On-disk Aperture stores all of its data in a special folder called a Library. This folder is a Mac OS X Package and the Finder represents it as a file. The file suffix for an Aperture Library file is ‘aplibrary’.
Aperturelibraryinfowindow
If you want to make a point-in-time backup of your Aperture data (except for preferences) you can make a copy of this file. It will very likely get really big. As you can see, mine is almost 22GB in size and most of my images are stored on an external hard drive.

As I mentioned, Aperture stores its information in this file. All of your images’ metadata and edits are stored in there. They’re small, though and most of the size is the database file that Aperture uses to quickly access the info stored in those files as well as thumbnail images and high-resolution previews.

This is a very important file to back up and Apple made it easy to do so. The built-in Vaults feature allows you to keep multiple copies of your Library stored on various hard drives in the event that lose your Library file itself. Synchronizing the Vaults with the master Library is a manual task so remember to do it frequently!

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