Hi all. I have about 200GB in databases. I currently sync them using iCloud between Mac and iPhone. Backups are a bit of a mess. I recently acquired a NAS to help with the backup situation.
What’s the best strategy of incorporating the NAS? The NAS itself is backed every night. But I don’t know the best strategy for getting the changing databases onto the NAS on a regular basis.
I know I’m not supposed to house the databases on the NAS.
So should I Drag and drop whenever they change? WebDAV? Some kind of third party sync? Thank you!
@Bluefrog’ s sage advice to review the “A Word About Backups” is the first step. As you read, think in terms of backup of your “systems” and “devices” (which includes the DEVONthink databases). And yes, sync is not a backup.
Good you have a NAS. You don’t say what brand. FYI, I backup the MacBook (with the DEVONthink databases in ~/Documents/DEVONthink/) using TimeMachine to my Synology NAS using the instructions provided by Synology on their website. I supplement that backup with a scheduled backup using Arc to Arc’s servers (offsite) and to the Synology NAS. “Belt and Braces”, I also occasionally run a TimeMachine backup to a USB drive. I also backup the iOS devices (iPad and iPhone) to both Apple’s iCloud (automatic by iOS) and to my MacBook (hook ‘em up with a wire and use Finder). Also, you might want to learn about 3-2-1 backup regimes–written about extensively on the “inter web”.
Thanks to all. If I may back up a bit to give my rationale my question might make more sense.
I’m using a MacBook with 256gb drive, so all of my data — with the exception of DT — lives on the Synology NAS. I pull data as I need it, and I do backup the Synology itself to external USB drives.
Since the 200GB (and growing) DT database obviously won’t fit on the MacBook’s internal drive, I have it on a fast external SSD connected via USB.
So my initial question is how to move the DT database seamlessly and automatically onto the Synology so that it’s included in the nightly backup of the Synology.
The MacBook is connected directly to the Synology via 2.5G Ethernet (soon to be upgraded to 5Gbe). But it is a laptop so sometimes I am on WiFi or entirely remote.
Help, please!
If DT can live on the Synology like the other data, that would be ideal of course.
@rmschne and others are more knowledgeable than I am, still I can offer you what I do.
Most my databases live inside my mac’s SSD, but others live inside an external SSD, always connected. I use a Synology NAS to backup both the mac and the external SSD’s databases. I think it’s faster, safer, more stable.
(and as @rmschne I do multiple other back ups, Time Machine, etc)
Ok, I read the manual and I get why you say sync is not backup so I will no longer use the term sync when I mean copy or backup.
I also get why I’m in this situation and I don’t think I can really improve it.
To summarize: yes I can put the database on the NAS, but then I can only access it locally via fast Ethernet. This isn’t necessarily more convenient than a portable SSD, and potentially dangerous as I (or someone on my team) might forget and try to access it on WiFi.
So assuming the database continues to live on the portable SSD, the main question is how to back it up. And the answer is any way I like, I suppose — Synology Active Backup, Time Machine, Chronosync (which uses word “sync” but they really just mean to “copy” from one to the other so that both sides are the “same”).
So the only questions around backing up are: what have people found to be convenient? Is there a method that doesn’t copy the whole 200 GB database if a single byte changes? I guess I’ll read the DT manual to find out!!!
Where have you discovered this is the case with the backup applications (TimeMachine, Chronosync, etc.) that you mention? What get’s backed up is under the control of these applications, not DEVONthink, an unless configured otherwise, do incremental copies. Further, DEVONthink databases are not a single file. They looked to be so as they are presented in Finder as a macOS “package”, which are actually composed of thousands if not more folders files and are an Apple “invention”.
I truly have no idea. Everything Time Machine seems fairly opaque — I don’t think you can directly tell it what files to back up. You have to tell it what files not to backup, and as a result I generally have no idea what it’s doing. So I let it run and do its thing, but I’m not relying on it. And while it’s supposed to be able to backup to a Synology NAS, I didn’t have luck with that because it took so long. And I’m not sure whether it backed up anything from the external drive.
I have hope for Synology Active Backup but haven’t tried it yet.
The idea of Time Machine is to back up all of the important data. So, it makes sense that you don’t tell it what to backup, because you as a user generally don’t know which files might be important for the working of an app.
And Time Machine, like any backup software worthy of that name, does incremental backups. Ie, If you change one byte in a file on a 200GB disk, this file is saved anew. Not the whole disk.
I’m learning that it’s not a file or a disk but something in between. My old method of producing a zip archive and uploading that to backup media is obviously too cumbersome. I am trying to streamline the process and that’s why I came here for advice. All of my other data lives on the Synology NAS and gets backed up very elegantly. Since I won’t be housing the DEVONthink database on the NAS or on the internal drive, the goal is to find an elegant way to seamlessly copy or backup the database from external USB drive to the NAS where it will automatically be included in the nightly backup. Thank you for your help.
Backups of my Adobe Lightroom photo catalogs (not the photos, just the catalogs, which can themselves get pretty big) - and for that I use the venerable app CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner); nightly
Syncs (not Backups!) of all my DEVONthink databases, which also live inside my main computer SSD, and in external SSDs. The syncing is done via WebDAV, and is automatic (everytime anything changes in one of these databases). DT’s documents explain this super well. You have to setup some stuff in DT’s settings, and of course in the NAS itself (credentials, etc).
I also sync the databases to my iPhone - previously I was using Bonjour, now I am using CloudKit which is working perfectly.
Time Machine: I backup up everything (that is, everything TM allows), 2 ways - via iCloud, and locally to 2 separate external drives.
Finally, I occasionally archive DT databases and store the ZIPs online (iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive)
That means I have several safety syncs and backups, and I know also if disaster happens, what are the most recent syncs and/or backups.
But it has been working well for ages.
If you open TimeMachine and start browsing what it had incrementally saved over time, you realize how great it is.
May I ask why you sync them to the NAS this way, rather than having CCC or something similar copy or back them up? I think this gets to the heart of what I’m trying to do.
Also, where they sit on the NAS, do you access them directly over Ethernet and make changes to them?
Generally people sync to ensure that they have the same data on several devices: Mac, iPhone, iPad
Generally people backup to ensure that they have data at a certain point in time and can restore to that point if something breaks.
If you delete a file from DT, sync ensures that it is deleted from all your devices. If that was a mistake, you can restore the file from a backup.
You never make changes directly to a sync store (did I mention that there’s a user manual that explains sync in detail?). There are no files in a sync store. It is like a black box that coordinates the data on your different devices.
How else would you access anything on a NAS if not via the network?
Lear, @chrillek (unsurprisingly ) answered to perfection.
I will just add a couple of points.
I have BOTH a local NAS sync and a cloud CloudKit sync.
These keep my databases alive in 5 places (including Mac, iPad and iPhone)
Both are great, and give me a lot of flexibility in terms of which I want to sync my iPad and iPhone databases to. Let’s say the NAS is down (it may happen during a brown or blackout, my NAS needs to be restarted manually) - then if I need to, until I restart the NAS, I can just switch, in my iPhone or iPad, in DTTG, to sync via CloudKit. Super easy.
I don’t sync all databases on the iPhone, and I don’t sync all databases on iPad (and it’s not the same subsets). And I don’t sync all databases on CloudKit (but might). But I do sync all databases in the NAS.
) answered to perfection.