Disappearing Library

jols1081
Think this may be part of another topic, but cannot find the posts at the moment...

I was running the latest version of Zotero at home, but due to the lack of admin privileges at my office, I decided to use the portable version of Firefox, along with Zotero version 1.0.9.

All was well and I ended up creating a significant collection, which I stored on my pen drive (I have not figured out how to back up elsewhere).

Out of curiosity, I installed the 1.5 Beta version of Zotero on my home computer (the sync feature is way cool).

I check my pen drive at home and the collection was still there, but now that I am at work, the collection seems to have disappeared!

Here are the details:

In my pen drive, I have:

- a folder E:\zot (think that I selected the custom storage option in Zotero preferences).

In that folder, there are the following:

- a storage folder (see below)
- files: zotero.sqlite.bak, zotero.sqlite, zotero.sqlite.damaged

In the storage folder, there are:

- the multiple folders associated with the collection
- an empty storage folder
- files: zotero.sqlite.bak, zotero.sqlite (larger files than those in the general folder)

Is there any way to retrieve my collection?

Jols1081
  • dstillman
    First, back up everything.

    Second, it sounds like you may have selected the 'storage' folder as your custom data directory instead of the main Zotero directory, which is why you have zotero.sqlite, zotero.sqlite.bak, and an empty 'storage' folder within the first 'storage' folder. You need to select the main Zotero directory. (I suppose the use of the phrase "Storage Location" in the Advanced pane of the Zotero prefs may be confusing here. It should probably be changed to Data Directory Location.)

    See http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data for more info.

    Note as well that once you use a database with Zotero 1.5, you can only use it with Zotero 1.5 or later, not 1.0.9. So if you're using Firefox Portable from work, make sure you have Zotero 1.5 installed into it, and make sure you select the top-level folder as the custom data directory.
  • jols1081
    Dan:

    Thanks for the advice and the link.

    I deleted older, smaller versions of duplicate files, renamed zotero.sqlite.bak and "found" my collection.

    Re-installed 1.0.9. on my home computer.

    Still daunted about change data directory locations, but will do it.

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