As a PhD student i’m very interested in DevonThink as my personal knowledge base. I’ve only got one question i’d like to see answered before i buy this app.
Where are the files in the database stored? Is it inside the databases i find in application support for Devonthink? What happens if Devonthink for some reason doesn’t work on my system (corrupted database or something) and i want to recover my data?
It’s just that i’d feel a lot more relaxed about using this app, if i knew that everything i save just becomes another file in a certain folder on my hard disk.
it is certainly a good idea to use DT for your thesis, and I recommend you to upgrade tp DT Pro as soon as it is out.
Don’t worry about your files. You can set all imports so, that certain original files (media like PDFs, movies, illustrations and all files DT cannot read) are stored either at their original place on disk or in a folder inside the Database. You can access it from the finder, in the Pro version it is inside a package. There is a great feature (at least in the upcoming version) that stops backups as soon as the original DB is corrupt, so you will not backup a well working DB with corrupt files.
Other files DT can read are stored inside the Database, which consists of 10 quite large files. If you back up your database with the backup command - an easy and very quick process - you have an exact copy of these folders. So, if your Database is corrupt, you can easily change to the backup and work on without problems.
And there is another feature that you might like: You can export the whole database as files and folders, then you have the whole database as documents which you can access from the Finder or other apps. When you feel your DB has reached a certain degree of completeness, you can export an feel relieved.