A quick question, that I think I already know the answer to. If my Aperture library is Managed, and I run Time Machine, then when Time Machine runs each time it makes a backup of the Aperture library file every time there's a change, right? So if I delete 1 photo from from my, say 10 gig library, Time Machine re-copies that 10 gig file (minus the trashed, and fully deleted photo), correct?
No, Time Machine does incremental backups, which means that it keeps a reference to the images and if you remove images it references your Library minus that image. In other words you don’t keep adding 10GB of data over and over, it knows to dereference the image you removed so that if you need to restore it will restore to the latest, OR it will allow you to go back in time and restore the image you deleted.
Hmm… if that’s the case I better find out what is the cause for consistently large backups. Thanks.
Just a note:
It seems that if you do something like a repair permissions (from the first aid menu in Aperture), Time Machine will register that as every file having changed during the “calculating changes” step - for example, I have a 300GB library. If I repair permissions, it will say that 300 GB will need to be changed in Time Machine, causing it to try and delete enough off my TM drive to make room (which it cannot do since, my TM drive is only slightly larger than my internal).
It MIGHT be smart enough, once it’s calculated to not make the changes, but I never have let that finish, and just start a new Time Machine in my case.
Another note:
If your Database is huge, then even opening Aperture will cause a relativley large backup file to be changed - for example, my 300GB Library has a database folder of approximately 1.5GB, so everytime I poke my nose into Aperture, it will do an incremental back up for my next Time Machine of 1.5GB. This is not normally a problem, because these backups will get removed over the course of regular time machine cleanups, provided you have enough space.