Upgrade StorageEverything is slow.
Hello.
My problem is that Zotero has become incredibly slow. This appears to be for entering new entries, downloading bibliographic info from websites, and searching for entries. Often, just entering a new article will freeze Firefox for several minutes (as in, I can go to the bathroom and come back before it is done with a search).
It's always been a bit bad, but it is getting worse. I suspect part of the problem is that my database is rather large: 8,434 items to date. I'm running Firefox 16 on a laptop that's under 3 years old & that has 4 gig of RAM.
I fear I'm not as knowledgeable as I would like. I'll happily give whatever info people need to help me with this, though if it's not immediately obvious I may request you tell me how to find the information you request.
I realize that there are some threads about specific things being slow, but since my issues seems to be rather universal, I started a new discussion. If this was a mistake, I apologize for that as well.
My problem is that Zotero has become incredibly slow. This appears to be for entering new entries, downloading bibliographic info from websites, and searching for entries. Often, just entering a new article will freeze Firefox for several minutes (as in, I can go to the bathroom and come back before it is done with a search).
It's always been a bit bad, but it is getting worse. I suspect part of the problem is that my database is rather large: 8,434 items to date. I'm running Firefox 16 on a laptop that's under 3 years old & that has 4 gig of RAM.
I fear I'm not as knowledgeable as I would like. I'll happily give whatever info people need to help me with this, though if it's not immediately obvious I may request you tell me how to find the information you request.
I realize that there are some threads about specific things being slow, but since my issues seems to be rather universal, I started a new discussion. If this was a mistake, I apologize for that as well.
This discussion has been closed.
Have you emptied your trash?
How big is your full-text index, in the Search pane of the Zotero preferences?
There are 3 items in the trash at the moment.
Max characters to index per file: 500,000
Index stats
Index: 36
Partial: 0
Unindexed: 85
Words: 7,021
At any rate, my Debug IS is D1272019944
Is your Zotero data directory stored in the default location, or have you moved it elsewhere?
Based on your question, I take this isn't a good idea.
From your debug output, it looks like you're in a view with parent items expanded—a saved search, maybe? Is it faster just in the library root with all parent items collapsed?
I ran a debug: D1173365325
During the debug test, I did a quick search for an authors last name, scrolled to a record, and edited the name. After finishing the edits and hitting enter Zotero locked up for 2 minutes. I can't tell you have annoying this is. All I wanted to do is add a period to the end of the author's initials and it took 2 minutes. Please fix this.
I don't think it matters, but you ask others with sluggish issues for the index info:
Max characters: 500000
Max pages: 400
Indexed: 1091
Partial: 53
Unindexed: 815
Words: 348036
I store my library on a second internal drive, not the default C:users.
My workaround currently is to use the Chrome connector to save sources to my library. That way I can at least go on browsing while Zotero catches up and does the fulltext indexing.
Sorry for the delay.
I have resorted to hitting the cancel search button before editing citations. Doing this fixes the slow-down, but it is clunky when I need to, say, standardize all the occurrences of an author's name for every article they are an author (so I don't have a problem with the in-text citations using the Work link [see my other post]). The slow down is apparent only while I have text in the search box.
Searches have always been relatively quick. Although, sometimes when I type something into the search box there will be a delay in the typing, but it's not too long.
Mark - I have been wondering if it has to do with the indexing. I'd rather not turn that feature off, because, like you said, it is very handy. However, if the problem doesn't get resolved, I may need to only use the Windows indexing and not rely on the Zotero full-text indexing.
We'll see if we can figure out why you're seeing such a delay when making edits with a search open. Worst-case scenario, I would expect the delay after editing to be equivalent to a single fresh search. A delay of two minutes definitely seems to indicate a problem.
I didn't know to look for the "Title, Creator, Year" option. Searching using that option appears to fix the editing slow-down issue. When I go back to the "everything" option it takes forever to register the edit, whereas, when I switch to the "Title, Creator, Year" option editing is no problem.
Cheers
http://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output
(that said, Zotero basically can't affect the speed for Chrome, so there's a good change something else is going on).