DEVONthink Pro databases are technically packages, folders that appear like a single file. When you simply copy them to another volume as a backup, the Finder always copies the whole thing. And so even do some backup applications, even though only parts of the database have changed. Try ChronoSync. It has the option to treat packages like files which allows it to peer inside the packages and only update the files that have actually changed. Command line fans will want to have a look at rsync (part of Mac OS X,) which intelligently copies only those parts of one or more folders that need to get updated.

DEVONthink Pro Office power user b.3 has discovered a nice way of searching his database directly from Launchbar. He uses the embedded web server and directly searches the database by passing a pre-constructed URL. See his posting in our user forum. Thank you for this power tip, b.3.

Sometimes, file permissions go bad and leave ‘locked’ or ‘used’ files behind. If this happens to your DEVONthink Pro database, the application will continue to claim that the database is in use. If you are savvy with file permissions, use either the Finder’s Info panel or the Terminal to correct them. Make sure to adjust the permissions of all files in the package. A trick that also seems to work in some cases is to duplicate the database in the Finder and open the copy instead.