Does anyone actually have SYNC working well between DT and DTTG. I have been trying for years and have never had a satisfactory solution. I was hopeful for the new cloudkit but after attempting to sync for over a week it simply never worked. So, back to Bonjour. Much faster but again it only actually works about 10% of the time and when it does it rarely finishes.
I have a big DT database (100GB) but after the initial transfer to the ipad, the sync should work fairly quickly. No such luck. Just a log full of errors even though I am tethered directly the computer via USB-C. Errors include time-out, database not available on server, syncsocket errors and whatnot.
Who has this working or is “hit and miss and hope for the best” the only real option here?
Bonjour works seamlessly all the time for me, and always has (Mac, iPad, iPhone, all via WLAN). CloudMe works too, albeit with regular 502-errors in the logs (bad gateway, IIRC; the issue seems to come to a spontaneous resolution each time though).
Bonjour and WebDAV to local NAS (Synology) working well. Dropbox external location working routinely. Have tested iCloud, CloudKit, and WebDAV with a 3rd Party (FastMail) and works well far as I can tell but I do not keep them running routinely as there is no purpose.
Bonjour is highly unreliable. i am just trying to set it up again on my ios devices but no luck.
cloudme is the only reliable sync location i have found; i am testing cloudkit now but it choked after a few hours. cloudme still has plenty of errors but at least the data gets synced. problem with the error handling in DTTG and DT is that it is pretty useless. giving me a sync error from 2 days ago while the app has synced 389 times in the meantime is useless. on the other hand i get no errors and the location shows having synced 2 minutes ago, yet the entire database is empty. with DT(TG) you never know what the sync status is, and the ui just makes the situation much worse.
Dropbox sync has been working fine for me for years. (DTTG2) I’m not syncing 100 GB, though, and have trouble thinking of a situation where I would need to: my largest database is only about 3 GB, and I don’t need to take it with me.
With that big a database, you might look at things like the amount of free space on the device.
So last night in an effort to get this going, I set up a new database and moved a lot of files that weren’t needed on the iPad. So my database is now about 40GB and 37,000 instead of 100+. It didn’t help. I also dealt with all the “pending” files. That didn’t help either. Both sync methods I am trying, bonjour and iCloud kit simply get stuck. There is no log on the iPad so no idea what is getting stuck.
Now, that having been said, it looks like MOST of my files are there on the iPad. I think, as someone mentioned that the big issue is with error handling. It almost seems like if there is an error, then the progress indicator stops but the data sync keeps going. There is no way to know if it’s actually “done” and the spinning progress indicator just goes for ever.
I sync around 50 GB via CloudKit to DTTG 3.
Apart from the inital upload from Mac, which took a day or two because of the iCloud server-side throttling, I’ve seen no issues. CloudKit has been running blazingly fast after that initial upload and sync between devices is much faster than in the past with iCloud Legacy.
iMac, iPad and iPhone: Bonjour sync since several years - never had problems (iMac is the server). Used WebDAV to NAS before but stopped it because Bonjour syncs so good.
3 DBs with 10 GB in total.
Errors are shown by a little triangle on the cloud symbol in DTTG. Tapping on the cloud symbol then brings up the error log. Long-pressing the cloud symbol shows the sync(s) in progress.
Which spinning progress indicator? Neither DT3 nor DTTG3 show a spinning progress indicator on my devices. Again, you can see whether a sync is in progress by long-pressing the cloud symbol in DTTG.
The long press shows what’s going on, but there is no error reporting that shows problematic files like the LOG window in DT3. I see things like “database busy” or “timed out” but not XYZ cannot be found.
The spinning indicator is when I open the preferences in DT3 and go to the sync tab.
I have reduced the database size big time (down to 33GB now) and the sync seems to be working now. Was the database too big or were there bad files that are now moved to a non-syncing database? I don’t know but I’ll keep looking for clues.
Thanks for the clarification Hey, is there any chance your USB cable is dodgy? I honestly can’t remember whether there are any active components in those USB-C plugs - do they get warm?
Back in the day of DT1 the use of multiple databases was not as seamless and simple as it is now in DT3 so way back then, I built a single database and that was it. I have been adding to it for 15-20 years and literally dumping everything in there. I am a film producer so every project is in there lol. Do I need everything on the iPad? No, but that’s what selective sync is for. Regardless, the multiple database option is now a solid one and I seem to have BONJOUR syncing now, basically in real time.
Also, for anyone following this conversation, after a major move of groups from one database to another, the size of my database IN FINDER grew from 100GB to 130GB. This is after moving about 75GB OUT. I did an optimize and archive and that 130GB went down to 36GB.
I too had troubles syncing about 65Gb. With the latest versions of DTTG and DT Pro my syncs are quick and, so far reliable.
I sync my smaller databases to iCloud so that they’re always up to date (daily reading and Inbox). This has improved so much with the latest releases.
I then use Wedav to a local sever for the big databases. This keeps my iPad, laptop and desktop in Sync. After the initial upload the sync take seconds.
Hope that helps.
Thank you for posting. I have had sync problems between DT and DTTG forever. The DevonThink help people are nice, but they are clueless as to why all my databases don’t sync (some time out). After many, many tries and a couple of years, I have given up.
Hey, is there any chance your USB cable is dodgy? I honestly can’t remember whether there are any active components in those USB-C plugs - do they get warm?