Aperture bit me.

[swoop]

So About two weeks ago Apple Aperture crashed on me hard. To the point where every time I loaded the program it crashed within seconds. It was unusable. I had to rely on iPhoto to edit and submit new assignments while Aperture was dead. I deleted the app, and reinstalled. Deleted the library to nothing. And it was still useless. I figured my last vault backup was about a week before. So I figured what the hell. I reinstalled the OS and started from scratch. I'd only be losing two assignments. Which were already submitted. So no biggie.

I reinstalled and Aperture has been working fine the past two days. Last night I finally got around to restoring my Aperture Library. I woke up this morning to a message that read something along the lines of "Error: Image L100485.DNG did not load." Because of this one single image file. My entire 95GB Vault file will not load. Because of one image. 29,407 other photos are unretrievable.

Screw you Apple. Don't depend on the vault file system to protect you. On the surface I thought Aperture was a great way to organize photos, edit them and easily back them up. But it cannot be relied upon professionally.

 

[movito]

Your photos are still there. Download Path Finder for the Mac from http://www.cocoatech.com/, and launch the application.

Navigate to your Aperture Library, right click on it and select the "view package contents" option from the contextual menu. This reveals all the files that are stored in the Aperture library.

Now, try finding the image that did not want to load, and move it out of the library. See if that will work.

If not, back up the contents of your machine and check your hard disk with the disk utility application and do any necessary repairs there. Wiping the disk and re-installing the OS might help, too.

Another approach that you could try is to open the library (with Path Finder) and copy out the images, and then re-import them.

Let us know how it works, eh?

 

[Colman]

The finder will do fine to delete that file. Now, why is that happening? I had a similar problem that seems to have stopped recurring since i had the disk replaced some months ago: it may indicate something is wrong with the hardware. As suggested, see what Disk Utility has to say and try running a hardware check.

 

[FifthLeaf]

DO NOT DELETE the dng file! Judging from your description and reading some information on how Aperture's vault system works, it sounds like there's an error reading that single file in the vault and that's causing the whole restoration to fail.

Also create a backup of your vault file right now. You don't want to dig yourself in a deeper hole.

First, you'll need to find the file.
-So browse to your vault file in Finder, right click it, and select "Show Package Contents".
-In the spotlight search window in the upper right corner of the Finder window, type in the name of the file, i.e. L100485.DNG.
-If you find the file, try opening it manually with a RAW viewing program. Let me know what error message, if any, pops up.
-If you don't find the file, we'll try to trick Aperture.

Post a reply with what you find and I'll try to help you from there.