I’m trying to consolidate several large DTPO databases into one massive one. Doing File > Export > Files and Folders, then re-importing is the “right” answer, but it’s slower than Christmas and keeps crashing. The source databases are all just collections of RTF (they’re imported from Entourage… but I can’t import more than a couple of thousand of messages from Entourage at a time before crashing).
Why can’t I select the source database in the Finder, Show Package Contents, dig down until I get to the Files folder, then option-drag (copy) that somewhere else in the Finder to use for re-importing? Is there some metadata I would be losing? Do I care?
DTPO shouldn’t crash. Please locate your DT Pro crash log at ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/DEVONthink Pro.crash.log and copy it as an attachment to a message to Support, with a brief summary of what was happening.
Because RTF files (and other text-based file types) are stored in the monolithic body of the database rather than in the internal Files folder, a very large collection of them increases the memory requirements for loading the database. Unless you have enough physical RAM to accommodate the load, database performance will suffer.
The future version 2.0 database will store all files, including text-based file types, in the Files folder inside the database package file.
Yes, you would lose metadata. But the reason you can’t perform such an operation for RTF files (in the current database structure) is that RTF files are not stored in the internal Files folder.
I’m also getting a bunch of crashes today.
I had to Force Quit DTPO when it got “stuck“ indexing a PDF.
I tried again, DTPO indexed a couple of hundred files, until reaching this one. Since it’s a big PDF I decided to remove it.
Tried again, but DTPO got stuck again or crashed, I can’t recall.
I removed other big files, and after 40 minutes of indexing DTPO quit again.
I’m glad that a few days ago I decided to Index these files instead of Importing into DTPO.
