Sync and Linked files

DEVONthink Tips
1

Apologies if that has been asked before. I searched on ‘sync’ but did not find anything on this.

Generally am very happy with DTPO sync. I use this between desktop and laptop, using the direct mode (I think), where they are syncing off the master copy on the desktop over Wifi on the home network.

I recently added quite a few large files (WAV, PPTX and MOV) to DTPO but only as linked/indexed files, not embedded within the DTPO database itself. About 500MB of data on the desktop, which I don’t want on the laptop.

When doing the sync this morning, it took much longer than usual and the progress bar was clearly paused on these large files. The sync completed eventually. I checked and these large files are just linked to DTPO, not contained within it. And the media files were not copied over to the laptop (which is good and is what I would expect). But then why does the sync take so long?

Is DTPO scanning the content of the media files again to index the content? I would have thought that it would not need to do that.

2

Please verify this as indexed file should copy over on Sync as a link will not be established between two machines. Indexing is local and requires local copies to link to.

3

Yup, that is the first thing I thought of. And yes, only the link to the file is in within DTPO… that is, it is an Indexed file, not an Imported file.

Eventually, I had to abandon the sync. No files beyond that point were synced.

And, yes, just so I am clear - the Indexed file was on the desktop machine, the same machine as the copy of DTPO database that holds the Indexing link. Same drive etc, not a network drive.

Kinda odd, I thought, unless I am misunderstanding something basic here… and I have been using DTPO for quite a while and am usually used to the things like Indexed, Imported, etc.

I just fired up the two machines again and re-ran the sync. Seems stalled at the same point, with the progress bar 95% complete and a sub-heading of

‘Sending SBL workshop STE-000.wav; Sending Simulation July video 13’ (truncated)

so these are very large files, which would explain the stall, but since they are Indexed, not Imported files, why is the sync sending anything at all?

Ok, looking closer now. I am using ‘3 panes’ view. In the second column, i.e. the left side vertical pane, I see that the whole folder that contains these files has been Indexed (which I don’t usually do). When I select this folder, all the files are also Indexed. None of them are Imported. But is it somehow because the folder is indexed, rather than the individual files? (I usually just drag files over one at a time (Cmd-Alt-drag etc) so would that have messed things up?) As far as I can see, when I check the file locations with Show Info etc, they are indeed the originals in their own location, not copied versions into DTPO’s folder structure.

And, now after 15 mins, the sync has finally completed. The Imported files (in other folders) are now where they should be on the destination laptop copy. The Indexed folder is there in the laptop list of folders. But there are no contents within that folder on the laptop, which is what I would expect. So with that time taken, it looks like DTPO is somehow re-indexing the WAV and video files as part of the sync, but no data is actually sent to the laptop. I’m guessing just with the sequence of events - I have not done a process trace or anything fancy like that. (And I am not expecting index data or the like to appear on the laptop… so the end result is what I would expect… but a 15 min sync process is a bit of a pain.

Suggestions? Any log files I can send you that would help?