saving Zotero attachments to network attached storage?

mghachem · September 21, 2019

Is it possible to have just the attachments to all of my Zotero entries stored on a network drive and access those from my laptop and work desktops in different locations, while having the data directory set to the default home directory on each machine? One of the threads alludes to this but I was confused by the language. I see a "linked attachment base directory" option under Preferences/Advanced/Files and Folders but the online instructions say that is not for people who save attachments on Zotero -- which I don't quite understand. I am trying to free up space on my laptop, which currently houses its own local copy of my entire library, both data and attachments, so that both my desktop and laptop would draw their attachments from the same place on the network drive (even though my desktop has room to store everything, but I assume for syncing purposes I have to have the same linked attachment base directory indicated for both machines? Don't have a good sense for what all of this involves or how to do it, and whether it would require time-consuming syncing each time I would open Zotero on my laptop.

dstillman · September 21, 2019

https://www.zotero.org/support/sync#alternative_syncing_solutions

mghachem · September 22, 2019

Thank you for this Dan, I will pursue one of those solutions. When trying to delete the (corrupted) Zotero data directory (corrupted because I had tried to access it from multiple computers), I am unable to delete the files in the "Storage" sub-directory. I get variations on this message: "The operation can’t be completed because the item “T87KUS7F” is in use." But my Zotero app is closed and the "Folders and Files" preferences are set to accessing the data directory directly on my computer's hard drives, so why would anything still be "in use" in that folder? I renamed the server version of the directory "Zotero-Old" but can't delete most of the files taking up space. Is there a way to do this?

dstillman · September 22, 2019

Hard to say. Restarting your computer would be the first step. Beyond that it'd really be a question for your IT folks — it's not about Zotero at all at that point.