Safe way to place storage folder in Dropbox/Mega?

edited April 11, 2018
I have read many warnings about mixing Zotero and Dropbox. But having cloud sync is very useful. I want to ask here if the particular I have in mind setup is reasonably safe.

I am on Linux.

1) Zotero main folder is outside Dropbox. This folder contains the sqlite database. I sync Zotero library (not attachments) to Zotero.org.
2) The "storage" folder (which contains attachments) is in Dropbox (or Mega, I haven't decided). Inside Zotero folder, I place a link to this the storage folder.

(I am basically following something like this: https://remembereverything.org/syncing-zotero-with-dropbox-and-several-computers/)

Can there be any problems with this setup? In particular, is it safe to keep Zotero open on multiple computers?
  • As long as you don't have zotero.sqlite on Dropbox/Mega you're mostly safe. There may still be some file syncing issues (e.g. those noted in that post; also, apparently Dropbox has problems with UTF8 characters in filenames) but nothing that would actually corrupt your information. With that setup it's fine to have Zotero running simultaneously on multiple computers.
  • Hi - does this mean that if I had the folder 'storage' on Google Drive I could sync computers that way? Leaving everything else where it is?

    I've been looking into using the Google space I have but I can't even accommodate my sqlite files in the free Zotero space!

    Sorry if this sounds pathetic - I've been doing a lot of reading about this and am confused.
  • Anything in the sqlite syncs for free and doesn't count against the 300MB, so you're misunderstanding something on that account.

    If you're able to put the storage folder on GDrive that'll work, yes, but note that you'll have to do so using symlinks as described in the blogpost linked above. If you just move the storage folder out of the Zotero data folder, all attachment links will break.
  • Sorry, I hadn’t been following the thread.

    Thanks ... we’ll think about that.
  • Since you say "we" -- I'm not sure how well this will work for groups and I'd generally advise against using anything other than Zotero for group file storage
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