DEVONthink and DEVONnote data file locations

I am a newbie to this forum, so I apologize in advance if this issue has been addressed before. I tried some searches of the forum, but really didn’t solve my problem.

I have both DEVONthink and DEVONnote, and use the latter as a daily journal (I need a journal with wiki-like capability). I work in three different locations on three different macs, so using iDisk would be nice, but every time I tried to associate iDisk with DEVONthink, I would get “last sync failed” messages until I deleted the files from the iDisk. I decided to move the files from computer to computer using a thumb drive, but I cannot determine where those files reside. If I were to dedicate a 1-gigabyte thumb drive to transferring the DEVONthink and DEVONnote files from computer to computer, what would I need to copy, and where the heck are the files?

My thanks in advance.

Jeffery

Hmmm… seems that data file locations are a closely guarded secret. That’s a shame. Guess I’ll limp along with EagleFiler and give up the wiki capability. :frowning:

These have both been answered multiple times. Instead of grousing, perhaps you could learn to search. You know, “teach a man to fish” and all that.

That said, DEVONnote stores its databases in ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONnote.

DEVONthink supports multiple databases. You can put them anywhere you want them to be. Note the iDisk is pretty darned slow, so using it for the database location could be problematic. You’d probably want to enable iDisk synching and go that route, rather than saving directly over a DAV link. Dropbox works better in my experience. Much better.

Thank you for the kind response. I did try searching it but for some reason didn’t think of using “/Library/Application Support” as a search key. And every other time I tried a search key, I got a message that said that I cannot do a search at this time.

You might try some anger management yourself. You might also suggest that the “trouble-shooting” section of the forum simply read “find it yourself”.

I’m hesitant to copy blocks of information from the Application Support portion of one Mac and paste it into the Library section of another Mac. I’ll stick with Eagle Filer. The folks over there are less edgy.

Even though I’ve seen this asked/answered before it’s not obvious to me which search keywords to use for finding the relevant posts.

I’ve suggested a separate FAQ subforum where Q&As like this would be easier to locate and reference, segregated from discussions in busier subforums. With DT 2.0 public beta there’s been a high frequency of certain Sorter, installation, scanner, etc. issues repeated reported that could now be easily answered with FAQ posts if Dtech was more supportive of doing it that way.

What makes matters more difficult is Apple’s tendency to have multiple names for similar things (such as me.com, mac.com, mobile me, and iDisk). Believe it or not, I have been stalled in my research for nearly a month as I make the transition from a Windows world to a Mac world. The two platforms could not be more different. And I have spent most of the past semester test driving Notebook, Notetaker, OmniOutline, Mori, MyNotes, EagleFiler, DEVONThink, DEVONnote, Notae, Journler, MacJournal, Bento, VooDooPad, and Tinderbox to see which application would work best. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and attempting to migrate all of my data from one program to another is paintaking.

Searching this forum since last Friday, I am aware that (1) it doesn’t seem to be a good idea to put DEVON data on an iDisk, (2) it doesn’t seem to be a good idea to run the programs from a thumb drive, (3) that DEVONnote can be fooled into thinking that its data is in the Library by using an alias pointing to the iDisk, and (4) the bigger the data files, the worse the performance.

Please trust me that I am not taking the lazy way out in trying to answer some of these difficult questions. I’ve pored over the user manual, searched the forum, and finally asked the question yesterday. I know that newbies are generally regarded as annoyances rather than members. I’ll maintain a low profile from now on.

Jeffery
New Orleans, LA

No matter what application you decide to stick with (and the folks on this forum are actually extremely nice and helpful to other users as well as us), I have one recommendation to you.

Do not ever use iDisk to store information you rely on and are working on dynamically! You will get burned. Backing up is no problem as long as it isn’t your primary backup. The WebDav implementation on Mac OS X is slow, badly implemented and with iDisk sometimes unreliable with large files.

About half of the applications that I have test driven seem not to get along with iDisk. I get a bit sick to my stomach when I think about how much I am paying for the me.com subscription when it only seems to be reliable in syncing my calendar and address book.

I am reluctant to give up the wiki link feature of DEVONthink and DEVONnote, and don’t feel that VooDoo Pad Pro is the answer. There is literally no documentation for that product, so I am only familiar with its most superficial of features. I dread the thought of trying Tinderbox again. I bought it at the same time as the first Mac, but adopting it as a database requires a commitment as serious as marriage, and the interface seems sparse and ugly. For the time being, I’ll probably transfer all of my rtf files to Filemaker Pro 10 (I’ve been using that program since it was marketed as Nutshell for the PC) and try to keep my thumb on the pulse of which Mac databases are upgrading to wiki capability. It has been suggested to me to buy a new, large Mac notebook and tote it from school to home to where ever, removing the need for syncing or thumb drives. That’s the most logical choice, but also most expensive as it will necessitate buying it on credit.

If you need read-mostly access with the capability to add notes, our DEVONthink Pro Office version has a web server built-in that allows you to do this from any web browser or iPhone. If that is the kind of remote access that would satisfy your needs, that is an option. You can give it a try since our databases are compatible across all versions of DEVONthink 2.

Thanks much for the info. I’ll download it and see if I can get things synced.

Thanks again!