The more I use DEVONthink 3, the more I want to use it. I just found an old trove of PDFs that would be great to have indexed and ready for searching when I need them. This isn’t data I need all the time. I certainly hate to fill up my MacBook Pro hard drive with all these files that I might not need for month or years in the future.
What’s a best practice for this? I’m thinking that I should be indexing them in the current spot (on a NAS drive)?
Is it possible to index files that are stored out on my cloud storage (Google Drive)? That would be most convenient as I’d love to end my reliance on NAS and other external storage drives.
What’s a best practice for this? I’m thinking that I should be indexing them in the current spot (on a NAS drive)?
It depends on if this is a portable machine that would occasionally be disconnected from the NAS. If so, I would advise against it unless - as you say - you really wouldn’t need access to them often.
Is it possible to index files that are stored out on my cloud storage (Google Drive)?
No. You should only index local resources into DEVONthink.
That would be most convenient as I’d love to end my reliance on NAS and other external storage drives.
Local drives are still faster, more robust, and defintely far more private than any cloud service.
I admit I’m struggling a bit with DT and data management concepts. As I say, the more I use DT the more I want to. That means multiple, large databases. I would prefer that my DT work isn’t limited to the capacity of my MacBook Pro.
I suppose the logical thing to do is keep large databases on removable drives that I plug in when doing a specific kind of research (i.e., plug in the law drive for legal work, swap in the food drive for nutritional research, etc.).
Of course, this approach makes it difficult to quickly add new content automatically through RSS feeds or when encountering content that I come across over the course of a day’s reading. It also means more work for backup tasks.
I appreciate and understand your enthusiasm. However, I would suggest you don’t building the penthouse before you build the skyscraper.
Check out this blog post:
and the Help > Documentation > Getting Started > Building You Database for some things to think about.
Putting databases on external drives (not flash drives or SD cards) is certainly possible. I have several terabytes of portable external storage that I can easily carry with me, if needed.
Ok, I can understand not using these for files that are used often. But they should be fine for occasional use, especially if you don’t use all the storage space. Because, of course, you have a stable and verified backup.
