Hi
I've been splitting up one massive library into smaller more manageable ones. All was going okay until I tried to make a new vault. Aperture found “inconsistencies” and needed to quit and rebuild the library. No choice, no “do it later”, no “no thanks, I'm happy with my library”, you have to do it right now
I've never come across this before. For a few days, I was switching around between the new libraries without problems. This rebuilding thing only started once I tried to make a new vault for one of the libraries.
Should I be worried? No obvious damage to the libraries seems to occur during a rebuild.
I'm setting up an alternative backup strategy because the vault system is quite clumsy. I don't really do much post processing these days, so I'm just going to make archives of the RAW files from now on.
Me again.
Have you ever wondered why you ever bothered starting something?
Right, the G-Drive seems to have failed again. I tried to import the library I’ve been testing on it to a new blank library on another disk. As expected, it took a while. When it had finished, all the previews and thumbnails were scrambled.
I went back to the G-Drive version of the library and noticed there were randomly scrambled thumbnails. Some would open to a good clean version when double-clicked, others wouldn’t. It looked like an explosion in a Warhol studio!
So, I’m getting Aperture to regenerate all the previews. If that doesn’t work, it looks like I’m going to have to go back to the end of August again, and get the images from the old library disk.
All this because my library disk was getting full and I decided to try to trim and rationalise it to a new disk. *sigh*
Heather,
G-Drives aren’t in my experience the most reliable on the planet. They use a variety of drive manufacturers, and not all of them very good (Western Digital *cough* *cough*). Unfortunately when you buy there’s no way to know what you’re getting until you open the box.
The good news is, they have a great warranty and seem to have no problem swapping drives out. I think I even got them to send me a replacement once before I sent the bad one back, so I could copy data over.
@PhotoJoseph
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It is true that g-technology is good about replacing drives under warranty. But use the replacement a lot. Work it hard the first few days because you don’t start a new warranty period. I think it runs out the clock on first drive or 30 days if you are near the end of the cycle of original drive’s warranty.
That being said: is there a consensus in preferred external non- USB3 and non thunderbolt drives? That is ( for now , FireWire 800).
Vid,
I’m not sure about enclosures, but I basically swear by Seagate drives now.
@PhotoJoseph
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Thanks guys!
I think I’ll get this drive replaced. I bought it on the basis of one I bought earlier this year, which was enough to convince me LaCie didn’t have to be my default option. Like Joseph, I’ve found one reliable maker that works for me, and I should have stuck with them.
As a sort of final update to my saga, things have now settled down. I’ve rebuilt previews and thumbnails, and managed to shift the library safely from the G-Drive to another drive entirely. Fingers crossed this will let things settle down now, because I don’t think my blood pressure can stand much more! In all I reckon I may have lost a couple of dozen images to this issue, but they are mostly shots where I was goofing about learning some techniques with the camera so I won’t really miss them.
I popped into the Aperture discussion pages over at Apple yesterday to find out if others have found this issue with scrambled previews and thumbnails. It seems to be something that’s been around since February 2010! Way to go Apple. It may be attributable to the GPU, or it may be drive or cable related. I now subscribe to the GPU theory, with a sniff of drive issues. My 2007 MBP has been exhibiting the odd external screen glitch, and if the GPU is getting dodgy that might explain some things. If nothing else, it’s made me realise my current Mac set-up is getting a little old for this game and I am therefore sizing up a shiny Mac mini to replace it.
Thanks for the comments and help over this issue. It’s been a worrying time over the last week or so. I hope things will settle back into my usual level of normality again.
Cheers!
Heather,
I would recommend that you check the drives are ok. If you’re in 10.7x or 10.8x, startup holding down the option (alt) key then choose the recovery partition. Run Disk Utility and choose ‘Repair Disk’ on your disks and all partitions.
Once that’s out of the way, make sure that vaults/backups are up-to-date, then run the repair as requested by Aperture. If you still have issues try this:
1/ Make a new library … on a different disk. Just an empty library.
2/ Import your problematic library.
This can take a long time and occasionally it may seem like nothing is happening … but it is. Just leave it overnight or something.
This is really the best big hammer that we have for Aperture. A new clean library then import the old one. It will fix most issues (maybe even all issues).
Once you’ve done that you can replace the old with the new. NB!!! If you have your Aperture library on its own disk (with nothing else on there) then reformat that disk before replacing the old library. Why? Well this will mean that the new library will be copied ‘contiguously’ which will mean that it runs … much faster! :)
Grant
Thanks Grant. That’s very helpful.
I’ve exported my most-used projects to two new libraries on a brand new G-Drive external disk. I’ve just been through the process of doing an originals export from the old large library as well (part of a new backup strategy). I realise these won’t have any of the processing I’ve done on them over the years, I can redo that pretty easily if I want. I can’t redo the original photos so easily!
I’m wondering if the new G-Drive is actually faulty. Once I’ve backed up the latest batches of images, I’ll run Disk Utility over it. If I still get this sporadic “inconsistencies” message, I’ll definitely reformat it and start over as you suggest.
If nothing else, starting over will give me an opportunity to prune a lot of dead wood from my photos. Doing that originals export routine has made me realise there’s a good deal of cruft in my libraries!
Thanks!
Heather,
when you export to library … don’t include the previews. These seem to be the source of problems. Just let Aperture build new previews in the new library.
Grant, thanks for that.
It does seem the G-Drive is at fault. It passed Disk Utility’s tests, and for a time all seemed well. I was checking through the various projects and finding scrambled previews and the occasional unrecognised file. While I was updating thumbnails and previews, and importing fresh copies of the dodgy files, I got the inconsistencies warning again.
I tried creating a fresh blank library on another disk, and importing a library from the G-Drive. Something very wrong seems to have happened, as only a tiny proportion of the images in the library were imported at all.
So, I am going back to my old full library drive, and I’m going to export projects as libraries to the other disk. I’ll reformat the G-Drive and try it again for a bit. If it still shows problems, it’s under warranty and it can go back for replacement or refund.
Cheers!
A brief update, for those that may come across this thread and wonder what’s happened.
The G-Drive seems to have been the cause of some data corruption to a working library. Thankfully, problems appeared pretty quickly, so at worst I’ve lost a week’s images. Some of those I have already retrieved and manually backed up, but I’m resigned to some just being gone. They were not important, images shot while experimenting with the camera and so on, so while I’m annoyed I am not going to worry about them.
I have created fresh libraries from my old “full” library disk on a spare external (the full disk is now like a preserved archive to the end of August 2012). I’ve broken things down to about four regularly used libraries, leaving projects I haven’t accessed for a while on the old disk. I have now reformatted the G-Drive, created a blank Aperture library and imported one smallish library to test. I’ll see how the disk performs, and if issues reappear I’ll get it replaced under warranty.
I hope things settle down now. It was a little worrying for a few days.
Cheers!