I do not have much free storage left on my hard drive, and need to move some of my DT3 databases to an external hard drive which makes me uncomfortable because I prefer to have several backups in different locations. Still, it needs to be done, and so I am thinking of storing the databases both on an external hard drive and in a Dropbox folder.
My question is this: how do I make sure that I move the entire databases to these locations (the external hard drive and Dropbox)?
To move the databases to the external hard drive, I closed DT3, and dragged and dropped the databases into the external hard drive. I then tried to open one of them from the external hard drive, which worked fine. Is what I have done so far the way to move the entire databases to an external hard drive?
As for Dropbox, I really do not know how to move the entire databases there. What is the proper way to do this? I crated a folder in Dropbox where I would like to store them. Also in the preferences for Dropbox, I chose the option not to sync that folder onto my computer since the Dropbox app is on my laptop, and syncing essentially will not save any space on my hard drive.
I do not use these databases often, so my plan is that if I need to use them, to try the external hard drive first, and if it works, I will proceed from there. However, if it does not work, I will have to probably download the databases from Dropbox to my hard drive.
To move the databases to the external hard drive, I closed DT3, and dragged and dropped the databases into the external hard drive. I then tried to open one of them from the external hard drive, which worked fine. Is what I have done so far the way to move the entire databases to an external hard drive?
Yes, this is fine.
There is no “proper way” to move a DEVONthink database into a Dropbox (or other cloud-synced location). It is not data-safe and opening or syncing a database in such a location is explicitly disallowed.
How are you going to backup your databases then if you use them from your external hard drive?
I use Arq and after I move the databases to the external hard drive, I won’t be able to have them backed up by Arq. I have disallowed Arq to backup any external hard drives that are connected to my hard drive because Arq takes a ton of space on my hard drive (currently 35GB!).
I do not want to use the Devonthink databases from Dropbox. I just want them stored in at least one more location in addition to the external hard drive because something might happen to it. Can I convert them to a zip file and move them to Dropbox? If not, are there any other options?
So you have two external hard drives when you use Mac Time Machine? I used to have two external hard drives connected at the same time but Time Machine was getting confused, and I had to switch to sequential backups; when a backup on one external hard drive is done, I remove it and connect the next one. How long have you been using this method? and have you not run into the issue I am describing?
And could you let me know you have setup the manual backup to be stored in the cloud?
Glacier is a kind of write often, read rarely thing: quite cheap iirc, but meant for long-time storage, if one does not need to access the data quickly. Restoring is slow, afaik.
Glacier is a storage class of Amazon Web Service’s (AWS) S3 storage service. It’s a very inexpensive, archival backup solution.It’s one of the online destinations that Arq supports.
What kind of cloud service are you using that is not on your hard drive? I am running into a block because the Dropbox app is installed on my computer, so I can store a zip file there, but that is not solving the issue of freeing space on my hard drive. I will have to manually move it to a a Dropbox folder that is not also on my hard drive.
For any Dropbox file on MacOS you can right click and go to the Dropbox specific contextual menu items and choose SmartSync then Online Only.
So copy your file into Dropbox and wait for it to sync. There should be a green check mark to indicate it’s been synced. Then do the above switch to Online Only. It might take a while to reflect the newly available space on your hard drive. The green check mark should now be a cloud icon.
NOTE: This means the file ONLY exists in your Dropbox unless you have your Dropbox synced to another computer. The local/online status of any file is specific to a computer. Also this particular function is one factor that makes Dropbox files challenging for indexing with DevonThink. The file is listed in your hard drive like a local file but it actually isn’t there.
Alternatively you can go through Dropbox preferences/Sync to select folders that aren’t synced to your computer. Those folders won’t appear any where on your computer so to put files into those folders in Dropbox you would have to use the web interface to upload them to the Dropbox folder.
