Well, I still don’t see a clear statement of need. Maybe I am being dense. It seems other people understand you as wishing the database itself to live in the cloud? Since DEVONthink can index cloud folders, I don’t get what the problem is, especially without proper context. To me it comes across like complaining a screwdriver is not a hammer, or that water is wet.
Doing photography, I have simply accepted external drives as a fact of life – also while traveling. Cloud is not feasible for this, and likely never will be. If you are concerned about durability, the LaCie Rugged drives have a good reputation, and I have been using them for many years with no failures. They also come in SSD versions.
… isn’t an external drive the optimal solution to this?
That point is moot. I access my NAS all the time while traveling (sync store, Umami etc). The name NAS does not imply that it’s not accessible from the outside. And technically it’s just „a cloud“.
enables you to have one instance running on one machine whilst another is turned off?
Nope. Sync data is not a database. It is a container of information and bits that make up a database. And each device is independent of each other, with their own local copy of the database.
is about as big as the original databases that you are syncing?
While not technically always true, it is a good idea to think of the sync data consuming the same amount of space. This helps in planning for and managing equipment, e.g., “What size hard drive would I need?”
I understand the database of metadata has to be on the local disk.
I want to store the documents in finder (indexing over importing), and for finder to manage those files, optimising the disk usage by moving them to offline storage when it optimises disk space (or equivalent in the case of DropBox etc)
I understand that to use the file it has to be present, and I have to download it, and whilst I think it would be nice if DT initiated that transfer in the way other apps do, it isn’t really essential.
What is essential is that it doesn’t trigger a download of all the files held, on a periodic re-indexing, for instance, and that it retains the metadata in the optimistic anticipation of the document being restored to disk.
So, someone has to provide your IP access wherever you are. And you have no home to install a NAS at, not even an RV. And you can’t bother to use external disks. And you would like DT developers to cater to those needs.
One can always hope, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
This is clearer. But I still think you are leaving out most meaningful context, and approaching this in an upside-down way. Instead of starting with a higher-order goal and figuring out a workflow that makes sense, you fixate on this one idea as the only solution. All because of a set of self-imposed constraints that you dismiss any notion of reevaluating. It seems unproductive.
(Missing context: What type of work do you do? Under what circumstances? What kind of data are you working with, and roughly how much of it? Why does it all need to be in DEVONthink?)
I am reminded of this perceptive post:
PS: I don’t know much about WebDAV, but my impression from skimming discussions in the past is that it is actually possible to set up and rent WebDAV storage from an external provider, and that you don’t need your own NAS.
Now that you mention it, I did know that. But it’s not something I have devoted any time to learn about, so I got the terminology mixed up. I also realise no one else has mentioned WebDAV – sorry!
(It was a PS to this)
chrillek: “I access my NAS all the time while traveling”
miloustale: “You need to own a network to attach it to…”
My understanding is some people use their NAS for syncing their databases by using it as a sync store with WebDAV. So I often see them mentioned together in context of DEVONthink. But I guess it is completely irrelevant in this discussion.
I have in my office a half-terabyte SSD drive that takes about the same amount of space as 3-4 credit cards. It’s not new technology, so the newest ones are probably even smaller.
