One of the most common questions we get from photographers is “how do I move my files from my laptop to an external hard drive in Aperture.”
Most serious photographers will run out of disk space and will want to move some of their images to an external hard drive. This will free up space on their local hard drives.
Aperture is a catalog based software meaning that it keeps track of your images location on the hard drive. By default Aperture places your images within the Aperture library file. The Mac OS hides these files from the user. This is a source of confusion among many Mac users. Because they can’t see their files, they assume that moving the whole library files is an all or nothing endeavor. It is not.
You can view the individual images within your Aperture library. Find your Aperture Library file (usually located in your Pictures folder), right click and select “Show Package Contents”, then select the “Masters” folder. All of your individual files will be there.
Do not move the files directly from Finder onto your external hard drive. This will confuse your Aperture library.
Luckily, there is an easy mechanism within Aperture to move your photos to an external hard drive.
From within Aperture select the files you wish to move. You can select multiple projects. Then go to the File menu and select “Relocate Masters”. Then select the destination folder. By default this will save the files by project name on to the destination disk.
One thing to keep in mind is that if you use Time Machine or the Aperture Vault to backup your images these will not back up the images on the external hard drive.
Once the images are moved to the external hard drive, the previews will still be available in the Library even when the external hard drive is unplugged. You can also make catalog or metadata changes to the files. You will not be able to develop or make adjustments to the image. You also cannot export or share the file without the external hard drive plugged in.
That is it. Although not entirely intuitive, moving photos to an external hard drive from Aperture is not too difficult once you learn how.