Thanks again, I am very familiar with CCC and that it can make its own snapshots and restore from them or Time Machine’s snapshots. I hadn’t connected these with your comments about snapshot style backups earlier (to avoid the problems of continuous backup of a live databases). I saw them more as means to restore quickly to earlier point in time.
I am not so familiar with Superduper! although a quick google suggests it also uses snapshots.
So for local backups look like CCC and Superduper! are good, even for active databases.
I found another thread about cloud based backing up of DT:
I can’t see the snapshot issue mentioned in that, but good discussion of the other general problem that backup tools will cheerfully backup corrupted databases, so backups should be based on exported (hence verified) archives.
I have exported archives of my databases and these are on a drive which goes to Crashplan, but not on a daily basis.
I’m not sure why sync stores aren’t recommended as a backup. My personal experience is that I have two Macs, an iPhone, and an iPad all running from the same Dropbox sync store. When I synced the second Mac to the sync store set up by the first Mac, it completely recreated the database file on the second Mac. So if I were to lose both Macs in a disaster, I could just get a new Mac and point it at the sync store, and that would recreate the database file, right?
So if I were to lose both Macs in a disaster, I could just get a new Mac and point it at the sync store, and that would recreate the database file, right?
Theoretically, sure. But as we have noted in many places: Note: Sync is not a backup, neither advertised nor advocated as such. A proper backup is application agnostic. That is not the case with DEVONthink’s sync.
That’s why I also use Backblaze. But just from a pure DT point of view, it should work. And it might work better than a backup of the DT database retrieved from Backblaze, depending on what was happening at the time of the disaster. I hope I never have to find out …
This is not something that should be looked at from a “pure DT point of view”.
Again… this is not advocated or advertised as a backup for a reason. Your initial reaction in an emergency situation should not be sync.
Please clarify “real time” and it’s “flawless(ness)”.
Just because a process backs up a DEVONthink database, that does not mean it’s data-safe. Dropbox also backs up DEVONthink databases you put in Dropbox, but it is not data-safe.
But just from a pure DT point of view, it should work. And it might work better than a backup of the DT database retrieved from Backblaze, depending on what was happening at the time of the disaster. I hope I never have to find out …