Sync duplicates entire database

the file was deleted on the macbook though, how did it surface again?

problem is that the problem makes no sense. hence i donā€™t know what the problem is and i donā€™t know what the solution is. i can make it work with the backup temporarily until i do the same mistake again and i have old already deleted files in my db.

without knowing what caused it i cannot avoid or solve it

Thanks, I understand your feedback.

The assumption is that the problem was caused by an unfortunate combination of switching to a new sync store without first having synced both devices via the previously utilised sync store, if I understand it correctly (@BLUEFROG may want to weigh in if I have misunderstood). If that is so, then the problem is easily avoided for the future: donā€™t do that :slight_smile: Iā€™ve made it a habit to regularly sync my devices, even if one of them is not in use. That way, I have an additional working copy of my databases on an additional device.

Does my feedback help you? I actually want you to be able to get back to enjoying DEVONthink - itā€™s a pain when things go wrong, and you, like the rest of us, probably have other things on your mind too. I think it may be worth accepting a slightly superficial explanation of what happened in this case, rather than performing a full post mortem (i.e. if drinking Zibabido kills you instantly, donā€™t inject Zibabido; it might be fascinating to know exactly how it kills you, but itā€™s initially more important to know that is does; and yes, somebody probably should find out how it does it, but we donā€™t all need to know).

yes and no, i do appreach your help and feedback.
the thing is, i have this problem often. i use my macbook seldomly (compared to the ios devices and imac) and i seem to get old files every single time i turn on the macbook, even if the sync store hasnā€™t changed (happened with icloud, dropbox and cloudme), which basically never changes.
To this day i do not know how i can actually avoid it, it is just this time where it is a rather massive change, normally it is ā€˜justā€™ a few files and groups. At least to my knowledge because i donā€™t know how to check for such ā€˜problematicā€™ files

edit: thinking about it, if the old file was still in the database and sync server, that is a security issue. the data shouldnā€™t have been there anymore as it has now leaked. if i delete a file i need it gone.

The database on the MacBook was outdated according to your description, therefore contained files which were already deleted on other computers/devices.

Then you tried to synchronize this outdated database with the latest one using a new sync store, meaning that thereā€™s no sync history and the databases get merged initially.

Basically this means that everything that is not yet in the local database but in the remote database will be added to the local database and vice versa.

To avoid this issue in case of such heavily outdated databases and switching sync stores at the same time there are several possibilities:

  1. Delete the outdated database and just import the latest one from the sync store
  2. Copy the latest one directly to the computer
  3. Synchronize the database first using the old sync location before switching sync stores

No, the macbook did the grunt work. i reorganised the db in august 2020 on it, the imac wasnā€™t in my possession at the time. when i got the imac, i manually copied the databases over via an external hard drive and use cloudme to sync going forward

i cleaned the sync and tried to start syncing again. it says that one of my databases failed verification. i tried to repair it but says ā€˜1 error leftā€™ and the repair failedā€¦

And then after the repair (you arenā€™t specific about which machine that on), you left it that way? I canā€™t understand why at that point you did not rebuild or at least do something along the line as suggested above (numerous times).

You have the attention of the DEVONthink developers @cgrunenberg. Their advice is sound. You would be well served to respect it and them.

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Was anything logged to Window > Log?

This is another database that i havenā€™t touched. it is not the duplicated database. this is a problem now popping up with the initial sync.

edit: and to be clear, this is the result of following @cgrunenberg and @BLUEFROG 's advice

yes, which is what prompted me to repair.

File > Verify & Repair Databaseā€¦ will log more details.

claims a file is empty

i removed the file and the error about verficiation is gone it seems

What kind of file? The next release will improve this verification, it will be less strict.

it was a PDF+text

and also a shoutout to @Blanc for his excellent advice in this thread: https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/backup-strategies/

because of the thread I implemented a very similar backup strategy with carbon copy cloner and was able to circumvent the ā€¦ issue, saving me tens of hours of maintance work on DT.

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