Inside Aperture

Backup Strategies with Aperture
Pages: 1, 2

As an alternative, if you have an extra $999 in your Mac Pro budget, Apple offers a build-to-order RAID card. This card sits in a PCI Express slot, connects to the internal drive bays, and enables hardware RAID 1 and 5 as long as you buy the appropriate number of hard drives (it also enables 0, which gives performance but not backup, and 0+1, which requires 4 drives but gives better performance and backup). Furthermore, with this card, Mac OS X’s RAID utility lets you switch to a RAID configuration without reformatting or reinstalling OS X.

If some of these options seem a bit complex, well, you're not alone in your thinking! In fact, two user-friendly products have come out recently: Data Robotics' Drobo and Infrant Technologies' ReadyNAS NV+. The idea behind both of these tools is similar--you shouldn't have to think about RAID and its subtle complexities. You should just have a box that figures out what the smartest thing to do is when you place disk drives into it. If you put one drive in, it'll just be a hard drive. If you put in three, it'll give you a RAID 5-ish configuration. If the drive capacities vary, it'll automatically figure out how to provide the most disk space while still automatically backing up the data.

The less-expensive cube-shaped Drobo is somewhat more simple overall. Its simplicity does create some limitations if you want to use it in a mixed Mac and PC networked environment (specifically because it doesn't support FAT32, only NTFS for Windows and HFS+ Mac OS X), but it's a great drive for your Aperture library. Be warned, though, both devices have only USB2 interfaces and not a faster Firewire interface. They might not be suitable to run your library from for day-to-day work.

A Drobo will help safely store your images.

Hard Drives and Aperture

Regardless of which of these options you choose, Aperture sees them each the same way, as a single hard drive. We've mentioned vaults before on Inside Aperture, but for those of you new to the site (or to Aperture), vaults provide intelligent backups of your images, versions projects, albums, metadata, etc. What do I mean by "intelligent?" Well, when you backup files, you'll ideally want to backup only those files that have changed. It would be rather inconvenient if, every time you went to backup your files, you had to copy over gigabytes of information! After you first establish a vault, each time you sync the vault, Aperture updates only the changed files.

To see the vaults, make sure the Projects panel is visible (Window > Show Projects) and select Window > Show Vaults. To add a new vault, choose "Add Vault" from the action menu, and select a folder. To sync a vault, press the Sync button next to the vault. If there are pending changes, the sync icon will be yellow, and it will turn black when the sync is complete. If the vault is on an external drive, make sure to press the eject icon next to the vault before removing the drive.

Vaults provide a convenient way to keep a copy of your library on a second hard drive.

If you need to restore from a vault, select File > Vault > Restore Library. Note that restoring vaults is an all or none operation--you have to restore everything in the vault and can't pick and choose which projects or albums to restore. In the Restore Library window, choose the vault you want to restore from and the destination library. Aperture will match the destination library to its state when you last synced the vault.

The Restore Library window.

Unfortunately, vaults have a number of limitations, aside from all or none restoration. When working with multiple libraries, it can be hard to manage multiple vaults. Furthermore, there is no convenient way to browse a vault. Additionally--and this is a big one--vaults don't work how one might expect them to with referenced images. The referenced images do NOT get copied into the vault.

What other options do you have? Obviously, you could export your master images to the external drive, but then you'd lose any adjustments that you made or metadata you've set. What I find to be the best solution is to export the project to the external drive and, in the export project panel, select the "Consolidate images into exported project" checkbox. This way, the complete project, including images and metadata, will be on the backup drive. Furthermore, if you keep an Aperture library on the external drive, you can import the project into that library so that the backup is browseable from within Aperture.

If, for some reason, you really want the image files to be stored outside a project bundle, once you import the project to the backup library, simply use the Relocate Master command (File > Relocate Master) to move the master files into a folder on the backup drive. One benefit to making the files referenced on your backup drive is that you can use another program (or even the Finder) to find your images in an emergency situation.

Make sure to check "Consolidate images into exported project" when exporting a project for backup.

Because many other backup options involve exporting a project, let me share a trick with you about importing a project into another library. If you use Aperture's File > Import > Projects... command, Aperture duplicates the project when it imports it, thus taking up twice as much disk space. To save disk space:

1. Quit Aperture.
2. In the Finder, select which library you want to import the project to.
3. Right-click on the library and select "Show Package Contents."
4. Move the project you just exported into the new window that appears.
5. Launch Aperture on the library and click "Recover" when Aperture prompts about the unknown project.

Check out Part Two in the series, Backup Strategies with Aperture.

Josh Anon is a technical director at Pixar Animation Studios (with credits ranging from software engineering to cinematography) and an instructor at BetterPhoto.com. Recently, he co-authored Aperture Exposed (Wiley, 2006). You can find out more about Josh and his photography at www.joshanon.com.

Return to digitalmedia.oreilly.com.

Post your backup questions and comments here.
You must be logged in to the O'Reilly Network to post a talkback.

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Software RAID
  2007-11-08 11:44:28  mlondon [Reply | View]
  
  
  Josh - thanks for the article. You said that a RAID made using OS X's Software RAID will not be visible on another system. Are you sure? I've always heard contrary, but right now only have one system, so can't test it.
• Software RAID
  2007-11-09 23:48:39  Josh Anon | [Reply | View]
  
  
  Good catch--yes, you can move a software RAID array between Macs (afaik, the RAID info is stored on the drives themselves). However, I was always under the impression that if you connected the disks to a PC, you wouldn't get the RAID setup. I'd be happy to be wrong here, though :)