Uh, why can't I move my Aperture library to my external drive?

[seenew]

Every time I try to move the Aperture Library container (the one located in the user/images directory) it copies about 6GB (of a total 302GB) and then stops, saying something like "some of the files in Aperture Library could not be read or written."

I've tried three times now with no success. I really, really, really need to move these files off my computer, I've got only 4GB of space left out of my internal 500GB. I was planning on going through the library today and organizing some vaults in hopes of speeding up the program's overall performance (it's being ridiculously sluggish even though I've got a 24" 3.06GHz Core2 Duo iMac with 4GB of RAM)

Any help is greatly appreciated. This just seems like it should be simple.

 

[aaronw1986]

You need to make a vault I think.

 

[seenew]

Now it's crashing even when I'm just looking at photos, much less making a vault.

I'm screwed.

 

[leighonigar]

Start in single user mode, run disk utility.

 

[pdxflint]

Can you open the "container" and try to copy some individual folders to an external drive. I think having only 4gig space to operate with makes it next to impossible to copy huge files/folders/containers.

Maybe if you can copy small parts of your collection (start with folders) and delete them when you know they're copied successfully, you can build up some more free space and eventually be able to copy more files at a time.

Or... maybe you can clone your drive to an external 1T drive. If it works, then you can start eliminating stuff from your internal HD while booted externally.

These are just things that come to mind. I'm sure an expert Mac tech type will have a definitive answer for you... Good luck.