Aperture library disappeared

[fredsherbet]

I'm using the trial version of aperture atm, organising my photos and planning to buy it... but! my library has just disappeared. Apperture moaned that the database had inconsistencies, to quit and hold option-command while starting aperture again to rebuild the database. However when I quit, it took a while then crashed. Upon starting it up again (with alt-cmd) it couldn't find the library. I had a look in Finder, and it was gone, and there was much more space on my HDD.

Thankfully I had a back up from a few hours before, but lost those hours of organising

Is this a common problem?! is it going to happen again? Is aperture a sensible place to store and organise my photos?

 

[chriscorbin]

this happened to me all the all the time, and is the reason i switched back to adobe bridge. I have no idea why it does this and when i called apple they didnt appear to have a clue either.

 

[John T]

I've only had this happen once - when I accidentally deleted the Aperture library file (aperture library.aplibrary)

It proves the point - Don't blame the application before you've proved it's not something you've done!!

 

[fredsherbet]

When it happened to me, I was inside apperture, moving photos around, renaming folders etc.

I think it's shocking that there is even a possibility for this to happen! All my photos, all my organising completely gone! Compared to iTunes, the worst that could happen is the library gets corrupted beyond repair, but I'd still have all my mp3s with their tags intact.

So! Obviously maintaining an up to date backup is important, but what about a more 'raw' backup of my photos, but well tagged and organised. If I go through them all tagging and sorting them in aperture, is there any way to get those tags etc into any other program?

 

[John T]

Obviously maintaining an up to date backup is important

Absolutely! One of the most vital rules - all important files, be they documents, photos or whatever, should always be backed up at least once on an external HD, DVD or whatever.

In Aperture, if you want to keep your originals intact, just store them as Referenced Master Files in their original locations.

 

[fredsherbet]

That's all good for not actually losing photos (and I have plenty of backups. All I actually lost was a couple of hours work) but I need to be able to depend on aperture to be reliable, if that's what I'm going to use. If, a few months down the line, I decide it isn't reliable enough, will it be a simple matter to move my library to another application, keeping as much of my organisation intact as possible?

Thanks for all your replies so far!

 

[John T]

If, a few months down the line, I decide it isn't reliable enough, will it be a simple matter to move my library to another application, keeping as much of my organisation intact as possible?

Yes of course, providing, as I've already said, you use Referenced Master Files and not Managed Master Files.

 

[fredsherbet]

So that means organising outside aperture, but I really want a program to handle my photo library, like iTunes handles my music library.

Okay, so in general, is Aperture a reliable, stable, non-volatile program to use for storing my photos, and does anyone have any suggestions for a good way to archive my photos for backup once I get them sorted?

(atm i'm sorting the photos I have from uni, taken by many different people, collected in a haphazard way resulting in lots of duplicates that have been processed in various ways)

I'll carry on with it, updating my backup regularly, while I'm sorting, and then look for a way to export the sorted photos in an organised fashion. Thanks again for your help!

 

[OreoCookie]

So that means organising outside aperture, but I really want a program to handle my photo library, like iTunes handles my music library.

Okay, so in general, is Aperture a reliable, stable, non-volatile program to use for storing my photos, and does anyone have any suggestions for a good way to archive my photos for backup once I get them sorted?

Get an external harddrive and use Aperture vaults. That's what I do, I have vaults on three different drives, one of them resides at my parents' place (i. e. offsite).

I haven't had problems with my library with Aperture. The trial version acted a bit funky, but I haven't had problems with the licensed app.

 

[mneur]

Aperture libary disappeared

My Aperture 2.0 libary also disappeared. I was just removing a project which contained files that were no longer referenced when an error message popped up on the screen saying something about inconsistencies in my library and that I should rebuild.

I couldn't get the message to disappear and all of a sudden Aperture crashed. When I started it up again using the rebuild key combination my whole libary (50+ gigabytes) had been replaced by a new empty libary. There was no trace on my harddisk of my old one. Of course I have a backup of all my photo's (34.000) but all my edited versions (within the libary) are now gone. This represents at least 2 weeks of work lost!
This program is absolutely not stable enough to be called a Pro-app!!

 

[OreoCookie]

My Aperture 2.0 libary also disappeared. I was just removing a project which contained files that were no longer referenced when an error message popped up on the screen saying something about inconsistencies in my library and that I should rebuild.

Why didn't you use Aperture's vault feature? You even save old and deleted files in vaults, so you can recover files you have accidentally deleted.