and the files will be ignored. Apparently that should stop Time Machine from trying to back them up...

...But that isn't a solution, as it means essentially turning Time Machine off for Aperture backups. Apparently Apple are working on it and maybe the new 10.5.2 release will help (I'm not optimistic!)...

Using vaults isn't an alternative - say you delete a picture and decide you wish you hadn't a month later. So you go back to a vault you made last month. But you need to restore to this vault to get to the picture. And that means that any subsequent pictures added since that date or any work done on other pictures is lost. This is understandable - Vaults are supposed to be backups for use in emergency and are not a good alternative to Time Machine. Apple needs to get Time Machine working with the Aperture library just like it is designed to with iPhoto (guessing that works ok, but haven't been able to try it as won't let Time Machine loose on my valuable photos until it's reliable!)

 

[robbieduncan]

The problem is with the application: not with Time Machine. I'd say that Aperture 2.0 might well have a fix.