Upgrade Storage4GB file size limit?
Hello! Being able to include larger files in my Zotero library for remote access and Zotero group sharing to me is useful/important. (There still is a 4GB size limit, correct?) Any idea about when Zotero might be able to support such files? Any estimate/speculation I'll appreciate. Thanks much, Robert
1. Usually an exact 4GB limit specifically is a hard filesystem limit (e.g. FAT32 drives cannot have files over 4GB, but that format is convenient for other reasons like compatibility across multiple OSs). There also might be some limits to file transfer size depending on how that's configured but I don't know.
2. Why would you need to have individual files over 4GB? Attachments should be PDFs of articles, not high quality movies, etc. That seems like an unreasonable expectation for the Zotero service to host for you. There are other options that will do this (although some may have similar limits at 4GB). Maybe there's a reason for you personally, but I don't imagine this is a general problem. Remember the general purpose of Zotero backup is to help everyone back up their references, and from what I've read here it is offered basically at-cost by the developers to help, not as a for-profit feature.
So, in short, this probably isn't an intentional choice by developers but a restriction based on how the system is configured and not possible to change without completely changing the system, and that's unlikely to happen because this isn't a general need.
If you have a good reason for needing files this large, you should state it so the developers can consider the need. But I would suggest looking at other options for file storage/transfer, rather than using Zotero backup for that purpose.
The limit is actually probably 5 GB, not 4 GB — it's a limit for standard uploads to Amazon's cloud storage service. There's an alternative, multi-part upload method that can handle much larger files, but it would require significant changes to both the client and server to support it. I'm not ruling it out, but it's not something you should wait for. I wouldn't make this claim, but it is fair to say that the vast majority of Zotero users don't require uploads larger than 5 GB, so it's a rather low priority.