storage folder seems too big

mnicholls

Hi,
I have 2813 items saved in Zotero. But there are 5457 folders in the storage folder containing 198418 files for a total of 5.82 GBs. Is this normal? Furthermore some of these folders and don't seem to correspond with anything in my library. Backup takes forever and I would like to get rid of any unnecessary files/folders. Has anyone else noticed this issue?
Micah

adamsmith

The two first things to check:
1. Have you emptied your Zotero trash?
2. Make sure to count all items & attachments: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/item_count
and include any groups you may belong to.

mnicholls

Thanks. The all items and attachments including group libraries come to 17914. The trash did not contain much. Over half of this comes from group libraries. Does this seem reasonable to you to have 198418 files?

adamsmith

some webpages have ridiculous amounts of files. Zotero has discussed switching to a more efficient system of archiving webpages, but until then, I'm afraid it does.

mnicholls

Ok. Thanks for the swift response.

liam.mchugh.russell

I have a similar issue. I've just switched over my file-sync to Box (I hope temporarily; I am happy to pay the $20 a year for 2 gigs, but...).

My Box account zotero WebDAV folder has 4104 files (zipped folders), totalling almost exactly 1.5 gigabytes; the storage folder in my zotero profile is 2098 folders, totalling 2.6 gigabytes. My zotero library has 3091 top-level items, 5536 items total. Is this just a matter of compression? Does this mean that if I paid for 2 gigs of Zotero file storage, I would be under the limit?

adamsmith

data are zipped online, yes, so I'd guess the difference is, indeed, the compression, but I don't want to promise you'll be under 2GB on Zotero. Also, note that any groups you own would be in the Zotero storage folder, count towards your storage, but not show up in WebDAV.