Aperture - Ref Masters VS move library to ext HD ?

Hi there,

I've got about 500gb of photos on my MBP, most are in Aperture.

I want to move them off my laptop. It seems i have two options:

1 - I can move the Aperture Library from my laptop internal hard drive to an external hard drive.

2 - Or i can Relocate Masters as Referenced Masters (to an external hard drive).

Either way i'll regain 500gb's of space (or thereabouts).

Both methods seem straight forward.

Any pros and cons?

is one method easier / better?

Thought i should check here before i do something stupid or make my life more difficult than it needs to be )

Many thanks!

I assume that you currently have managed Aperture Library on your internal and you want to create more free space on your internal. So the choice is between:

1. Move the whole managed library to the external.

2. Relocate the masters to the external, keeping the Aperture Library on the internal.

The advantage of leaving the library on the internal drive is that you can still open Aperture and view your photos without the external being attached. The library contains the previews so you could give slide shows etc without the external.

Depending on the speed of your internal (SSD vs HDD) the library will load more quickly if it is on the internal.

Depending on the size of previews you are using you will save more space on the internal if you move the whole managed library to the external. Space used by previews, which are within the library, can be quite large, but of course much less than the masters. In a 500 gb managed library it would not be surprising if the previews used 50Gb.

A managed library is more robust in some ways. With a referenced set up you have to be careful about not losing the connection between the library and its masters, e.g. by renaming the external. Such problems are usually easy to recover from.

Thanks Mike,

very clear to me now. i think i'll go with referenced masters as it's very handy to keep previews intact without needing to plug the external in.

the space i recover will be enough

cheers

thanks Jim, makes total sense. i think option 2 also.

much appreciated

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Stan-o-Stan