We've never seen any such problems, but if you don't mind uploading your database to the DB Repair Tool and sending the Upload ID to support@zot....org along with the folder names (e.g., "AH5E2NV9") of items you can't find in your library, we can take a look. If you have backup files with numbers above 1 (e.g., zotero.sqlite.36.bak), upload and include Upload IDs for those as well. You can ignore the download links the tool provides.

Also, are you using syncing, or are you just working locally?

So I don't see any references in your database to the two item keys you listed in your e-mail. This includes the log that Zotero 1.5/2.0 keeps of deleted items, which in your case shows eight deleted items between December and February. (I don't know what the date is on those two folders.) While I couldn't say for sure that Zotero didn't somehow wipe out those two items, it's pretty unlikely that it would have and that there'd be no record of them, particularly since you weren't even using syncing in the 1.5 previews/betas.

I'd actually be much more wary of Windows Live Sync. I'm not familiar with how it works, but you would likely need to be extremely careful if you were keeping zotero.sqlite under its control—as far as I know, most people here who use third-party sync tools use them only for the 'storage' directory. When Firefox is open, Zotero can update its database even when you're not editing Zotero items, so, for example, if you left Firefox running on your other computer, Live Sync, depending on how it handles conflicts, might offer to overwrite your local database with the remote one simply because the remote one had been updated more recently than the changes you made locally—leaving you with a local database that was missing references to the 'storage' items you had created. It's hard to know for sure, but, if that all sounds plausible, that's my best guess as to what happened.

(As a side note, I'm also a bit curious as to why there are no numbered backups above 1 in your data directory. Any time you upgrade Zotero to a new version that requires an update to user database tables, it should save a new copy...)

Hi there,

I'm facing a similar issue, but not sure of the cause-- or, more importantly-- the remedy. I'm missing huge chunks of my references and my five folders are completely empty. I'm not a techie, so I'm a lost babe in the woods here- Help! Please! I didn't notice until I was merrily saving new refs and went to see where they were going...ugh, I have this sinking feeling all is lost after four years of compiling.

Thanks for any and all help.

Michelle