How to move the entire DT3 database to Dropbox and an external hard drive?

DEVONthink
21

Thank you so much for this.

The other day I was exploring Dropbox and found the option that allows some folders not to be synced on the computer. So my solution for now is to have a folder on my computer that syncs with dropbox. Once the file is downloaded (green circle) in that folder, I move the file to a Dropbox folder that is not syncing on my hard drive. There is a ‘move’ option for files once I log into dropbox.com. This process has too many steps for my liking, and I generally like to have several backups per day, but this will have to be my solution for now. I have a ton of space on my Dropbox, so I can use it to store all the zip files.

I wish that this process could be automated and done in the background. Do you happen to know if that is possible?

22

I don’t know about automated but the first solution in my reply doesn’t require using the browser version.

To reiterate:
Put zip file in Dropbox folder.
Right click zip file
Go to Dropbox SmartSync in right click menu
Choose “Online only”

This means it will only be stored in your Dropbox but it will keep a link to it on your computer and for the most part it will LOOK as if it is stored on your computer and taking up space but it won’t take up space on your computer and it will tell you how big it actually is. The little icon beside the name of the zip file should be a grey cloud. A green check means it is stored locally and taking up space.

Reading up on Smart Sync on the Dropbox website might help.

1 Like
23

Got it. I just tried the Dropbox SmartSync. It will save time.

24

I use Arq for backup as well. I have my internal (iMac) drive backed up to Wasabi cloud storage and I have my external drive backed up to my OneDrive cloud account. I have 1TB backed up on Wasabi and 800GB on OneDrive. I looked at the Arq directory in the Library folder and it was using 26GB. It seems to me it would be much less of a headache to just add the DT3 databases on your external drive to your Arq backup routine. It seems like a lot of manual effort to copy things around on Dropbox and when there is a lot of manual effort, I tend to either forget to do it or don’t do it often enough.

My external drive died on me recently and I was able to quickly restore it from my Arq backup, I was very thankful I had it.

Another option is to use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to clone your external drive to another external drive. I do this as well as the Arq backup, just not on a regular schedule, generally just before an OS update (though it can be scheduled to run periodically if you prefer).

And of course Time Machine for the internal drive… Belts and suspenders but makes me feel secure.

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25

I don’t have anything new to add, except to say that almost everything works just as it would if you had your database on your computer’s HD, so even if you have a lot of data, you will probably not find it to be a significant departure from what you have been doing.

I follow a system similar to DTLow. It’s not complex. My files are all on an external drive, which is indexed by DT using a database on my computer’s HD (at one point I also located the DT database together with my files on my external drive), and the external drive is backed up together with my computer’s storage using Time Machine (external drive enabled). That’s it. It also syncs really smoothly to DTTG on the iPad and iPhone (through the sync store on Dropbox), just as you would expect.

The only problem I encountered was when I tried to do the syncing with two computers. I haven’t figured out how to get the sync (through a sync store in Dropbox) for two computers to work yet, perhaps because I am indexing stuff on the external drive rather than importing. It seemed like each computer was trying to upload everything independently into the sync store without recognizing that the database was the same one being used by the other computer–basically doubling the data and not actually working well together (nothing ever got in sync). This seemed to happen even when I had the database on my external drive (for all intents and purposes, everything was the same in this scenario except for the computers the drive was plugged into). Maybe it was a user error problem. I will experiment with this more when I have more time.

By the way, this external drive stuff isn’t necessarily my ideal setup, but after going paperless for about 20 years now, I have simply accumulated way too much data to work within the confines of even a 1TB HD, so working with an external drive has become necessary. I tried archiving stuff as I went along, but my career (a historian) is basically all about constantly accessing files from books, articles, notes, and all kinds of other things, and I cannot do very much without having everything available all the time. To put it another way, I do lots of projects, but no project really ends, because they all build on one another in some fashion, so the longer I am at this, the more enmeshed, cumbersome, unwieldy, and incredibly powerful the database becomes.

Also, I should note that my data hoarding has made it pretty much impossible to use any other competing applications, because no one has the kind of flexibility that it takes to make it work. How many other apps design for such a use case? They should, because all of us are accumulating a ton of data every year, but they generally still pretend that you can store “everything” on a 500GB or 1TB drive.

2 Likes
26

@FROBGOBLIN That sums up DT3 well!

27

why not buy a second external hard drive (ideally you should keep a third in a different physical location, regularly backed up) and back up your first ext. hard drive to the second. i do this with my photo library (i’m a professional photographer) and on my mac i use CarbonCopy Cloner which will not only make an exact copy of the 1st drive to the 2nd, but will subsequently examine the two drives and only copy over additions and changes from the first drive. it will also keep snapshot copies on the destination drive as space allows.

it has never failed me, and saved me once when an external drive failed.

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28

I’d be embarrassed to say how many hard drives I have here :open_mouth:
Well… maybe not that embarrassed :stuck_out_tongue:

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29

Thanks for the CarbonCopy Cloner advice. I carry my main external drive with me all the time, and whenever I am at work it is being backed up by Time Machine, so I already have that as a backup. I am planning at some point to task another drive as Time Machine at home (like Bluefrog, I have a plethora of hard drives accumulated over the years). That’ll give me the three different locations (one TM at work, one TM at home, and my main external drive). Everything occurs in the background, so there is no thinking involved. I just have to make sure everything is plugged in. At least for my use case, I don’t see any benefits to CCC over TM, especially since it would involve purchasing additional software.

Besides TM (or CCC), another option would be to backup my main external drive to Dropbox so that I would have that in the cloud (making sure to uncheck the box that would download the data to my computer because of space concerns). I’ll probably do this at some point. I just have a lot of data, so I need to make sure and clean out DB first to make room. One additional benefit of using DB for a backup is that it gives me an additional access point to my data when using mobile.

30

The benefit is that TM can and will let you down when you try to restore a backup and discover that the backup is corrupted.

31

I’ve been actively testing CCC for the past two months and I will say, it more than lives up to its reputation :slight_smile:

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32

Can you add more detail about “let you down” and if the risk can be mitigated?
I use two TM drives that alternate automatically
plus a second backup method; a weekly export to the cloud

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33

Instead of Dropbox
Time Machine automatically makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup disk is full.

I used to have two external hard drives connected at the same time but Time Machine was getting confused

Time Machine is working well for me

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34

There are instances where there is corrupt or missing data in a Time Machine backup which is only detected when you attempt to restore the backup and the backup fails; Time Machine may halt the backup process and leave you with either no restored files or substantial missing restored files.

Alternating Time Machine Drives may mitigate the damage in such a case, though of course that may mean you wind up reverting to an older backup than you would prefer.

I am just an n=1 of course so YMMV, but I have seen this behavior several times with Time Machine but have not been let down yet by CCC.

35

I’ve never had an issue with TM, but I am an n=1 as well, so maybe I have just been lucky so far. I will think about CCC, but I will probably actually just clear out space on DB for that backup of the external drive. I already pay for DB and it will also give me access to the files from iOS devices–a win-win situation.

36

Two questions there

(1) How often have you attempted and completed a full restore of your Time Machine Backup?

(2) What software will you use to backup your data to DropBox?

37

This has happened to me. It is one reason why I also use Carbon Copy Cloner as well as using BackBlaze. I tend to think that three backups is the minimum one should have, but probably that is just me being old. Three backups using three different methods is probably being old beyond one’s years.

38

Redundancy in backups is still the best strategy.

2 Likes
39

Fully agreed

TM already failed 2 times for me, couldn’t continue backing up on my drive and had to start after formating with an initial backup again. Luckily such never happend in the rare cases I had to restore files.
CCC never failed for me (almost 5 years of use now). Started recently using Arq for my most important files - encrypted backups in the cloud (e.g. OneDrive).
I use several drives and rotate them.
In the days of increasing cyber thread you can’t be paranoid ennough in terms of backup :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

40

hi - i’m sure you’ll find yourself a workable solution. for me, CCC is more than useful because i can use it to back up a limited dataset (as timemachine will do if you specify the options) or a full internal drive backup. what it also does, importantly to me, is back up the contents of one external drive to another external drive, and i’m not sure if TimeMachine can do this (?)