Data Directory Location keeps reverting back to firefox profile directory

Michael Schmidberger
Dear Zotero community,

I use Zotero on my home and office computer and I have thus installed my "Base directory" and "Data Directory Location" onto a USB Harddrive (F:\), which I keep transporting back and forth between the two computers.

In Zotero Preferences -> Advanced -> Files and folders

I configured:

Base directory: F:\biblio\ZoteroDB_Speicherort

Data Directory Location: Custom -> F:\biblio\ZoteroDB_Speicherort\zotero

This usually works fine, but sometimes those two directories just revert back to "firefox profile directory", which is their default setting.

This is really annoying and a real problem as all references I then add or edit are not saved to my USB HDD and thus I loose them/cannot work with them.

It might be caused as sometimes Firefox is running while the harddisk is not recognized properly or simply not present. Could you tell Zotero not to simply revert back, but instead display a simple error?

I use Zotero 4.0.12 for Windows 7 x64 (Firefox addon).

Thanks a lot!

Michael

Thanks a lot in advance
  • adamsmith
    May I ask why you have the base directory configured? This looks like you may be misunderstanding what that is for - it only applies to linked attachments.

    Dan would have to say about the feasibility/desirability of producing an error - the current behavior (i.e. reverting to default when the target directory doesn't exist) does strike me as more stable for various contingencies, though, so I'm not sure we'd want to change that.
  • Michael Schmidberger
    Dear adamsmith,

    thanks for your quick reply.

    I have both attachments that zotero autocreates in the weird "random-folder-name"-structure and attachments that I sort by hand and then link by hand.

    I want all these to be combined in one place for two reasons:

    First of all for backup reasons such that everything is in one folder and I don't need to worry about loosing papers.

    Secondly I want everything to be on my USB HDD not the (internal) local HDD which has the firefox directory as I cannot transport it.

    If there is an easier way to achieve this (all references being save on my USB HDD) then please let me know. Otherwise, I think what I am suggesting is a bugfix rather than a feature.

    I also need the very *.pdf files, as I regularly mark them and add notes, which I also want to be saved on my USB HDD, obviously (acutally the marks are more important than the papers themselves as the papers can easily be re-downloaded from the web - the marks can't).

    Thanks a lot,

    Michael
  • adamsmith
    The base directory makes sense then.

    I disagree that this is as clear-cut as a bugfix, though. Since Zotero needs a data directory to run (that's e.g. where the translators are stored, so it needs it even when you don't open it) it can either throw an error when the specified directory doesn't exist, or it can switch back to default. There is certainly merit in remaining functional.

    While you're welcome to use Zotero any way you want - it's free software in any sense - putting the data directory on an external HDD that's frequently unavailable certainly isn't the way it's intended to be used, so I don't think you can expect Zotero to make design decisions based on that.
  • Michael Schmidberger
    Hmm fair enough.

    Do you have any ideas how I could solve my problems then?

    I have about 45 GB of references, including scientific papers, full books and (scientific) videos. This exceeds any online or cloud-based capabilites. This is why I started using the external HDD in the first place.

    A simple "do not revert back automatically" tickbox in the data directories menu could solve my problems, but maybe you have other ideas.

    Thanks
  • dstillman
    If Zotero doesn't find the data directory, it should actually just show an error icon, and clicking that should pop up a dialog letting you reset the data directory. That's working for me (on OS X with a local folder, at least—I didn't try an external drive on Windows, though I don't think it should be different). Can you reliably reproduce this? If not, you'll need to figure out when exactly this is happening before we can do anything about it.

    It's still not totally clear to me what you're reporting, though. The base directory doesn't change where anything is saved, and the data directory location doesn't affect whether things are saved within the Zotero data directory or linked. For something not to be saved into the random-string directories, you need to link it (manually or with ZotFile). The data directory location setting just determines which data directory the file ends up in (and which database is used, of course, though if you're syncing data that wouldn't particularly matter).
    Base directory: F:\biblio\ZoteroDB_Speicherort

    Data Directory Location: Custom -> F:\biblio\ZoteroDB_Speicherort\zotero
    And where are your PDF files? Do you have PDFs in folders within 'biblio' other than 'ZoteroDB_Speicherort', correct? For what it's worth, I'm not sure we've tested having the data directory within the base directory. It might work fine, but I'd recommend moving the Zotero data directory elsewhere.
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