Because of my new found knowledge re: Tags across multiple databases, I’ve expanded my DT4 project from one to two phases.
Clean sheet Tagging revamp
My existing Tags are a collection of 10 years of randomness. I’m spending a weekend organizing my Tags with a logical and organized system of Nested Tags.
Database Consolidation
In the past, I’ve used multiple Databases to isolate any possible database corruptions/disasters. This way, if something went south, I was only working on 1/6 of my data rather than the whole enchalada. But because “Unify Tags” didn’t mean what I thought, I’m looking to consolidate these six databases into one. My question is how big is too big???
Here’s the makeup of the six databases.
Ref Library- 27,000 docs, 45 GB
OSHA Library- 1200 docs, 12 GB
Graphics Library- 621 images, 800MB
Exwit Library- 2700 docs, 21GB
Consulting Library- 1500 docs, 4GB
Crane Knowledgebase- 1800 docs, 11 GB
Total: 34,2K Docs, 621 images, 93.8GB
BTW, I running a M4 MacBook Air with with 32GB RAM and 2TB (252 GB available) drive on Sequoia and DT4.
Are you trying to consolidate just due to the tagging situation?
Also see the Getting Started > Building Your Database section in the built-in Help and manual .
Basically yes. I will combine the six files that I used in concert to write my papers. To date I’ve used DT for as a storage vehicle and my own brain as the retrieval engine. With DT4’s AI to aid in finding the appropriate reference docs/sections for my research and reports.
As noted in the documentation, the number of words and unique words is the important factor here. Having 32GB RAM definitely allows for more comfortably having a larger database. But DEVONthink can search across multiple databases. Even its built-in AI can make filing and related document suggestions across open databases.
It sounds as if your hard drive capacity is borderline at present - either you would need to put your DT4 databases on an external drive of some sort or (preferably) you would need to put other stuff on an external drive to make more room for your Devonthink data.
Currently I have 8 databases concurrently opened, plus Global Inbox. The 8 databases sums 700 GB including the files and the internal DT stuff. My biggest database is 235 GB. Second one is 133 GB. Total amount of files are around 40.000-50.000 files.
My devices are: iMac Intel with 24 GB of RAM, MacBook Pro M1 16 GB, MacStudio 36 GB, Mac mini 32 GB, most of them with a 2 TB disk (external or internal).
Based in my experience, performance with those massive amount of that is very good. Don’t expect real time search as you type, but even somewhat complex search queries takes less than 10 seconds. However, it adds a lot of memory pressure, more in the MacBook Pro but to me they are faster enough. Most important IMHO is disk speed. Except the Intel iMac, the others are Thunderbolt 4/5 with 5K-7K MBs disk speed.
Just started, DT with all of that loaded, only uses 5 GB of RAM, but as you search, it can easily go to 20-25 GB.
As a summary DT is a very good piece of software to deal with somewhat massive amounts of data. If you have enough disk space, you can join all your databases and test.