DevonThink to go sync with multiple Macs

DEVONthink Tips
1

I am still struggling with the setup of DTP and DevonThink to go.

What I try to do is, to keep all my data in sync across a couple of devices. While this works great when I use my desktop Mac, I can’t seem to get it to work in combination with my iPad/iPhone. As mentioned in another post, DTog crashes when trying to sync large databases (but that’s another story). Additionally it seems, that I can only sync DTog from ONE machine.

Here’s my setup:

  • Office Mac, Home Desktop Mac, MacBook Pro, iPad, iPhone
  • External portable drive (holding my large DT databases)
  • Dropbox (holding some smaller databases)

/Application Support/DEVONthink Pro 2/ folder is symlinked to my Dropbox on all machines and I want to be able to sync my data to the iPad from whatever machine I’m working on (that’s why I carry my portable drive with me all the time).

BTW, this is the same way how I use iTunes, Bento or Microsoft Office (and others).

But DTog seems to ‘remember’ the machine’s id when synching instead of the database id. It brings up an error message, if I try to sync to the very same databases from one of the other machines (allthough the databases are the same).

Is there any workaround for this to get my setup working as mentioned above?

2

Not at the moment, I am afraid. DEVONthink To Go uses the serial number of your Mac to identify it. A future version of DEVONthink To Go will be able to sync over MobileMe or the Dropbox directly.

3

Just a little clarification: My preferred storage for large databases is an USB-Stick or Harddrive, which I carry with me all the time. So every Mac I’m working on connects to the same set of (large) databases, which reside on my external drive. The database is fed from any of these Macs. And so synchronizing to the iPad-helper apps should also work from any of these Macs (As already stated in my previous post, this works great in Bento, iTunes and a couple of other apps) and although it’s not a deal-breaker, it would be great if that worked in DTP/DTotg as well.

4

This is great. I am looking for a simple way to keep my databases synced between my laptop and desktop. I’m going to skip my iPad for now as it is new and I am only using it to read pdf and watch videos.

It sounds like I can grab a large USB drive, say 16 gigs and keep one or more of my DTPO databases on them and just save to and from that USB…?

Is there a simple way of setting this up? Anything to watch out for?

Thanks - Ryan