My wife has a 4tb managed library and our external raid 5 box just died. Rather than replace it directly I think I want to try something different. Below is a layout of my proposed approach.
Use rsync to backup the following:
- Masters by year (first layer in .aplibrary structure)
- Scripted running backup of 2013 masters, 2014 masters and Database folder
I’ve got the scripts written to support this approach and my questions are as follows:
1. If I need to restore all or part of the library can I just copy the database and masters into the right folders?
2. Am I missing any original data that prevents question #1 from happening smoothly?
3. Is this a bad approach? I don’t want to over complicate but what I have are a bunch of 2tb drives and feel that this would be a more manageable way to deal with so many files. The other approach (large array of disks, copy entire library) felt like I was constantly struggling to manage a huge file that was growing quicker than my array could. I am open to other suggestions as well.
Thanks
I would not separately back up any pieces of a managed library. Aperture assumes it has complete control over that entire folder tree and records a lot of state information about it. If you had to restore it from your piece-meal backup, you might not recover it to the same state Aperture expects. That could permanently and irreparably damage your Library making it unrecoverable.
If you have concerns about so much space, you may want to “relocate masters” to move the managed images outside the Library. You can do select them by year, or by another other criteria you wish, and place each batch wherever you choose (different drives by year, for example). Just remember that you will need to maintain reliable backups of all of your drives. The benefit to this method is that if you lose one of those drives, you only lose the masters for that subset of your images and only have to recover from the backup of that one drive.
If the managed Library is 4TB, you may want to delete all of the previews. I ran a test on my own Library. I have a 720GB managed Library without any previews. I generated previews for all of the versions in the Library without limit on the size of the preview. The Library grew to 1.5TB. For a master Library one doesn’t need to maintain all of those previews for ever. My master library has over 43,000 master / versions. How many are in your wife’s 4TB library?
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Thanks for the response. She has 113k photos in the library. Using omni disksweeper you can see how much space each component of the library is taking up and previews are at about 54 GB.
I was hoping to avoid using referenced images as from what I can tell if the drive gets unplugged (or worse) it’ll act like iTunes and throw up and become painful to restore. Which is one of the reasons I moves away from iTunes altogether.
Thanks again for the response. I’m going to do a little more research and will proceed as suggested if I don’t get any other comments.
I agree with Walter, I wouldn’t monkey with a managed library. Stick with vaults.
Bob
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Bob Rockefeller
Midway, GA
www.bobrockefeller.com
I am experimenting with something similar using rsync.
I have multiple local backups (Time Machine and SuperDuper) of my working Aperture library. I am experimenting with rsyn the library to a second house to get geographic diversity. Sending the large files across the wide area network is slow – just letting it run 24x7 until complete.
So far just rsync’ing the test library back and forth to make sure I can open it after a round trip. Next step will be to delete previews. I am looking at the library to see if I could trim other big files. I am thinking I could be more effecient with thumbnails. So far I am only making changes via the application. I have not tried selectively backing up only parts of the bundle. This is an interesting concept. I may try that on the test library.
Has anyone else been successful in maintaining a geographic diverse back up across the wide area network? Any suggestions?
Thanks, Bob