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Newbie-ish Question: Correct Backup Procedure for Upgrade to Aperture 3 from Aperture 2 #1
Jeff Harwell's picture
by Jeff Harwell
July 2, 2013 - 8:26am

Hello everyone. I am an avid amateur photographer with about 10,000+ photographs on my 20” iMac computer (currently running OS X 10.5.8 and Aperture 2.1.4). Ok, so I'm not a newbie to photography, but for system backups I am completely a newbie. So bear with me while I explain:

In the not too distant past, I purchased an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 1TB external hard drive. I completed 1 backup of my entire system using Carbon Copy Cloner, which left me with 730.29 GB available on my external hard drive.

I recently switched from a Canon EOS Rebel XSi to a Canon 5D Mark II. During my most recent, and first, attempt to upload pictures onto Aperture 2 (v 2.1.4) with the CF card from the 5D, I received an error message that says “Insufficient Disk Space”. From reading other posts, and from posting on the Apple forums myself, i see that this frequently happens when there is less than 10GB of space left on the internal hard drive.

So, following the article on this website about “reducing the aperture library size”, I did a “Get Info” and found that my internal hard drive of my 20” iMac, with a capacity of 232.57 GB, only has 6.02 GB available. I also found out that my iPhoto library is at 9.3 GB; my Aperture 2.0 library is at 93.03 GB (102.36 GB combined); and my Music (iTunes) library is at 88.43 GB. That's a total used of 190.79 GB.

I also know from doing research that in order to upgrade from Aperture 2 to Aperture 3, I will first have to go from OS X 10.5.8 all the way to 10.7.5. I understand that I must first go from 10.5.8 to 10.6.2 ($19.99), then do a software update to 10.6.8, and then use the App Store to go to 10.7 in order to get Aperture 3.

I know that I need to do a complete backup of my entire system onto my external hard drive to ensure that it is up to date in case something goes wrong with the OS X upgrade (bootable version?), but my backup options/procedures after that are a little fuzzy. So, with that, here are my questions:

(1) Should I have 2 external hard drives - one for the system files and then one for media files (photos, movies, music, etc.)?

(2) Should I have my Aperture library (what will be Aperture 3) as referenced instead of managed? I assume this is the only way to free up space on my internal hard drive.

(3) Can I have a complete system backup and a media only backup on the same external hard drive without having to partition the hard drive?

(4) Since my Aperture 2 files are “managed”, should I do a vault backup onto my external hard drive before I do the upgrade, or will doing a complete system backup onto my external hard drive be sufficient?

I truly appreciate everyone's time, as I am completely lost and frustrated when it comes to backups..

Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
July 4, 2013 - 3:56am

Are you just trying to get a fresh, clean backup before you upgrade the OS and Aperture, or are you also trying to free up disk space on your internal drive?

For a fresh backup, just run Carbon Copy Cloner again. For freeing up disk space on your internal drive, you can drag-n-drop your managed Aperture library to your external drive and remove it from your internal drive. You might want to do both, in that order (Carbon Copy, then copy / delete the Aperture Library), then do you OS upgrade and Aperture upgrade.

After you copy your Aperture Library to your external drive and delete it from your internal drive, make sure you empty the Trash bin so truly free up the disk space.

Jeff Harwell's picture
by Jeff Harwell
July 9, 2013 - 10:53pm

Awesome, thank you for that information Walter! You are correct - I am trying to do both; a regular bootable backup, and then also free up internal hard drive space.

On the Apple support forum page, someone also suggested maybe keeping the last 6 months worth of photos on my internal hard drive, then putting the rest of the library onto an external hard drive. That would free up space, but also leave some of my photos in the internal hard drive. Does that sound like too much work?

Also, what do you think about this sort of a backup/photography workflow:

-750 GB external hard drive for older photos (>6 mos)..
-2 TB external hard drive for Time Machine backups..
-1 TB external hard drive (my current OWC) partitioned to have a bootable backup on one partition, and then a second partition to back up my 750 GB HD for older photos..

Does that sound like overkill, too complicated, or just about right?

Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
July 11, 2013 - 3:52am

Jeff-

I keep one master library on an external hard drive. When I have a new project or event, I create a new library for that on my internal drive. The images are loaded into the new library, processed completely, and then the new library is imported into the master one.

This keeps the library on which I an actively working small and accessible, but also gives me one master library for all my finished work where I know I can find anything I need from my archives.

My master library lives on a 1TB USB-powered external drive. I keep three more copies of that drive and I synchronize to them at least once a week. All are the same type of 1TB USB-powered drive. I prefer them to be USB-powered so I don’t have to keep separate power cables. I keep two drives with me wherever I go, a 3rd stays at home, and a 4th stays offsite at work.

The reason I keep two with me is because it gives me a handy backup in case the master drive fails. I don’t have to go home or fetch my offsite copy in order to keep going. I just need to walk into any Best Buy or Wal-mart or similar store and get a new 1TB USB-powered drive to replace the failed one.

I use Western Digital MyPassport drives. They are generally $90 anywhere you get them. For me that is an affordable, reliable, convenient solution. They support USB3 and USB2 so they work pretty much on any Mac, and get the speed boost of USB3 on newer ones.

-Walter

Jeff Harwell's picture
by Jeff Harwell
July 11, 2013 - 7:26am

Awesome, thank you for the help Walter!

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