I have a question about moving/relocating vaults. I looked around your site, but haven't been able to find anything. I ran out of space on my external, where I store my vault just before xmas. So yesterday I bought a new external. It's only storing items I've put in my library since my last update on the old vault. I want to know how can I create a fresh new vault and store EVERYTHING in it on my new external? Do I need to remove my old vault from aperture? I appreciate any help.

There are two ways to move a vault: move it yourself and tell Aperture where it has moved to, or abandon the old vault and create a new one on the new drive. The former is more useful if you have moved a Firewire disk from one server to another and have not had to copy anything; the latter if you are moving to a new drive and have to copy the data anyway.

Here is an example of moving a vault. Here is my current vault:

I want to move it to a different volume. First I notice that it is not synced, so I click on the arrows button to do a sync:

And then I copy the vault to its new destination by using the Finder.

I have make the current vault go offline before Aperture will allow me to give a new location for it. If it were on an external drive I could do this easily: just unmount the drive and Aperture would note that. In my case it's on my internal hard drive, so I must move or rename it. I can't make any changes to it straight away because it is locked:

I unlock the file in the Finder by deselecting the Locked checkbox in the Finder's Get Info window (command I):

Now I move the file to a different place on my hard drive so that Aperture will not find it, then quit and relaunch Aperture. Now Aperture sees it as disconnected:

I am ready to tell Aperture where the vault has moved to. I select the vault in Aperture's vault pane, and from the cog menu bottom right I select Update Vault Path...

I navigate to the new location to tell Aperture where it is and can now use the vault as normal.

To delete the old vault, since the lock was removed, I just drag it to the trash and empty the trash. If I had moved to another hard drive then I would format the old drive immediately to make sure that it was impossible to get the vault on it confused with my new one.

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Vaults, Moving

Great blog-- thanks!! I seem to have "misplaced" a master image. Not quite sure what happened. I opened it (twice) with an external editor and attempted to delete one version (using the 'Delete Version' option). I did not choose 'Delete Master and all Versions' option and Aperture never asked me to confirm this action. However, all traces of the photo now appear to be gone from the library. I drilled through using the 'Show page contents' tool and looked at previews. There is no folder in the project for this image. I have recently backed up my Vaults before editing. Is there any way I can recover a single master image from a vault? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!!

Yes, single images can be retrieved from vaults. By navigating down into the vault or by searching, the image can be located and copied out using the Finder. Once copied, it can be imported back into Aperture. This will lose all versions and adjustments, and any metadata that is not part of the original master file.

But first, check for the image in the trash. Images in Aperture that are deleted are put into the trash in a folder called Aperture. Inside that is another folder with the name of the project the image was in. Inside that is the images deleted from that project.

I'll find and restore a deleted image from a vault. The organization of a vault is very similar to that of the library, so delving into the vault is very similar to delving into the library. Since in this case I know that the name of the deleted image included the number 2486, I can search on that. First I open the vault using control-click and Show Package Contents:

Then by typing the part of the name I know into the Finder's search box, I can quickly locate the image:

I can use the slideshow and other features of the Finder window to examine my image. Once located, I option-drag the image out of the Finder window to copy it to the desktop, then drag it onto a project in Aperture to import it again.

If I had not already known part of the name of the image, then I would have had to do more work. By typing JPG into the search box (since I know that my master image was a JPG) I can find all the images and then browse through them:

This will of course work for other file name extensions such as CR2 or NEF. Selecting a image in the Finder window shows the full path at the bottom and double-clicking a folder in that list will open the folder for further examination. Control-click can be used to open projects that show up the path by selecting Show Package Contents. As before I can option-drag image masters out to copy them and restore them to Aperture.

If the deleted image is not in the trash and also not in the vault, there is one last place it may be. Images deleted from vaults by a vault update are not removed entirely, but they are not put into the trash. Instead the folder that holds the vault contains a folder with Deleted Images in its name. Inside that is a folder named for the date and time of the vault sync that removed the image from the vault. Inside that are folders for the deleted images and the masters:

My image is now available for reimporting into Aperture. The techniques I show here can also be used to find out if the image really was deleted from the Library in the first place.

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Vaults, Deleting, Masters, Recover, Bone-Headedness

Apple has just released an update to Aperture 1.5.6 (130MB):

Recommended for all licensed Aperture customers, the Aperture 1.5.6 Update addresses issues related to performance, improves overall stability, and supports compatibility with Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.

• Resolves some minor compatibility issues with iPhoto 7.1, which organizes images by Event rather than Roll.
• Addresses issues related to metadata and sort order when sharing previews with iLife Media Browser.
• Improves reliability of queries based on Import Session.
• Addresses reliability when recovering an Aperture Library from a Vault.

Update: Later today Apple will release the Aperture Export SDK 1.5.5. This provides only minor changes. Notably there are no new APIs provided. I am seeing reports that Aperture is fast on Leopard. I'll get a chance to try it out later today or tomorrow when I have Leopard in my hands.

Tags: Aperture, Leopard, Updates, iPhoto, Vaults, Plug-ins

A short thread on Apples' Aperture discussion board gives a possible solution to the problem of vaults that will not update due to errors on specific images:

Aperture is not letting me update my vaults. I am receiving update vault error messages when trying to back up to Vaults. I have three backup Vaults on external firewire drives, formatted Mac HFS+ (not MS-DOS) and not partitioned. My Aperture library is also on a dedicated external drive. I get the same message for all three vaults, so this seems to be an Aperture problem, not a disk problem. The error messages refer to NEF (raw) image files that do not exist in my Library (or anywhere else, for that matter). Message reads:

update vault error:
The following error occured:
Couldn't create/Volumes/LaCie/ApertureV2.apvault/Library/....

Any insights would be appreciated.

Another reader with a similar problem found a solution:

I managed to fix my problem by making an adjustment to the photo that the error message referenced.

This and the fact that all three of the poster's vaults fail to update implies that the problem is not with the vault, but with the library: there is something about the information that Aperture stores about that image that causes an error. When the image is adjusted the bad file is overwritten and the problem goes away. Vaults don't contain thumbnails or previews, so it can't be those. The master in this case is referenced, and in any case is never updated. So it must be with the sidecar files.

The original poster can't apply this fix because the image that is causing the problem apparently does not exist, so I'm investigating this with him. Update: We traced the problem to "something bad" about the folder or its contents that was being reported. By opening the library and the vault with control-click Show Package Contents and navigating down, it was possible to trash the folder. Not only did the vault update complete once that was done, but it worked many, many times faster than before. The bad news is that I think this is due to a bad spot on the disk, indicating a drive that is on its way out. If you have vault problems: back up carefully and consider that you may have a bad disk.

Vault problems can be caused by using the wrong disk format, typically FAT32, because the drive arrived that way and was never reformatted. FAT32 cannot support the characters used by Aperture in folder names and so causes errors. Another cause of problems is that the ownership of files and folders in the vault may be at odds with the current user. This can be fixed by checking the box for Ignore ownership on this volume on the information window for the volume (command I):

Tags: Aperture, Vaults, Updates, Adjustments

First off, your site is quite an excellent resource. Well done and keep up the good work! I have one question, which I'm hoping you know the answer to. I'm trying to move my Vault over to a network drive, but Samba doesn't seem to be able to handle the : characters inside the .appproject packages. Did you ever encounter this problem? If so, how did you get around it? If not, have you any ideas how I would get around this?

If the filing system were NFS+ and the connection AFP (Appletalk) then the answer would be in the article Network Vaults that describes how to create a vault on a server when Aperture refuses to allow it. However the question at hand is how to handle a file server running Samba (SMB/CIFS), and possibly a foreign filing system like NTFS where there are problems with the file names.

The answer is to create a disk image on the server and put the vault inside that. Exposing Aperture to a filing system that cannot handle the Mac path names results in errors like this:

By creating a disk image on the server the server sees a single large binary file and the Mac sees a complete HFS+ filing system.

There are two types of disk image that could be used for this: standard are sparse. A standard disk image (.dmg) has a fixed image file size and a fixed capacity. It behaves just like a regular physical disk. A sparse disk image (.sparseimage) has a fixed capacity, but its image file size varies with the amount of data it is holding. The one catch with sparse disk images is that they don't get any smaller when data is deleted from them. In either case, when the disk is full, you have to create another, bigger one. Both types of disk image can also be encrypted.

I recommend using a sparse disk image. Create one on your server by launching Disk Utility. Make sure nothing on the left pane is selected and then select File > New > Blank Disk Image.

Select sparse disk image from the pop-up and then specify the size. Pick something that is big enough to hold what you will need for the foreseeable future, but not so big that it will cause problems on your server when it is full-sized. Be aware that Aperture requires quite a lot of space held in reserve to be sure that it can write or update a vault.

If you want to encrypt the disk, do so. You can store the key in your keychain if you like. But make sure you don't lose the key or you will lose your data forever:

Navigate to your server and create the image there. Once you have created your disk image you will have a file that looks like this:

Even very large sparse disk images are small to start with. A 100GB sparse disk image is tens of MB in size when empty. To use the disk image, you must mount it. Just double-click it and it will appear on your desktop with your other drives:

Now you can create your vault on that mounted disk image drive:

Giving it a sensible name:

To unmount the volume, control click and select unmount. If you drag to trash, be careful to drag the volume to the trash, not the sparse disk image file to trash.

When your vault becomes too big for your sparse disk image delete it by deleting the sparse image file and emptying the trash. Now create a new bigger image with the same name and create a new vault on it.

Tags: Aperture, Vaults, Networking, Samba, Q&A, Disk Images

By design, vaults are supposed to be stored on Firewire or other local, directly-attached drives. But this does not take into consideration all the people with large, fast servers and NAS systems who want to use those as backups for local library storage.

Here is how to create a vault on a network drive. This article applies only to storing a vault on a server with an HFS+ filing system accessed via Appletalk (AFP), such as another Mac or an XServe. Other situations require a different approach.

First I will attempt to create one and see what goes wrong. I go to the vault pane lower left and add use the action (cog) menu to create a new vault. I can have as many vaults as I like for my library, allowing me to keep drives off site and rotate them if I wish.:

The Add Vault dialog comes up, so I navigate to my server and try to create the vault:

But Aperture does not like what I am trying to do:

So I have to work around the check that is being made. Instead of trying to create the vault on the server I will create it locally and then copy it to the server. First I create a vault on my desktop and it appears in the vault pane:

Then I quit Aperture and copy the vault from the desktop to the server. The vault on the desktop is no longer needed, so I trash it -- but I get an errorr if I try to do that:

It is locked. Vaults are locked as a precaution against accidental deletion. I must unlock it first by selecting the vault on my desktop, hitting command I to get the information window, and then deselecting the Locked checkbox.

Now the vault icon has lost its little lock badge:

And I can drag it to the trash and empty the trash. But I am not quite done yet, because Aperture does not yet know about the vault that is on the server. If I launch Aperture and look at the vault pane:

I see that Aperture cannot locate the vault. To tell Aperture where the vault is located, I select the vault and select Update Vault Path from the action menu:

Now I can navigate to the vault on the server to update the path:

And Aperture is happy and can use it:

Finally I can back up my library to the new vault.

There is a new warning in Aperture 1.5 about backing up managed and referenced masters:

This is a very useful warning if I expected all my masters to be in the library, because it is telling me that not all of them will be backed up to a vault. Finding all referenced masters is easy: I click on the library and bring up the filter dialog. Select File Status from the + menu (and maybe set the rating to Rejected and Better):

And then select Referenced from the File status pop-up:

If I wish, I can save this as a Smart Album for immediate use as well.

Tags: Aperture, Vaults, Networking, Server

You can easily find out which vaults Aperture has archived individual images into. Select an image and then show the inspector (I). Then look at the metadata section at the bottom. Click on the Archive button bottom right:

That shows the name of the vault (Local250 in my case) and the date and time that this image was updated in the vault. Really the button should say Vault instead of Archive. If you enable the Include In Summary checkbox then the vault information is added to the metadata set selected above, in this case the General set. That lets you display the vault information on screen with the image.

Tags: Aperture, Tips And Tricks, Vaults

Vaults store the critical data from an Aperture library so that you have a back up in case disaster strike your main drive. Lets restore a library from a vault to see what happens.

I quit Aperture, rename my library, and restart Aperture. I expected to be able to just select Restore Vault from the vault pane, but that was grayed out. So I had to go to the File -> Vault menu and select Restore Vault from there. Aperture had created a new empty Aperture Library file for me, so all I had to do was tell Aperture where to restore from and to:

Data loss paranoia rules here:

The files are read back in, and Aperture must be relaunched:

On relaunch Aperture sees that it lacks a database and so asks if I want to rebuild the database:

This step can take a significant time to complete. I have seen many complaints on discussion boards about the rebuild, since it was unexpected. There is a trade-off: if the vault contained everything then it could contain everything with corruption, but would be complete and take less time to restore as the cost of more disk space. Apple has taken the safe route and chosen to just keep the data it needs to keep.

The restored library is not as big as the original library: it's the same size as the vault actually. Only when I click on a project does it rebuild the thumbnails: again this can take a long time and there is no warning that this needs to be done. The thumbnails, once recreated are cached, and so subsequent opens of the project are fast.

A vault reflects the same contents as the library after updating, so you would think that if you delete an image and then back up to a vault, the image is gone, both from the library and the vault. But you would be wrong. Just as Aperture saves images deleted from the library by putting them into the trash, it also saves images deleted from the vault by putting them onto the drive that the vault is on. To show this, I deleted three images, backed up, and got this on my Firewire drive:

The masters are there, each in individual folders. The containing folders are named after the date and time. The files you see in the screen capture above are very small because the example TIFFs I was using really are very small.

Tags: Aperture, Vaults, Restoring

As part of my back up strategy, I use an Aperture Vault. The vault lives on a Firewire drive that I keep connected to the computer but normally turned off. That's what that particular drive is for: quick back ups of critical items that cannot wait for my regular 5am back up to another drive (that back up is driven by SuperDuper).

I'll create a vault and look inside. Clicking on the middle icon in the lower left-hand corner of the Aperture window brings up the vault pane:

No vaults yet. I'll add a new Vault to my Firewire drive "Crow" and call it Blog:

Local250 is another Aperture vault that is already on the drive. The new vault, Blog, appears in the Vault pane. Clicking the disclosure triangle shows which drive it is on:

You can have as many vaults as you like on a drive.

It is possible to create a Vault on a network volume, although Aperture tries to prevent this. To create a vault on a network volume, first create one on a Firewire drive, then Quit Aperture and copy the vault to the network volume and delete the original on the Firewire drive. Start Aperture again the vault will show as Offline. You can tell Aperture the new location of the vault by control-clicking on it and selecting New locaton.

Updating the vault takes a long time the first time, but subsequent updates are very fast because only the differences are resolved. Vaults are not archives -- that is they do not store any history, such as items you may have deleted a long time ago. They are just a snapshot of the library at one moment in time, so if you delete something in the library and update the vault, that thing is gone. (Well, almost gone. You actually get one last chance! More on that in a later article).

If the drive is disconnected, Aperture knows this and will show the status:

If you try to update you will get a dialog box:

My Aperture library for the examples in this blog is 91.8 Mbytes in size. Yet when I look at the vault I see it is only 75 Mbytes. That's 18% less. For my real Aperture library, the vault is 26% smaller. What is missing?

The vault is a package, just like the Aperture library. Packages are just folders marked to look like a single icon. Packages are opened by control-clicking and selecting Show Package Contents. Here is the inside of the vault I created:

So the vault contains all the keywords and other settings. But there is no database. So restoring from a vault requires that Aperture rebuild the database. Looking inside the Library folder gets this:

This looks just like the Aperture library itself. Let's look inside the Photos project:

That's almost like the Aperture library, but some things are missing. The Aperture Library has this in it:

Notice that the AP.Minis and other similar files are missing. Those are the cached thumbnails. So restoring from a vault also requires Aperture to rebuild the thumbnails.

If I look inside the import group folder I see my images:

So there they are, complete with all the adjustment and version information. Everything I need is in the vault.

One last thing that confuses people. The vault icon has a little lock next to it:

That shows that the file is locked. If you do a get Info, you will see that the Locked box is checked:

If you try to trash the locked vault, the Finder will prevent it. You must remove the lock first, then drag to trash.

Tags: Aperture, Vaults