Difference in storage size

kstovold · April 9, 2018

Good evening. I am wondering why the storage sizes of my local and cloud folder differ so greatly. The local folder is listed as "Size: 3.55 GB" and "Size on disk: 3.71 GB", yet on the website it's listed as "2043.5 MB" (2.0465 GB). I know the first two differ due to compression; no worries about that. It's the last number that concerns me. Is there some part of the file system that Zotero ignores? Or does a portion of screenshots not figure in?

I am trying to figure this out so that I know if I synchronise to another device with Zotero, or if I export to another citation manager, that I know I've gotten everything. Thanks!

bwiernik · April 9, 2018

Two things typically lead to Zotero's online storage space being smaller than on disk:

1) You are a member of a group that you are not the owner of (storage only counts against the group owner).
2) Zotero compresses files online to an even greater degree than might occur on disk (e.g., snapshots are often much smaller when online).

If you aren't seeing a sync error in Zotero and you have file syncing enabled for both My Library and Group libraries in Zotero preferences, you can be confident that all of your files are syncing to Zotero's servers.

adamsmith · April 9, 2018

(and with a bunch of snapshots, 2 alone can easily be responsible for the size difference you're seeing).

I am trying to figure this out so that I know (...) if I export to another citation manager, that I know I've gotten everything.

just as a note, though, that you'd typically do that from your local library anyway.