I’m considering purchasing DEVONThink Pro, particularly because I have some very large (+10GB) email archives going back over 15 years.
The archives themselves are stored on DVDs, and my G4 Powerbook has only a 100GB drive. It is impractical to store all my email on my harddrive, nevermind all the other information I’d like to use with DT.
Can DT handle removable storage? Can DT do fuzzy searches, etc., when storage is offline?
Oh, yes: can DT import email from Mozilla Thunderbird?
TIA!
Kirk
If you want to import the email with the formatting intact you’ll need DEVONthink Pro Office.
The process converts the email into RTF and imports these as files into the database. A database can be stored anywhere, but it needs to be open in order to use it. Also, the “index” of a database is memory based, so it’s not practical to have a 10GB email archival database because you’ll probably run out of RAM (it depends on many factors but I think it is pushing the limits). And you cannot search it when the database is on an unmounted volume.
Mozilla Thunderbird imports are supported.
Thanks for the response. This is encouraging.
Okay, I’m not surprised about the RAM limits. And it’s easy to have more than one email database, based on, say, date. More recent stuff is more relevant anyway, in my situation.
Can the databases be accessed remotely? Could the database be located on network storage and accessed either via nfs, and/or VPN or even via http from a location outside the local network and firewall?
Kirk
There is a server option for this version as well. You can query your open database through a browser.
I’d say download the demo and play with it, all these features are enabled (albeit with a limitation the the amount of email that you can import on a daily basis) for 150 hours of use. But at least it will give you an idea how you could deploy it for your particular situation.