zotero very slow

jimi
Hi,
I've had lots of problems with Zotero being extremely slow - to do anything basically. This isn't specific to a document, any action takes 5-30 seconds and involves a hang of some sort.
I thought this was just Zotero, but reading the forums has led me to believe this is an anomaly. I currently have the tags bar off.

I have a debug output for a simple search in the search bar:
Debug ID is D1500567539.
Error Report ID: 677462075

thanks
jimi
  • jimi
    Now, with tags on, I added a citation to a document.
    The Debug ID is D617242904.
  • jimi
    "Everything" search with tabs
    Debug ID is D546490264
  • dstillman
    Well, in a sufficiently large library, a search could plausibly take 5 seconds, depending on computer speed (and an "All Fields & Tags" or "Everything" search could take longer, though it looks like yours are still taking < 5 seconds). The other recent forum reports are about slow loading of the items list with the tag selector open, and that issue we haven't been able to reproduce, but it doesn't look like that's what you're reporting. We'll hopefully be able to speed up searches in future versions, and have some plans in particular to do that for full-text searches.

    For searches in a large library, you can type " first to keep it from searching until you press Return. And, obviously, using "Title, Creator, Year" mode should generally be quicker.

    But most other operations — e.g., editing an item — should be instantaneous except in extremely large libraries (which you don't appear to have). If you're having trouble with things other than searches, you should provide Debug IDs for those.
  • jimi
    Hi,
    Thank you for the quick reply.
    5 seconds is the minimum. 20-30 seconds is common. Often the screen switches to "not responding" or I get an "XULRunner Has Stopped Working" alert (just not when I have debug running, apparently)

    Two test runs of about 25 seconds.
    The Debug ID is D547656897
    The Debug ID is D1001646039
    Is there anything I can do to speed this up?
  • dstillman
    Hmm. That certainly doesn't seem right. What are the hardware specs on this computer? Is your database in the default location on the local hard drive? Have you checked Task Manager to make sure nothing else is using CPU at the time of your search?
  • dstillman
    But basically something's very wrong here, so you definitely shouldn't think this is expected Zotero behavior. I just tested it, and for me, with a library the size of yours, the search you're doing takes approximately half a second.
  • jimi
    Hi,
    Thanks again for your help.

    My Zotero database in not in the default location - it is on a network drive, (I just ran a LAN test and I have read/write speeds of 90 Mbps to that drive).

    Computer specs:
    Windows 7
    Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9400 @ 2.53GHz
    Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB

    Zotero database 16GB (but pdfs not indexed)
  • aurimas
    I just ran a LAN test and I have read/write speeds of 90 Mbps to that drive
    But that doesn't take into account latency, which would be very significant for random access (not just downloading a file).

    You should move your database to a local directory and see if it changes anything. My bet would be that you will see dramatic improvements.
  • jimi
    thank you Dan and aurimas for you help and comments.
    I moved the directory to the local drive and everything is much, much faster now - truly "dramatic improvements".
    thanks again
    jimi
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