Lost of my data because of an update

umoberreiter

Hi, today when starting zotero, the program asked for an update. After updating the program (there was also an error) all my data is lost. I tried all the things with the sqlite and also the backup, but nothing helped. I installed a sqlite-viewer and saw the sqlite and the backup contain no data. So where can I find the data of the last years?
Has anybody an idea?
greetings Ute-Maria

dstillman

Unless you were just now updating from Zotero 4 to Zotero 5 — which was released in 2017 — a regular update doesn't really do anything to your data.

What was the error you received? In what way is your data "lost"? Is your Zotero data directory set to the default location ("Zotero" in your home directory) or something else?

First, make a backup of your entire Zotero data directory. Then tell us the names, timestamps, and file sizes of all the zotero.sqlite* files in your data directory. Also look in 'storage' to see how many folders there are.

umoberreiter

Hi, I found what happened: the update ignored my storage location and set it to the default - found my entris on the "right" place. I'm not really happy that updates do that but happy that I found my entries,
greetings

dstillman

Updates certainly don't do that normally.

umoberreiter

hm, this was the first update who did it...

dstillman

I'm saying it's not a general problem, and there was nothing specific about this update that would've done that.

Again, if you were upgrading from a very old version of Zotero, there are ways this could've happened. In any case, unless it happens again, I wouldn't worry about it.