DEVONthink To Go with indexed files stored on Synology Drive – how does two-way sync work?

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Hi everyone,

I’m currently evaluating DEVONthink 4 and would like to make sure I fully understand how indexed files interact with DEVONthink To Go before I decide on my long-term setup.

My current setup is:

  • My original documents are stored on a Synology NAS.

  • Synology Drive synchronizes these folders to my MacBook Pro, so the files are locally available in the Mac file system.

  • In DEVONthink 4, I have indexed these Synology Drive folders rather than importing the files.

  • This works very well on the Mac, and I would strongly prefer the Synology NAS to remain the primary location for my original files.

However, I would also like to use DEVONthink To Go on my iPhone, including having my documents available locally/offline.

This raises an important question for me:

If I synchronize my DEVONthink database with DEVONthink To Go, what happens to indexed files?

More specifically:

  1. Can the contents of my indexed files be synchronized to DEVONthink To Go while the original files remain in the indexed Synology Drive folders?

  2. If I modify an existing document in DEVONthink To Go on my iPhone, will that modification eventually be written back to the original indexed file in the Synology Drive folder on my Mac, and therefore synchronize back to the NAS?

  3. Most importantly: If I create or import a new document on my iPhone in DEVONthink To Go and place it into a group that corresponds to an indexed Synology Drive folder, will DEVONthink on the Mac create that document as an actual file inside the indexed Synology Drive folder?

In other words, I am trying to determine whether the following architecture is possible:

Synology NAS → Synology Drive → indexed folder on Mac ↔ DEVONthink ↔ DEVONthink To Go

with changes and newly added documents ultimately returning to the Synology Drive folder and therefore to the NAS.

My goal is to keep the Synology NAS as the authoritative file storage, while using DEVONthink as the document management/search layer on the Mac and DEVONthink To Go as the mobile interface on the iPhone.

Is this workflow officially supported and reliable, or would I need to import the files into the DEVONthink database in order to achieve true two-way synchronization with DEVONthink To Go?

Thanks very much for helping me understand the correct architecture before I migrate my document collection.

2

Welcome @TrigonOS

  1. DEVONthink To Go doesn’t support indexing. It receives copies of the indexed files via the sync data and stores local copies on the mobile device.

  2. Yes, of course, changes propagate when syncing and DEVONthink on the Mac is dealing with the actual files in the indexed location.

  3. See the previous response.

PS: All this is easily testable with a small test folder in the Finder indexed into a database in DEVONthink and sync with DEVONthink To Go.

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