I am looking into getting a newer thunderbolt capable external HD with larger capacity in the near future. I have about 80+% of my photos as referenced files on my present external HD. If I do get a newer HD I will use my old one as a backup to be kept off site. My question is how to move my referenced files from the old to the new external HD and have Aperture recognize them. I know there is a relocate option in Aperture but I am not quite sure of the steps to be taken, i,e., move files to new HD then try to have Aperture find/relocate them, etc. Thanks.
Florian
As so often - there are different ways to do it:
1) Copy in Finder, relocate in Aperture
You copy all files from your old HD to the new one without changing the naming of your files and directories. After that you open Aperture and will see that all your masters are missing. You can then relocate any masters and doing so just needs selecting one of them in the relocate dialog
2) Relocate referenced masters within Aperture
This will automatically move all masters from the old place to the new. It will MOVE them - so it will not leave the old harddrive as a backup snapshot. You should have a backup of your files before doing this. If the move fails - you just restore the old HD from the backup.
3) Copy Aperture library to new disk, Consolidate, Relocate
You just copy your referenced Aperture library file over to the new HD. Open it up and consolidate all masters so that they are within this library - choose the “copy” option!. Now you have your backup on the old and a new managed one on the new HD. You can now relocate the masters from the managed library to its new place on the new disk. After that you can move you Aperture library back to its old place.
http://neonsqua.re
Thanks, Jochem. I kind of thought your #1 what I needed to do but was not sure and did not want to mess around blindly and get things all messed up. I’m glad I have other options. :-)
Florian
Florian Cortese
www.fotosbyflorian.com