Re uploading whole library after duplicating to another machine.

pasan

Hi, I have Zotero syncing between my home and work PCs with WebDAV for file sync. All good! However recently I work from another office so I copied my entire Zotero library to a USB stick and setup sync from the new machine. I expected Zotero to detect any new files and only sync those files but it started uploading my entire library!! Is it because file date stamps may have changed while copying? Anyway to sync the new copy of the Zotero library without re uploading all the files? Should I do a copy again but with maintaining file attributes?

dstillman

Maintaining file timestamps should avoid any reprocessing, but it might not actually be uploading anything—in theory it should just compare the file hashes with the hashes recorded on the server and then skip the identical files.

You could look at a network monitor to see if it was actually uploading anything, but you can also hover over the blue progress bar to see some status info. I'd guess that you'd see it rather quickly counting through all your files, much quicker than your actual upload speed.

pasan

Either way the process was awfully slow (i have close 2Gb attachments) and it was uploading some data. Problem was for each upload Zotero would create a new instance of it self so I couldn't count the cumulative data use using sysinternals TPCview which monitors network activity by process. It will be just easier to go home and recopy the whole folder with attributes preservation tonight. Thanks Dan!