Do web snapshots count toward 100 MB free storage?

Karl Myer
At Zotero Support > Documentation > Start > File Sync, it says: "Zotero File Storage is a cloud-based storage solution for PDFs, images, web snapshots, and any other files attached to your Zotero personal and group libraries."

My question is about "web snapshots." Are these the snapshots that you view when you press the "View Snapshot" button in the right Zotero column after having clicked on an Item from the center column that you originally brought into Zotero by pressing "Create New Item From Current Page"?

Are these web snapshots, then, counted in the 100 MB of free storage each user is given?

There is at least one other place in the Documentation where, in the list of things included in the Zotero File Storage, web snapshots are not mentioned. It is at Start > Sync, where under the heading "File Syncing," it says: "You can use Zotero File Storage or use your own existing WebDAV account to back up and update any files you have added to your library: PDFs, audio, video, images, etc."

No mention of web snapshots here.
  • dstillman
    Are these the snapshots that you view when you press the "View Snapshot" button in the right Zotero column after having clicked on an Item from the center column that you originally brought into Zotero by pressing "Create New Item From Current Page"
    Yes.
    Are these web snapshots, then, counted in the 100 MB of free storage each user is given?
    Yes.
  • Karl Myer
    Indeed. I certainly don't need to keep all the page snapshots, as long as I can get back to the actual webpage with the link provided in the main Item's page info. I would then only keep the snapshots I would like to have indexed, I would guess.

    I tried right clicking on an actual snapshot of a page and choosing "View Page Info", then choosing "Media" from the resulting box, but then down at "Size" it says "Unknown - Not cached".

    I went through my Library and deleted 6 or 7 of the snapshots -- the attachment in the center column of Zotero under the main Item, with the snapshot icon -- but kept the main entry with its page info. My Storage use before doing this was 16.7 MB, and after deleting the 6 or 7 snapshots it dropped to 14.9, but only after empying my Trash. It stayed at 16.7 as long as the items were still in the Trash.

    Wow! There I deleted another snapshot of a page with probably over 100 black and white pictures of old New York and my Storage usage dropped to 1.7MB.

    Is there a quick way to know the size of a snapshot, in terms of the amount of the 100MB memory it will occupy? I guess it's a good idea to delete the snapshot right away when you "Create New Item From Current Page" if you're not going to absolutely have to have it Indexed, and do not need an archive copy, in the sense that you need a record of the way the webpage appeared on that particular day.
  • dstillman
    You can turn off automatic snapshots from the General pane of the prefs or you can Shift-click on Create New Item from Current Page to do the opposite of the pref.
    Is there a quick way to know the size of a snapshot, in terms of the amount of the 100MB memory it will occupy?
    Show File, go up a directory and select the parent directory, Get Info/Properties on the parent. Then subtract some because they're stored compressed.
  • Karl Myer
    And, I know one of my attached files is a 1.6 MB Word document, so that explains more than 90% of the remainder of the 1.7 MB Zotero says I am using. Good to know.
  • Karl Myer
    Dan Stillman writes: Show File, go up a directory and select the parent directory, Get Info/Properties on the parent. Then subtract some because they're stored compressed.

    Thanks. I just did that on a shapshot of this page. It's 574 KB, as I remember. When you say, "Then subtract some because they're stored compressed," I'm assuming you mean on the Zotero File Storage they're stored compressed.

    Just this minute I did the "Show File" thing for my 1.6 MB Word document which I know, from before I was storing it on Zotero, that it is 1.6 MB. Doing the "Show File" on Zotero shows it as 1.59 MB. So it must be on the Zotero File Storage that it's compressed and it is its regular uncompressed size on the Firefox profile file.

    If that's the case, what is your estimate of how large a 1.6MB Word document would actually be on Zotero File Storage?
  • Karl Myer
    When I experiment with this 1.6 MB Word document, I find that when I delete it from Zotero, my Zotero File Storage usage is 0.3% of my allowed 100 MB. Then, when I bring it back into Zotero as an attachment, my Zotero File Storage usage is 1.9%.

    The file is 1.59 MB whether I get its size by clicking on Properties while it's on my Desktop, or when I click on Show File when it's in Zotero. And since my Zotero File Storage usage varies up and down by 1.6 MB when I move it into and out of Zotero, this seems to indicate that Word documents are not compressed in Zotero File Storage. Is that true?
  • dstillman
    Attachments with single files (PDFs, word documents, images) aren't compressed in Zotero File Storage. Attachments with multiple files (web page snapshots) are.

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