In January this year when using Dttg 1.5.4 I synced with DevonNote and lost my entire Dttg database. Fortunately all was OK in Dnote. I reported it here and it turned out to be a bug in that version, but the next update (1.5.5) wouldn’t even run; crashed on launch. I removed Dttg from my iPad and waited several months and a few updates before trying again, with 1.5.8.
I’ve had no problems until yesterday when I synced with DevonNote after entering a new note in Dttg and once again my entire database disappeared. The new note entered in Dttg never made it to Dnote. I’m running ios 8.4.1
I removed all the valuable items from the mobile sync folder in Dnote and left only a couple of folders with files I’d created earlier for testing. I synced again and the 2 folders made it to Dnote, but a note I’d created in Dttg didn’t — and it also disappeared from the Dttg database.
I’ve done some more testing today and all is going well, but I’m not sure I want to trust this app after two major disasters. Will Dttg ever get up to speed? It’s a rather expensive app and I would expect much more of it — not having to worry about losing data at the very least.
Though I cannot replicate your issue, DEVONthink To Go 2 is coming along nicely. I can’t give you the date of release but it will be a free upgrade to current version 1 owners.
Funny that this is coming up now: I just got a beautiful iPad Pro on Friday. Quickly transferred all my stuff from my old 4th gen iPad. DTTG came up without problems. Then on Saturday, I wanted to use DTTG and suddenly there was nothing in DTTG anymore, no DBs, no inbox. Left me puzzled. Synced everything from the Mac. Then on Sunday, it happened again, in front of my eyes. I tried to open a file in DTTG, and suddenly everything vanishes!
Re-synced. Since then, despite heavy use, everything has been fine.
That’s exactly the way it happened to me the other day. As I said, I went to Safari to copy a URL and when I returned to Dttg I saw the list of my synced files, including the one I had just created — but the new one was the only one that had any content in it, as I could see in the preview. All the other files showed nothing but the title. I clicked on one and found it empty — and suddenly everything vanished.
I re-synced the “boilerplate” files I’d created for testing and did some more fiddling in Dttg and on the Mac, synced again and all OK. I did this again yesterday and today and all is working OK.
That said, I’m very wary of using Dttg since this is the second time I’ve lost my database. Weird, most certainly, but I’m especially concerned about losing data from the Mac in some other weird incident, and then everything would be gone for good.
I don’t know if you’re referring to losing data relative to iOS or OS X in general. We strongly advocate observing proper primary backups using TimeMachine (or similar application) and local external drives.
This has happened to me too. Suddenly everything in DTTG just vanished. Not sure when or what I was doing but it vanished. I have everything on my Mac but I had just spent about 30 minutes syncing about 4 GB worth of data into it and it was working fine. I think it vanished when I synced. I really really would like to be able to trust DTTG as I need a way to make my DTPO databases portable.
While it amazes me that you (as a company) can continue to say things like this for several years. , it amazes me even more that people are willing to accept this as a valid response. I’ve been in the software industry for over 25 years and have been responsible for deploying numerous mission critical applications where any failure has the potential to cost hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and lost opportunity costs. I know what it takes to deliver extremely complex software. I know how long it should take. And i can guarantee the applications my teams have built are several orders of magnitude more complex than a mobile version of a devonthink.
I completely understand your position of “well, it’s a hard problem and we’re working hard to guarantee everything works as expected and our trusted users don’t lose their data.”. But it’s an insult to fall back on this line for over 2 (3???) years. To be honest i’ve lost count of how many years.
Do I believe you have some pre-release software on your device right now that you’re testing? sure i do. Do i believe you’ve had it for quite some time? sure i do. Do i believe your mobile software development team is competent? absolutely and demonstrably not. You should have cut your loses with them years ago and started over. They have no idea how to deliver. You keep a completely broken version out there for sale and string everyone along waiting for ‘the next best thing’. Sorry, but you’ve lost all credibility.
I absolutely love the desktop app. I use it every day. Just please stop insulting us all. It was almost entertaining in the beginning (2 years ago), but now it’s just annoying.
I have also lost my database in Devonthink database on my iPhone several times. I guess this is a bug. However, the solution is to re-sync and be careful with backups.
I have lost data on DTTG many times. The only correlation I see (anecdotal evidence) is a loss of data following an iTunes sync/backup. Same thing happened today:
Connected the iPad to the Laptop via USB and did a full iTunes backup/sync
Opened DTTG (the databases still showed up fine at that point) and ran a sync with my desktop
The DTTG databases still show up fine
Tap into a database, content appears to be there
Use the Back button - oops - now the corresponding database is empty.
Same thing happened in all DTTG databases. I then close (“swipe up”) DTTG and restart it. Now the databases don’t show anymore at all.
This behavior is reproducible. I love DT on the desktop. I would like to use DTTG instead of lugging around the desktop, but it’s unusable.
P.S.: Re-syncing the full set of databases is a real pain for me and no good solution. Takes at least 30-45 minutes because of the number and size of the documents.
