Moving Zotero Installation (and library) to Another Hard Disk with Zotfile Installed

kush.bubbar

I would like to move my Zotero installation and associated library to another Hard Disk to free up space. I am nervous to move the installation as I use custom tags and notes extensively for specific library objects that I do not want to lose. I also use the Zotfile plugin to save my pdfs in a few different directories associated with my library and offline "Tablet Files".

I would be grateful if anyone could please either direct me to documentation that explains how to perform this safely or list steps that I can perform to do this.

As reference, I have the Zotero desktop application installed on a Windows 10 PC.

Thank you for your help!

dstillman

You don't need to worry about anything stored in your database (e.g., tags and notes) or your Zotero data directory generally (e.g., PDFs that are stored rather than linked). You can just copy the data directory to the new location, point Zotero there from the Advanced → Files and Folders pane of the Zotero preferences, and then delete the old directory once you've confirmed that Zotero is using the new location.

If you want to move your linked files, that's a little more complicated. You'd want to make sure that you've set a Linked Attachment Base Directory and that all the linked files are stored within that base directory so that they're linked using relative paths. If you then move the base directory, you can just update the base directory setting and Zotero will look for the files relative to the new location. If the linked files are in different directories that aren't under a common directory, that's a bit more complicated, and you'd probably want to use something like the Zutilo plugin to batch-edit the attachment paths after moving the individual directories.

To be clear, you shouldn't move your "Zotero installation" — the program files should stay where they are. You can move your data directory, though.