May 7, 2008
Time Machine backups and Aperture are like oily water
Posted May. 7, ’08, 9:25 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software
For you Aperture users out there who have noticed particularly heavy disk usage during a Time Machine backup, here’s the explanation for those woes: according to an Apple knowledge base article, if Aperture is running when a Time Machine backup occurs and the Aperture library is included in the backup.
Turns out Time Machine doesn’t really like that, so it will exclude your Aperture library from the backup. Instead, it’ll wait until you quit Aperture and then back up your entire library, not just the changes since the last backup.
Not terribly convenient, but then again, neither is Apple’s workaround, which involves disabling Time Machine’s automatic backups and then backing up manually when you’re not running Aperture. In fact, the doc goes so far as to say “Avoid performing backups or restores while Aperture is running.” Great.
I’m not an Aperture user myself, so I haven’t run into this—how about you guys?
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Does this affect Aperture 2.0?
I was under the impression that it did not.
This affects Aperture 2.0 and 2.1. It limits the usefulness of Time Machine, that's for sure.
I'm hoping a fix is present in 10.5.3, or a point release after.
I can confirm from experience that this does affect Aperture 2.1. I noticed that Time Machine was taking an awfully long time, so I checked on the status and noticed it was backing up many gigs. I hadn't made many changes to anything, so I wasn't sure what it was; I guess now I know. Hope it's fixed properly soon...
I did notice this last week (wish I'd seen the article then), but wasnt sure what it was. I also wasn't sure what caused my TimeMachine backup disk to suddenly lurch from 105GB to 130GB, but now, I think I do...it would be nice to know if there was a way to go back...
Recommend not including Aperture in the Time Machine backup sequence.
Better to use your 'other' external drive (you know, the one with the CC or SuperDuper image) for Aperture libraries.
External drives are so large and cheap why not have a dozen or so blinking blue lights humming away on your desk?
If I wanted a space hog (Time Machine) I'd have bought a PC. One of Apple's longest standing high points is an array of efficiencies of scale. Time Machine seems a 180 spin from that, and I don't use it. Incremental backups from .Mac are wholly satisfactory; Time Machine is overkill.