DB transfer trouble

wilkins5
I'm afraid I just lost data, but I thought I'd ask. Here's what happened.

I had to reinstall Vista on short notice so I copied a bunch of files to an external drive. I tried to locate my zotero database so I could export it to the external drive. I went to preferences, advanced, show data directory, and I saw:
zotero.sqlite
zoter.sqlite.bak
I didn't think that was what I was looking for, so I just copied the entire firefox directory from my harddrive to my external harddrive and hoped I'd be able to locate my zotero database later.

Now when I load up firefox portable on from my external drive, and load zotero, my data is nowhere to be found.

Any advice on how I might go about locating it? Or did I manage to lose everything? I'm running Vista. Sorry if I'm repeating a question. Thanks for any help
  • Tjowens
    It sounds like you deleted your data. Firefox saves personal information such as bookmarks, passwords, and user preferences in the profile which is stored in a separate location from the Firefox program files. The zotero.sqlite file you saw is the Zotero database. So if you no longer have that you no longer have your collection.
  • dstillman
    Did you copy your Firefox profile or your Firefox program directory in Program Files (or whatever it's called in Vista)? If you still have a copy of your entire original Firefox profile directory, and the Zotero data directory was set to the default location (a 'zotero' folder within the profile folder), you still have your data. If you only copied the program directory (which contains firefox.exe, for example), you probably don't.

    Firefox Portable wouldn't use the copied folder just because it was on the same external drive—it has its own internal profile. Go into the Firefox directory you copied to the external drive and look for a 'zotero' folder. If you see a zotero.sqlite file, that's your original database. In your new copy of Firefox (Portable or on your main hard drive), use Show Data Directory to open the active 'zotero' directory, close Firefox, and copy the original zotero.sqlite file and the accompanying 'storage' directory into there, overwriting the zotero.sqlite file and 'storage' directory that's there. (You might want to make backup copies first in case you get this backwards). After you restart that copy of Firefox, you should see your data.

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