Hi All,

I am fairly new to Aperture, I have been using Light room for a number of years. Over the years however, I have found myself using more and more of the apple tech and just recently went full tilt on Final Cut Studio. So I have decided to switch to Aperture as well for the work flow integration.

I know that Aperture contains all the features I will need, so that isn’t an issue for me. The issue I am having is how to back up my files and all the data with them. Currently all my files are stored on my file server at home. I pretty much store everything there, not just my photos, but everything. I then use Mozy to back them up online.

However form some reading I have done I find the back up process for Aperture a little confusing.

With light room, I access my photos on the file server. I do not import the files into light room, I simply point to my files on the server. I run the backup built into light room once a day, and that backup is also stored on my file server. If I ever loose my computer, or something along those lines, all I have to do is reinstall light room, restore from my back up and all my imported information is there, meta data, keywords list, etc.

From all the reading I have done so far with Aperture it appears that this would not work with Aperture. It seems the best course of action would be to allow aperture to import all the files from my file server into it’s own DB, thus storing the “Originals” there. Although I know a copy would still remain on the file server, as far as aperture would be concerned, the master would be the locally imported file. I would then organize the photos into libraries. To backup my photos, I would then back up my “Vault”.

Does this sound correct to everyone? Is there a way i could create a setup like I have in light room? My biggest concern is that I would like to have all the keywords I assign to a photo available to me in the case of a system failure/restore situation.