New account with full storage?

fmarion
Hi,
I deleted all the articles (300+) in my standalone Zotero and only have 6 collections folder with nothing in it left.
Then I sync with a newly created account with my school email instead of my personal email without any data in it and Zotero says my storage is full.
I don t understand why?
  • aurimas
    Have you emptied the trash?
  • floremarion
    yes I emptied the trash and it still say my storage is full.
    I think I ll do the purge option.

    I was just trying to have 2 main folder bc I have 2 very different research axis and now I have 1 account for each. not convenient but at least the collection are not lost.
  • aurimas
    no, don't purge. That won't help you if Zotero still thinks you have file attachments. Dan will take a look at your account and let you know what's going on. Is this your secondary account?
  • floremarion
    Purging worked and brought the storage to 0.
    But it was a little too easy to delete all my collection by mistake.. I m glad it happened now and not before a big deadline!
  • floremarion
    Lol too late.
    My other account with my complete collection is still available in my account with my personal email. I ll reorganize that collection,back it up and will sync both account again soon.
    But thanks for the quick feedback,
  • aurimas
    But it was a little too easy to delete all my collection by mistake..
    I'm not sure what purging has to do with this. Deleting collections, though, does give you a prompt that you have to confirm and deleting just collections (without items) doesn't actually delete the items. They are just removed from the collection, so that doesn't help you with the storage quota issue.

    Though as I said before, purging on zotero.org probably doesn't do what you think it does and your storage may go back up in the future. What exactly are you trying to achieve by freeing up storage? Do you actually want to get rid of unwanted file attachments so you can sync file attachments that you are interested in? Are you trying to use Zotero web storage to sync groups? Or are you just trying to get rid of the "Storage quota exceeded" notification in Zotero?
  • floremarion
    I add not use zotero in several months. I thought that the articles in the main library were the ones I add not moved to a specific collection. so I selected all and moved to a collection/folder.( My bad!)
    Then I checked that they were all in the folder/collection. they still appeared in the main collection. So I click delete. There was no warning about anything that would disappear forever. and then every thing disappeared from all the collections. no article anywhere.
    Luckily, the standalone zotero was failing to sync with my online account at that time . So My online collection was intact.
    That s when I decided to create a new account and replace my credential on my stand alone zotero with the new account. The empty folder were still on the stand alone. Zotero suggested to sync and merged and that s when the storage level got Full.
    Purging did make the storage go down to 0.
  • aurimas
    Here's what I gather from your explanation:

    You had a Zotero library that you were successfully syncing with zotero.org (as fmarion). You managed to move all of your items to Trash (there is only one way that you would have not gotten a prompt before the items were moved to Trash and that is by viewing them in My Library and pressing Shift+Delete) and then you emptied the Trash.

    At this point (or maybe before this point) your Zotero was failing to sync with zotero.org, so all of the items you deleted were still online. (here, the proper way to retrieve your - possibly outdated - online library would have been to reset your Zotero database from server, but don't do that unless you really know what you're trying to do. Ask for help first).

    Now you created a new account (floremarion) and tried to sync with that. Presumably your local library should be empty at this point, so I'm not sure what the idea behind this was. The syncing was working, but you received a "Storage quota exceeded" message, which would have only been possible if your local _personal_ library (not group library) was not empty.

    At this point you purged file storage on the server for... which account??

    This is a huge mess now and I'm not even sure where to begin untangling it. (hopefully I'm wrong about something above)

    First, I'll ask you to make proper backup of your local library (the whole data directory). Tell us exactly which account you're using now to sync (what's the username entered in Preferences -> Sync?). Do you have any group libraries showing in your local Zotero? Check "My Library" and Trash on your local client and tell us if you see any items in those locations.

    Dan, can you check both of those accounts and see what's happening server-side?
  • floremarion
    Hi thanks a lot for your responsiveness. I honestly did not expect that the forum answers would be like a tech service!

    "This is a huge mess now and I'm not even sure where to begin untangling it. (hopefully I'm wrong about something above)"
    no you are right. but there is not sense of panic or urgency on my side. I still feel like nothing was lost...maybe I m naive:

    I disabled the sync from my laptop with my old account so for now, everything is still in my laptop as well as online on floremarion. it has not disappear.
    My current question :
    If I log again on my desktop ( where the mess happened) with my first account would everything come back or everything would disappear from the online library?
    This time I will not do it before you reply!
  • aurimas
    I'm still waiting for Dan to provide some info. In the mean time, could you explain what you are trying to achieve by (1) creating a new account (seems like you wanted to keep some things separate) and (2) clearing up storage space.
  • floremarion
    I wanted to be able to reopen zotero stand alone without it syncing and potentially deleting everything in my old online library.
    the goal of opening standalone again was to see if the document where linked to standalone and not the account, somehow.
    creating the 2d account was just to ba eble to work while protecting the online library from being erased.
    I was also ready to start a new library on my second topic and keep the first account for whenever I ll need those papers again.
    I had no clue wether the forum would turn out useful.
    I cleared the storage because I wanted to start adding documents to my new library and this full storage bug was preventing me to do so.
    I d prefer not to have 2 accounts.
  • aurimas
    Ok. Your storage quota should not prevent you from adding new items to your Zotero library on your computer (I.e. Standalone). There is no limit to how much storage you can use on your own computer (besides the size of your hard drive). The only time online storage matters is if you're trying to sync file attachments between multiple computers, or if you're trying to access your PDFs from zotero.org. Assuming you are trying to do the latter, then your only choice would be to buy more storage space. If you're trying to just sync between multiple computers, you have other options, like WebDAV. See https://www.zotero.org/support/sync#file_syncing for more info.

    Don't set up any of that yet though. We first need to recover your library. Well get back to you on that in a bit
  • dstillman
    fmarion has 1 item. floremarion has 722, none in the trash.
  • aurimas
    Which one of your accounts is the original account that you have used previously? What is the state of your current library: click My Library and let us know how many items you have there, also check your Trash and let us know what you have in Trash as well (if anything).
  • floremarion
    floremarion is my main account.
    I am currently log in in standalone with fmarion. the library had 1 item and the trash is empty.
    Do you want me to log back with floremarion? I am just afraid that my last action in that account on that computer was to delete, therefore when it will sync it would delete everything from the online library... might be completely irrational?
  • aurimas
    edited October 3, 2014
    We're aware of what you have on zotero.org. What I'm asking about is the state of your library on your computer in Zotero Standalone. That library is not dictated by the username you log in with on zotero.org. It is only affected by the username you put in under Preferences -> Sync. You should disable syncing altogether under Preferences -> Sync though and do not change the username there yet.
  • aurimas
    But hold on, I think I understand now what you're saying. When you made the backup of your library above, how many folders did you have inside the "storage" directory? Also, what were the file sizes and modification times of the zotero.sqlite and zotero.sqlite.*.bak files (please list all of them)?
  • aurimas
    I disabled the sync from my laptop with my old account so for now, everything is still in my laptop as well as online on floremarion. it has not disappear.
    ummm, ok. let's make this simple. If you're happy with what is currently showing on your laptop, follow the backup instructions on your laptop and use that backup to restore the library on your desktop following the instructions here. You should see the same library on both the Desktop and the laptop at this point. You can now re-enable syncing with floremarion account under Preferences -> Sync. The deletions you had previously performed on the Desktop will not be synced. Once you get to this point, you can figure out what you want to do about file syncing.
  • floremarion
    zotero.sqlite 10/3/2014 1,504kb
    sqlite.1.bak 10/1/2014 6,536kb
    ..

    ok I ll do the back up from the laptop as you recommend. that look like a good solution
  • floremarion
    thanks so much for your explanations.
    I am not going to have time to finish today. It s taking a long time to get the data on the drive to move it over to the desktop and I have a bunch of errands to run. So I ll finish that Monday.
    But thanks again for all the support!!

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