Have read all the current posts with this problem - mine is a bit different.
I have my RAW files on a 2TB G-Tech external. My rational is that keeping all my RAW files in Aperture itself would make it too bloated.
When I came home from recent travels in Colombia, I copied all the RAW files from my portable West Digital 2TB external to the G-Tech. Aperture then began a series of cascading nightmares I have yet to figure out how to recover from.
It couldn't locate the referenced copies, so I used the 'Locate Referenced Files' function. Aperture then proceeded to make copies of each 470 captures side by side in the same Colombia folder BUT all with different titles! Instead of IMG_0123,it prefixed all of them with 'untitled' <untitled.56.CR2> & gave them all different numbers!
I then trashed all the copies with the <untitled.xxx.CR2> to slim the folder thinking it was not needed. Unbeknown to me this really sealed my fate. As far as Aperture was concerned, no match, no reference. End of story.
All the files appear as red under the top volume / file path window in the Locate Referenced Files function. I tried using option to force reconnect - but both the reconnect and reconnect all buttons stay grayed out. As far as Aperture is concerned NONE of the pictures match, so no reconnect!
Stranger still, in Aperture metadata, all the photos all retain their correct number but somewhere in the guts of the program, there exists this major ID discrep.
I worked really hard to retouch all 470 photos. I'd hate to trash 8 days of work and start from scratch!
I have a feeling it might need major one-by-one terminal level fixes, but I don't know how to do this. This is my first post here. I'd appreciate all suggestions!
Thanks!
Ken / Slightly desperate in Brooklyn
Wow. Nasty.
I must say that Aperture did something equally odd to me - completely lost managed files, claiming that they were referenced when they were not and never even saved the master files.
In the last few months I have perceived a number of people on various forums etc having quite odd and quite serious Aperture problems - a number that seems to be increasing.
I just have a vague concern that something somewhere has been altered in an update that is interfering in unforeseen ways. It may have been an Aperture alteration or an OS alteration perhaps.
It just seems that lately more people are having worse problems of unusual natures.
Ken,
I’ve never seen or heard of this happening before so it’s unchartered territory for me. I’m going to do some more research and post again later, but in the meantime, have you rebuilt or repaired the library? You may want to export the project(s) as new libraries that are affected and work only with those just to make things faster and also to not make anything potentially worse.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
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Ken,
After you try a repair then rebuild, if either don’t work, please see the following:
Can you provide some more info (precise steps, as much as you can recall) of how you got here? If I’m asking questions you’ve already answered please bear with me and still provide as much detail as you can.
You didn’t mention if you were on the same computer the whole time. Was your setup a laptop with the portable external drive while on the road, then the same computer just plugged into a different drive at home? Do you store the library AND the originals on that external drive, and therefore moved both to the G-TECH, or is the library on the internal (and hence unmoved) and just the originals on the external? Or did everything get moved to a different Mac, and if so, how?
How did you move the referenced images? In the Finder, or did you use Aperture’s “relocate originals” command?
Do you still have the originals on the WD portable drive, and have you tried connecting to those?
I may ask you for a small library with just a few of these un-reconnectable images in it to look at.
I know you won’t be keen to try to reproduce this issue, but I may ask you to do that at some point.
-Joseph
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Thanks for the reply Joseph -
I did try to rebuild, but even stranger things happened! ‘Recovered’ only 44 out of the 407 frames - and only some of those were visible! In other words, there were blank place holders - but no pictures! As The Police once said - ‘Ghost in the Machine’!
I will definitely take your suggestion and make a new library from the retouched versions and have the RAW files on hand on the external drive.
Yes - there was quite a bit of swapping machines and drives - which is I’M SURE what led to the problem. WIll never repeat that mistake again! Went between copying library and RAW files on MacBook / IMac AND WD, G-Tech. I did not use the ‘relocate originals’ command, rather copied with Finder - probably the key mistake.
In my attempts to be very ‘thorough’ with backing up and redundancy I shot myself in the foot! I’ve learned Aperture needs consistency and a straight line to reference files - otherwise major trouble!
Still, this presents a potential dilemma to the traveling photog! I think to solve, this may be an ‘in the programming guts of Aperture’ issue.
I assume in future, I need to use ‘relocate originals’ command, once files are copied onto my home drives. Pick ONE and go with it - correct?
Await your reply.
Many thanks!
Ken
Ken,
“Relocate Originals” is certainly the safest, but shouldn’t be necessary. In fact if Aperture is running, you can move Originals around and it’ll follow them. It’s usually very very good that way.
So the rebuild only fixed some, not all. Did you do this on an exported project (as Library) so you have a small library to work with now? If so, try my “magic” trick, detailed in the FAQ here. See what that does.
You haven’t outlined the steps you took that got you here… that could still be useful. In as much detail as possible, please describe every step you took between the last time everything was fine, to when it broke.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
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