ibogost Posted December 7, 2008 Share #1 Posted December 7, 2008 Advertisement (gone after registration) This isn't particularly Leica related, but here goes anyway. Lately when I run Aperture it just eats through disk space, slowly, while the program is open. Gigabytes over a couple hours' time. Eventually the disk will run out of space and then Aperture complains that it's out of space. Rebooting is the only way to get the space back, and then the whole process repeats itself. Anybody had to deal with this? I've already turned off previews and all that stuff. Just not sure what it's doing. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted December 7, 2008 Posted December 7, 2008 Hi ibogost, Take a look here Aperture eats disk space?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
ceflynn Posted December 7, 2008 Share #2 Posted December 7, 2008 Download Baseline: Apple - Downloads - System/Disk Utilities - Baseline There is a detailed discussion of the apparently missing disk space problem at: Where Did My Disk Space Go? - MacFixIt Forums Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Thawley Posted December 7, 2008 Share #3 Posted December 7, 2008 Interesting.... I've been an Aperture user for over two years and never heard of this. JT Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibogost Posted December 7, 2008 Author Share #4 Posted December 7, 2008 Thanks, I'll try that comparison tool. I guess it might be virtual memory swap space, but, I didn't experience that before on the same machine. We'll see I guess. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MPerson Posted December 7, 2008 Share #5 Posted December 7, 2008 To keep everything running sweetly: The Mac OS is based on Unix and Unix runs several clean up scripts to keep the system running smoothly. Some run weekly and some monthly. These scripts were designed to run during the night when the servers were quiet. If you shutdown your Mac over night these scripts never get a chance to run and and over time performance will be affected and you can suffer slow-down etc. A good utility to use is Leopard Cache Cleaner. LCC allows you to run these scripts and perform many other tasks from one simple interface. My Macs at home are never switched off but my two Powerbooks run LCC and I cannot fault it. I usually run it weekly before backup. Leopard Cache Cleaner website Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwelland Posted December 7, 2008 Share #6 Posted December 7, 2008 Just a thought ... you haven't by any chance changed your preview settings for a large Aperture DB? It could be the regeneration of thumbnails/previews going on in the background? It sounds like you're pretty close to filling your disk - as mentioned in some of the other posts, OS X has to do some garbage collection plus also once you get to a critically full point with the disc space you'll often run into issues like this, plus swap, go slows, random crashes etc. Free up some space and see what happens. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
psamson Posted December 7, 2008 Share #7 Posted December 7, 2008 Advertisement (gone after registration) For users with OS 10.4 (Tiger) or 10.5 (Leopard) and who also use the Dashboard, you can download the free Dashboard widget called "Maintidget". Maintidget shows you when the daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance scripts were last run. Moreover, you can easily run the scripts on demand from the Dashboard. The daily and monthly scripts run quickly, but the weekly script will take a few minutes. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ceflynn Posted December 7, 2008 Share #8 Posted December 7, 2008 Leopard is supposed to run maintenace scripts that were not run in the middle of the night at the next opportunity to run them. This is a big improvement over Tiger, which assumed the Macintosh was not asleep at 3:15 A.M. daily, at 4:30 A.M. on Saturday for the weekly script, and at 5:30 A.M. on the first day of the month for the monthly script. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shootist Posted December 8, 2008 Share #9 Posted December 8, 2008 And I thought only Windows users had to run 3rd party programs to keep the PC in tip top shape. Learn something new everyday. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibogost Posted December 8, 2008 Author Share #10 Posted December 8, 2008 Just a thought ... you haven't by any chance changed your preview settings for a large Aperture DB? It could be the regeneration of thumbnails/previews going on in the background? It sounds like you're pretty close to filling your disk - as mentioned in some of the other posts, OS X has to do some garbage collection plus also once you get to a critically full point with the disc space you'll often run into issues like this, plus swap, go slows, random crashes etc. Free up some space and see what happens. Thanks for these suggestions, I think you might be right. I'll give it a shot. It would also explain why I didn't have the problem before. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinetar Posted December 8, 2008 Share #11 Posted December 8, 2008 Just how much space is left on the hd and do you have a 2nd drive? If not, get one. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwelland Posted December 8, 2008 Share #12 Posted December 8, 2008 And I thought only Windows users had to run 3rd party programs to keep the PC in tip top shape.Learn something new everyday. Generally, you don't. The suggestions here are just for utilities to force the OS to run tasks that it runs automatically when the machine is left on full time. These daily, weekly, monthly background tasks do housekeeping to clear out the temporary files and content that are cached for better performance. If they don't get to run then it's a bit like never dusting the house or taking out the garbage ... eventually you HAVE to do it. If you've got lot's of free space it doesn't matter much, but if you are teetering on a full disk, this can be what kills performance and introduces instability due to apps not being able to run effectively, use swap space etc. Fill up your Windows PC disk and you'll see exactly the same type of behavior. The difference is that whilst the Mac does the auto housekeeping, with the PC you need to manually remove temp files, defrag the disk, etc etc etc. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andit Posted December 8, 2008 Share #13 Posted December 8, 2008 One way of getting around this problem is by splitting your Aperture Library. I have my current stuff on my Mac, the older stuff that I don't access that often, is relocated to an external disk drive. The great thing about this is that you free up space on your mac, but are still able to view the "preview" images, even though the relocated disk is not currently connected. When you do need full access to these images, simply plug in the external drive. It's a seamless integration without you even knowing that Aperture is getting these images off an external drive. My Aperture Library was sitting at about 60 gig's and was just taking up too much space on my machine. Went out, got a 500 gig external usb drive and moved about 40 gig's worth onto the external drive. Problem solved. The image vault still backs up all images, regardless of the fact that the library is split. Hope this helps you along a bit. Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Thawley Posted December 8, 2008 Share #14 Posted December 8, 2008 One way of getting around this problem is by splitting your Aperture Library. I have my current stuff on my Mac, the older stuff that I don't access that often, is relocated to an external disk drive. The great thing about this is that you free up space on your mac, but are still able to view the "preview" images, even though the relocated disk is not currently connected. When you do need full access to these images, simply plug in the external drive. It's a seamless integration without you even knowing that Aperture is getting these images off an external drive. My Aperture Library was sitting at about 60 gig's and was just taking up too much space on my machine. Went out, got a 500 gig external usb drive and moved about 40 gig's worth onto the external drive. Problem solved. The image vault still backs up all images, regardless of the fact that the library is split. Hope this helps you along a bit. Andreas Whoa.... are you running a REFERENCED or MANAGED library? You just thew out a couple of things there that don't jive. If you're saying you're able to review previews when the external drive is NOT connected, that implies you are running the additional Library locally and referencing the files on your external drive. If that is in fact what you are doing, VAULT is NOT backing up that Library. VAULT only backs up MANAGED Libraries. Also, maintaining Previews can use nearly as much space on a drive as the actual image files, depending on how large you run them. Either way, that's still a lot of overhead memory-wise. I currently run 4 Managed Aperture Libraries. Each at approximately 250GB... all on individual external drives and each backed up to additional external drives. 5 terabyte in all. I don't like Libraries to exceed 100,000 images as things tend to slow down. However, I ONLY run MANAGED libraries as I feel REFERENCED is just a nightmare waiting to happen. The comfort level in my workflow and archive model, is each Library resides on a drive, with the images and the versions and each library is backed up to another drive. (there are redundant copies as well). I do most of my shooting on the road. And... since it's motorsorts, I have a natural calendar break built around the race season. So... starting in January, I'll go to my first event and start a new LIBRARY called Motorsports 2009. Using my laptop (which is my only machine) I'll have a 1TB portable drive hooded up and begin upload, organizing and building that Library over the coming year. Each even will be a "Project" within that Library. When I get home after an event, I "dock" my laptop to my monitor, keyboard/mouse and 6TB of hard drives. I'll create another Motorsports 2009 Library on one of the external drives that stay on my desk. Open it. Then go into FINDER, locate the Aperture Library on my small portable drive, "right click" on the Aperture Library file to show "Package Contents"... then drag the most recent Project into the Library that's open on my desk. I'll do that for each event upon my return home. This way, I have everything current with me and a full back-up at home. Just a trick, if you're running multiple Libraries, put a Folder on your task bar called Aperture Libraries. Then drag a "Short Cut" for each of your Libraries to that folder. Then when you want to open a particular library, just launch Aperture using the appropriate short cut. Remember, Aperture will only run one Library at a time and will always launch (using the App icon) to the last Library viewed. JT Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andit Posted December 8, 2008 Share #15 Posted December 8, 2008 Hi JT, Ok, how I went about it was the following way. I simply right click on the project that I want to move. I then select the Relocate Masters For Project option from the menu, and select the place that I want to move them to. This still leaves me with full preview, even though the external drive is not connected. You can not zoom into, or do any editing of the image, but you can view it - plus this frees up a whole lot of disk space. Hope this helps you a bit. I'm not sure if this is a referenced library or a managed library? Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Thawley Posted December 8, 2008 Share #16 Posted December 8, 2008 Hi JT, Ok, how I went about it was the following way. I simply right click on the project that I want to move. I then select the Relocate Masters For Project option from the menu, and select the place that I want to move them to. This still leaves me with full preview, even though the external drive is not connected. You can not zoom into, or do any editing of the image, but you can view it - plus this frees up a whole lot of disk space. Hope this helps you a bit. I'm not sure if this is a referenced library or a managed library? Andreas It is REFERENCED. There is no VAULT feature for REFERENCED Libraries. Be VERY careful. Honestly, please trust me. I've been a hard core user for over two years and took my certification training over a year ago. JT Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andit Posted December 8, 2008 Share #17 Posted December 8, 2008 Thanks for the forewarning JT. Will have to re-evaluate the way I work to make things safer. Thank You Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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