Moving Aperture 3 library to external hd

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I recently purchased A3 from the app store. Just made the step up from a point and shoot to a Dslr ( Nikon D3100, love it!). Anyway..my photo collection is growing quite a bit and am looking to store my photos on an external hd and not on my mbp hard drive. The a3 on line user guide is a little confusing.

Basically want to store the photos on external hd then import for editing and the export them back..just so they are not taking up so much space on my mbp. Any help would be appreciated
 
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Since you are moving important data, make absolutely sure that you have a good backup before attempting this.

#1 Make sure that the external drive is formatted Mac OS Extended. (By clicking on the drives icon in the finder and doing command+i)
#2 Locate the "Aperture Library: in Users>YOURUSER>Pictures
#3 *COPY* it to the external drive. Make sure Aperture is quitted durning this.
#4 Once it has finished copying it over, double click the Library on the external HD. Aperture will open and now see that it's library has been relocated.
#5 If you see that everything works like it should you can delete the Aperture Library on the MBP in Users>YOURUSER>Pictures

Because of the transfer rates of the cable, you may see slower performance when using Aperture.
Note though that now you cannot see/edit your pictures unless you have the external HD plugged in.
 
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If I were you Winchester, I'd keep the Aperture Library file on your Mac's HD and simply keep your NEF reference files on a main external, as well as a redundant backup external HD. Aperture is already a bit of a resource hog, without having to access its library from an external HD, which as McYukon stated, will slow things down.

BTW, you might stop over at the nikoncafe(.com) since you're a new DSLR owner. Good bunch of people there and a lot to learn as well as view. You can't see all the forums unless you register though.. but it's a free forum so no biggie.

Good luck with Aperture and your new Nikon. I'm a D300 shooter myself.

Doug
 

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If I were you Winchester, I'd keep the Aperture Library file on your Mac's HD and simply keep your NEF reference files on a main external, as well as a redundant backup external HD. Aperture is already a bit of a resource hog, without having to access its library from an external HD, which as McYukon stated, will slow things down.

BTW, you might stop over at the nikoncafe(.com) since you're a new DSLR owner. Good bunch of people there and a lot to learn as well as view. You can't see all the forums unless you register though.. but it's a free forum so no biggie.

Good luck with Aperture and your new Nikon. I'm a D300 shooter myself.

Doug

I am trying to do something similar, moving my Aperture Library to my NAS and CWA107 gave something to try to make that work (haven't tried it yet) but reading this I think I may be better off just moving the reference files.

How specifically do I do that. I tried relocate masters and that gave some reference files to reference to. So it seems like a good step.

If this is what you are advising:
1) What is it actually doing when you make this selection?
2) How do you (or can you) make this the default?'
3) Does this prevent you from working with files when your external HD isn't connected?
Thanks,
Mike
 
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Thanks guys! Appreciate the input!
 

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