My computer died and I had not enabled library syncing. Is there a way to access my old library?

Ameliahanigan
Yesterday my laptop broke - I am unable to turn it on. My whole Zotero library was saved on there, however I had not enabled the sync function. I have logged on on a different computer but I am unable to access my old library! Is there anything I can do?

Thanks in advance.
  • adamsmith
    Do you have back-ups from the old laptop? If not, a good computer store or specialist will often be able to copy over your harddisk content even if your computer is broken. If neither is an option, I'm afraid there's nothing we can do.
  • dragonfly
    Computer specialists can charge an arm and a leg for data recovery. If OP has any basic knowledge of computers it can be quite straight forward, and low cost, to recover data from a crashed drive.

    First you need to clarify if you are on Windows, Mac or Linux.
    And writing "my laptop broke" is not good enough. What does "broke" mean?
    What are the symptoms seen?

    The process entails ...

    removing the disk drive from the laptop
    placing it inside a USB/hard drive enclosure (bought from a PC shop but making sure it matches the drive - this should be your only purchase)
    connecting the USB enclosure plus extracted drive to a working pc via USB port.

    Then with any luck you might be able to see the filesystem from your working PC.

    If the disk drive has indeed crashed and files are not seen you then need some free forensic tools to try recovery.

    Here is one respected tool .. testdisk ..

    https://www.cgsecurity.org/

    but there are others you can try depending on whether you are in Windows or Linux.

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