moving database to new hard drive

lakelander

Hi All,

More a clumsy upgrade on my part than a genuine trouble shooting opportunity for the wizard zotero developers among us, but I hope someone will be able to give me a database recovery tip. Today I had a new hard drive installed by IT staff at work, alongside the existing one. The new one became drive c: (an XP user) and all the old stuff is now on d: A long story why. Bottom line - how do I get my zotero library into the newly installed version of firefox on c: ? (i.e the new c: not the old c:... good grief.) I've not installed the zotero add-in to the new firefox yet, out of fear of making things yet more difficult.

At a push I can get the IT chaps back and make d: briefly be c: again apparently, and I will if I have to, but I'd rather not if there is a work around (and, no, of course I've no backup or anything.. that's what this new disk is about, you see... sigh...)

Rintze

Unless you have linked files to items in your library, I don't think you'll encounter any problems by just copying your Zotero data directory from d: to your new c:.

Just first find your Zotero data directory and back it up. Then install Zotero in Firefox, locate the new Zotero data directory, close Firefox, and replace the contents of the new Zotero data directory with those of the old one.

Info on locating your Zotero data:
http://www.zotero.org/support/troubleshooting_zotero_data#locating_your_zotero_library

lakelander

Thanks Rintze

I tried just copying over the old ./storage directory and that didn't seem to work, but I copied over my whole firefox profile directory from the old one to the new one and this did the trick. It also meant I got all my old bookmarks and such like too.

Rintze

The storage directory only contains the files that are saved separately (PDFs, webpages that are saved as snapshots). The info about all the items in your Zotero library is however stored in the Zotero database (the zotero.sqlite file in the zotero directory), so you have to copy that file as well. But copying a whole Firefox profile also works.