Moving some Aperture Projects to an External Hard Drive

[teknikal90]

Hello all,

I'm not a photographer by any means, just an enthusiast.
And this little endeavour of mine into the world of photography has made me an Aperture 3 library of over 150gb.
I want to offload the majority of that (not all..) to my external library to free up some space on the MBP.

Is that possible? If so, how would I go about this??


Thank you all in advance!

tek

 

[flynz4]

Hello all,

I'm not a photographer by any means, just an enthusiast.
And this little endeavour of mine into the world of photography has made me an Aperture 3 library of over 150gb.
I want to offload the majority of that (not all..) to my external library to free up some space on the MBP.

Is that possible? If so, how would I go about this??


Thank you all in advance!

tek

Yes you can. Aperture can deal with two general locations for your originals:

1) Managed Originals - located within your Aperture database
2) Referenced Originals - located on any combination of hard drives that you desire

Note that if your originals are referenced... you will still see and use them exactly the same within Aperture. Howerver, you should not go mucking around with their location on the HDD(s). You do not want to confuse Aperture on where to find them.

If your HDD(s) are not connected... you can still view and perform certain operations on your library. What you would be looking at are the "previews" that would still reside in your Aperture library. It is also possible to delete all the previews if you do not want to see the pictures... and consume even less space. Or... you can lower the resolution (hence size) of the previews.

To move originals... you would use the Aperture>File>Relocate Originals. Depending upon what you have selected... you might see "Relocate Originals for Project".

Projects can have any combination of referenced and managed originals. You can choose to have them badged (but I forget how).

Personally, I only use managed originals... so you might want to read up on it a bit before doing anything.

I strongly recommend that you buy two eBooks from Robert Boyer. They are my "bible" for Aperture. I think the URL is photo.rwboyer.com but I am not positive. The two ebooks are Aperture Organization, and Aperture File Management. They are inexpensive and invaluable.

BTW: Previous to a recent upgrade to Aperture... originals were called "Masters". They are the same, so if you see them used in different contexts.. just dont get confused.

Hope this helps. This is a very powerful feature of Aperture.

/Jim

 

[maflynn]

If you go with the managed route, its quite easy - just move the aperture library to the external drive (make sure aperture is not running). Then either open it by way of File->Switch to Library or just double clicking on the library.

I keep my older aperture libraries on my NAS. I double click which one I want to load, easy peasy.

 

[flynz4]

If you go with the managed route, its quite easy - just move the aperture library to the external drive (make sure aperture is not running). Then either open it by way of File->Switch to Library or just double clicking on the library.

I keep my older aperture libraries on my NAS. I double click which one I want to load, easy peasy.

maflynn makes a good point. In your original post... you mentioned that you wanted to move a large portion of your library (singular) to an external HDD.

The other approach, as maflynn points out is to have multiple libraries... and then move them in their entirety off to a HDD.

There are plusses and minuses to each approach. If you know that you will not need access to the older pictures... or if they are for an old client... then you might as well save them as a separate library.

If you still want access to all of your pictures... but want to save space on your laptops SSD... you move less frequently used pictures (or maybe those rated 2 or 3 stars and less) off to a HDD as a referenced original. That way they still exist in your library... you can still see the preview... you can still rate or organize them... but the large originals are saved on the external HDDs.

This is just one more example of the power of Aperture. It is really a spectacular program.

/Jim

 

[larmende]

Hi,
I tried to move my data to an external hard disc and as far as I can see it was successful. However, I haven't generated any more space on my internal disc.

I used file -> relocate original and then selected the disc. I can see 27GB of data there.

Did I just copy it? Or what did I wrong, and what do I need to do?

Cheers,
larmende

 

[flynz4]

Hi,
I tried to move my data to an external hard disc and as far as I can see it was successful. However, I haven't generated any more space on my internal disc.

I used file -> relocate original and then selected the disc. I can see 27GB of data there.

Did I just copy it? Or what did I wrong, and what do I need to do?

Cheers,
larmende

That would have moved the originals to the external. You still have the thumbnails (tiny) and the previews locally. Preview size/quality are user selectable. You might try smaller previews, then deleting and regenerating them.

/Jim

 

[larmende]

Hi,
I just wanted to see if I can change the sizes, but for some reason, without me actually doing anything, I have a lot more space available.