Should I Worry?

DEVONthink
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Hi

I recently made the shift from Evernote who I’d been with for about 10 years I guess, quite a wrench but I felt DEVONthink offered clear benefits. I’ve been pleased so far that I made the jump and I’ve now deleted Evernote completely.

Browsing around I found this post on Reddit:

Don’t trust Devonthink, I’m afraid to say. I’ve been using Devinthink Pro Office for eight years. But this week I discovered that MANY of my files turned into zero byte corrupt files. I lost more than 2,000 files, among PDFs, web archives and txts. Half of them had been imported into DT and the other half was only indexed. And this happened a while ago, it seems, because my DT backups at Backblaze presented the same problems. So, it is with a heavy heart that I say that I can no longer recommend, use and especially trust DEVONthink with my files. I’m on the market for another app, but for a while I’m back to Finder, Dropbox and tags.

This alarmed me somewhat and I was wondering if anyone has had any kind of similar experience or if there are any ideas why it might have happened, so that I can avoid something similar.

Many thanks,

Q

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DEVONthink Pro Office 2.x is quite outdated, version 3 was released in 2019 and version 4 in 2025. Both DEVONthink 3 and DEVONthink 4 automatically check for empty files too, e.g. via File > Verify & Repair Database but also while synchronizing or when receiving filesystem events for indexed or externally edited documents.

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A couple things:

  1. Don’t trust Reddit. It’s pretty much the stupidest place on the internet and is full of retards like that guy.
  2. I’ve been using DT from the beginning and have never experienced any issue like the one described. I suspect it’s operator error.
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Reddit? Least reliable place to find serious information.

I’ve been using DT for 18 years now. I am religious about making backups, multiple, to different locations, always following what the good folks at DT recommend. I always verify my databases, and often export database archives. I got maybe two dozen active databases, and another 2 dozen that are not actively used - reason: I prefer not to have databases that are very large. And I use DT for EVERYTHING. We’re talking maybe 1 TB. Images, PDF, Apple Numbers, Excel, markdown, html, rtf, txt, etc.

Have I lost data in 18 years? Yes, a bit, always because I made some silly mistake. I haven’t lost anything in at least 10 years.

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No. I am regularly checking this forum, for many years, just to get this question answered. For all those years, the impression is that there is nothing to worry about. Most reassuring is that if I (usually not DT) has a problem, there are several very kind users and the DT team here to help. Sadly I am too incompetent to help others, so I am just watching this space.

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That’s what I also suspected would be the case :+1:

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Other things not to trust include NASA’s science which says Earth isn’t flat.

Seriously, you have to wonder what else was going on. Was his database stored on a cloud service? That is unworkable because a Devonthink database isn’t one atomic thing, it’s separate files for every document plus Devonthink’s working requirements. Syncing won’t copy everything at the same time.

I think archive backups and checking file signatures are always good things, but I’m paranoid. I even looked for myself on that Earth question.

Yes, it’s true. Earth is not flat.

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Also note, there are people who have experienced issues but never asked for assistance on our forums nor opened a support ticket with us then posted on Reddit or other fora our software is broken, we are incompetent, etc. But as a production manager told me many years ago, “I’m not responsible for issues I’m not told about.” :slight_smile:

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In my experience working with software, Jim, I came to believe that those users who reach out to the developers (and have a bit of patience) are ultimately mostly able to resolve the issues, find workarounds or alternatives.

And you are 100% right. There are always users who will not reach out to developers, won’t read the manual or instructions, won’t participate in forums and ask (but not lashing out) questions - and then will post the most horrific things in Reddit and other places.

For @QFieldBoden who asked very nicely (and honestly - bravo!) - AND EVERYONE ELSE READING THIS WHO HASN’T BEEN HERE FREQUENTLY(caps are intentional, not for shouting but to call to attention)- you have one of the very best user forums ever in here. And a company team that is beyond and above in terms of giving feedback, help, reading support tickets, etc.

There are people far smarter and more capable than me here (some of them in this thread) - and I learn from them all the time. They will help ALWAYS.

My call to fame is I’m a DEVONthink veteran, having used it much longer than most. It has been my main application for 18 years, and the reason I’m on a Mac. My entire life revolves around it. That means I came to trust it, the company, the team, the forum members. By profession (retired now) I was a User Experience Designer, working for big and small companies. I worked closely with developers, support and QA people. And with Users. I know the drill. When things don’t work as I expected, or would like to, I know how hard it can be for developers sometimes to fix, change, etc.

But here, with DEVONthink, what you get is the following: Jim, Christian, others, always telling you what they probably will NOT do, and what they might do when they have the resources. They are super transparent and correct. They will tell you to read the documentation (superb), and they, and the forum members, will help - especially when you are as kind as everyone else tends to be here.

OK. this was a long one :grinning_face:

Mike

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No, you shouldn’t be worried.

The red flag in his topic is that he takes himself as a reference, is quite specific about why you shouldn’t trust or use DEVONthink, and then ends his post with a request for assistance to prevent such a problem.

The post also doesn’t provide any specifics about his setup. There are many ways his problem could have occurred, none of which can be attributed to a single tool. Seeing Dropbox mentioned, and knowing how people can mess things up when they think they’re IT experts, I suspect syncing via Dropbox might have played a part in all of this.

Only thing I would “worry” about is the quality of your backups. :wink:

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Many people now seem to reflexively take their issues to social media. I could hypothesize the “why” for about an hour but I see the same in my world serving the public in hospitality.

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It’s a strange (and newish) phenomenon, for sure.

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I’ll play devil’s advocate and say, yes, you should be at least a little worried. Not because DEVONthink is uniquely fragile, but because everything is fragile.

As Ned Stark would remind us, “Winter is coming.” More accurately, disaster (winter) can come at any moment, usually when you have something due and no time for tech drama. That applies to Evernote (I’ve been with it since the early days), DEVONthink (same), and any other app you decide to trust with your external brain.

The good news is that DEVONthink lives on your computer. That changes the stakes. If you’re doing daily backups, and you really should be (Jim and others have explained this well on the forums), then even a catastrophic glitch becomes an inconvenience rather than a crisis. Over the years I’ve had external drives fail, computers fail, iPads fail, the usual parade of modern electronics giving up the ghost. But with a solid backup routine, I’ve been able to keep working with minimal interruption. Last year was particularly unkind, a MacBook Pro and an iPhone both died on me without much warning, but in both cases the actual damage to my work was measured in minutes, not days.

So even if that Reddit post is accurate, it looks like a rare event, and in practical terms it shouldn’t matter much if your backups are in order. I’ve found DEVONthink remarkably stable and well supported throughout my professional career, but I still try to work as if the app could go sideways tomorrow. That’s the “prepare for the worst” part. The “hope for the best” part is that, so far, I’ve gotten to open it each morning and see the same reassuring screen, as if nothing in the world ever breaks. Which, of course, is exactly why we back up.

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I remember the 0byte thing, I had problems like that as well, having some files suddenly turn into 0bytes with all content gone. Searching here in the forum I found where that problem was acknowledged by Devontechnologies:

That being said, that bug was fixed and I have never had any issues like that since then. Backups are your friend.

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Indeed and that was five years and a major version ago :slight_smile:

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