Zotero taking too much disk space

marzena.karpinska
Hi, I have been using Zotero for the past few months and now I've noticed it is taking A LOT of my HDD space (I mean like CRAZY a lot - 119 GB!). It is weird cause most of the files I keep on dropbox anyway. Any idea why this is happening?
  • dstillman
    edited December 9, 2018
    You'd have to check that yourself. You can use a disk space analyzer tool (e.g., GrandPerspective on a Mac) to see what in the Zotero data directory is taking up space.

    But if the data directory is really taking 119 GB, that would be really quite extreme. Are you sure you don't mean 119 MB? (That would be entirely reasonable.)
  • marzena.karpinska
    edited December 9, 2018
    Thanks for the tip! Yes, sadly I'm sure. I'm an ubuntu/windows user (this story happened on Win). I was shocked myself when I saw it. I run out of dick space and was trying to uninstall something so I just arranged the programs in order from biggest one so no mistake there... :(

    Also my Linux computer crashed at the moment but I don't think zotero was that space-greedy there... Wondering what could have happened...
  • dstillman
    edited December 9, 2018
    Where are you actually looking? In Add/Remove Programs (or whatever it's called in Windows 10)? The Zotero data directory, where Zotero data is stored, wouldn't appear there. That listing should just show the size of the Zotero program folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\Zotero, which should be a little over 100 MB for the current version. You can check that folder manually in the filesystem.
  • marzena.karpinska
    Yes, that is exactly where I'm looking and it says 119 GB no mistake there. The folder is fine - normal size.
  • dstillman
    edited December 9, 2018
    There's a good chance that's just some weird bug in Windows. You can safely uninstall Zotero and reinstall it from the download page, and it will probably go back to saying 106 MB or so. Your data (which should be in C:\Users\:username\Zotero) won't be affected.

    If you think you're actually missing 100 GB of disk space, you'd want to use a disk space analyzer tool on your whole disk.
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