Hi all, my 2015 iMac seems to have died on me, and I need to figure out whether I can recover my full DEVONthink database before wiping the hard drive.
I’m using DEVON to manage research for a book project. All of the folders in my database are indexed from dropbox. I can still currently see all of the files and associated metadata (tags, etc.) in DEVON to go.
All that suggests I should be able to import the databse to DEVONthink when I install it on a new machine (or re-install it on my iMac, when I get it working again). But when I tried doing this on my spouse’s Macbook just now, I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Nowhere in my indexed files or the Dropbox cloud sync folders DEVON creates do I see a single file that I would open as the database. All of the cloud sync folders are just seemingly endless folders and files with long strings of letters and numbers.
What am I missing here? I know I could reindex the folders to get them back in DEVON, but I don’t want to lose all of the tags I had put together in the database.
That’s because your database is not in Dropbox nor in the cloud. That’s not only unsafe, it’s impossible to work with a DEVONthink database in any cloud-synced location.
my 2015 iMac seems to have died on me, and I need to figure out whether I can recover my full DEVONthink database before wiping the hard drive.
How are you accessing the drive if the Mac died? Did you pull the drive and are accessing it externally? Or are you referring to a backup drive (which you hopefully have) ?
I installed a trial version of DEVONthink on my spouse’s macbook to see if I could bring up my database, but couldn’t figure it out, hence the question. I’m trying to decide between buying a new machine and wiping my iMac and trying to reinstall macOS to see if it comes back to life.
I do not have another backup of the database file, so I may be SOL here (it’s not a total loss, since I have all the actual files still). But if I am able to access it on DEVON to go, including all of my tags, etc. is there not a way to get that information back into DEVONthink on a new machine?
If using dropbox sync; the sync-store store is in the dropbox cloud and is available for use with the new Mac
Set up the new Mac and the local databases will be sync’d
Sorry to give you the bad news, but sync is not backup. And “indexed” files are not in DEVONthink. Do you have a backup of your system and files to restore from? If not, recovery will be more difficult and probabilistic.
Yes, but makes things more “probabilistic”, more complicated, assumes Dropbox files still available, and independent of DEVONthink. Takes care and concentration and with a good system backup would be simpler.
Thanks for the help. Once i realized i had named this sync “Dropbox” and the encryption key, it all imported into DT3 on a new macbook the way i hoped it would.
Fwiw, it was important to me when setting things up that i could access all of these files (mostly PDF and txt) independent of DEVONthink. It made it easier when saving thousands of research articles and primary source materials to do it that way. And, a couple hours of panic notwithstanding, worked fine. I was never at risk of losing the files themselves, or their organization within my folder structure, but would have been a pain to lose the tags and metadata I’ve added in devon.
That is a bad position to put yourself in if your data is important to you.
I’m glad to hear you have things working but I hope your next step is to get an external hard drive and work out a proper backup strategy.