4GB database but 16GB in actual size?

DEVONthink Tips
1

When I right-click a database in DEVONthink (Database properties), it says it’s 4.4GB, but when I click ‘Get Info’ in Finder for the particular database, it says it’s 16.64GB in size.

Is this normal?

2

The size displayed by the Database Properties panel is the size of all files in the database. This doesn’t include e.g. the search index, the metadata storage or backups.

3

Thanks.

How would I purge everything else (Backups, metadata storage and backups)? I’m on a really small drive at the moment (Only 120 GB, with less than 8 GB remaining.), so I’d like to remove all the superfluous stuff.

Update: I deleted the 800,000 tags that were in my database (Automatically generated via RSS.) but it only shrunk the database file by 1 GB.

4

You can set Preferences > Backup to 0 or 1 to limit the internal backups (though I wouldn’t necessarily suggest it).

You can close the database and right-click > Show Package Contents on the .dtBase2 file to go into the internals of the database and manually delete them (but again, this isn’t something I normally advocate). Do not delete anything but the Backup folders.

PS: You can uncheck Preferences > RSS > Convert Categories to Tags to avoid the proliferation.

5

Thanks.

Deleted backups, reduced to 8 GB now. Mystery 4 GB remaining.

6

Odds are it is the .dtMeta files, which you absolutely should NOT delete.

Also, does the database have unemptied Trash? If so, these files are still part of the database.