Zotero Backup files are taking up a lot of space!

miladm
I see a lot of .sqlite-journal and .bak files stored in my Zotero directory. They are taking up a huge amount of my hard disk space and it looks like a lot of these files go back to a long time ago. I was wondering what these files are and if it is okay for me to mannually remove these files from the Zotero directory.

Also, It would be great if you guys could include a feature that can automatically clean/get rid of old files in the database.

Thank you!
  • ajlyon
    Your 'zotero' directory will likely contain several other files. These can include zotero.sqlite.bak (an automatic backup of zotero.sqlite, which is updated when you quit Firefox and the existing zotero.sqlite.bak file hasn't been updated in the last 12 hours) and zotero.sqlite.[number].bak files (automatic backups of zotero.sqlite that are created during certain updates to the Zotero extension).
    http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data

    The net size is unlikely to be huge relative to modern hard drive capacities, but you can still safely delete the older .bak files, with Firefox closed, if you are confident that those previous Zotero updates went smoothly. For updates that were years ago, that's pretty much guaranteed.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited March 10, 2011
    It would be great if you guys could include a feature that can automatically clean/get rid of old files in the database.
    Such a feature exists. You should see only extensions.zotero.backup.numBackups recent backups and I believe only one upgrade backup.
  • adamsmith
    to access extensions.zotero.backup.numBackups see here
    http://www.zotero.org/support/hidden_prefs
    the default is 2

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