Upgrade StorageSeparating large library into multiple profiles
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I recently became part of a 'global assessment' project that involves about 70 researchers working over 2 years to synthesize the literature on a particular set of topics. The team created a group library for its use. At last count, the number of references in the database has reached 42,000+! Since I use zotero for all my 'regular' research, in which I a member of another 15 group libraries (each a much more modest number of refs--say 100 to 1000), the sudden addition of 42k references is really slowing zotero down, both when it launches, and when I do a search.
So I was wondering whether I can use the "multiple profiles" approach, create a new profile with its own data folder, and use this profile only to deal with this 'global project' group library. But when I created the new profile, it is a) still using the old data folder, and b) even if it had created a new folder, I don't know how I can copy the 42k group library into this folder. Else I have to set sync to only sync this library in the new profile, and then switch off syncing for this library in the old profile. Right? But that still leaves the 42k files in the old profile, so when I use the old profile, it will be as slow as before.
So firstly, how would I remove the 42k group library from the older profile to speed up searches there, and if that is possible, why is creating a new profile with the -p flag not resulting in a new data directory?
Sorry for the long (and possibly confused or misplaced) post.
You'd then want set up syncing with a new account, invite that account to the group library, and leave the group from the old account.
But if you plan to use these libraries at the same time, you should note the caveats about using multiple instances.
Using two instances of Zotero at the same time would use more memory, so depending on how much RAM you have in your computer that could easily make things slower.
0. Launching zotero was still a bit slow, don't you think? (system specs are pretty good: i7 8th gen CPU, SSD drive, 16GB RAM, Windows10.)
1. Although My Library contains only 591 records, the starting search was still pretty slow. And it goes through 2 steps: an arbitrary subset of records show up first, and then finally it zooms into the one ref that had the keyword. Subsequent searches were okay.
2. Then going to the 42k library and searching was not so bad.
Your thoughts from the debug report will be useful here.
3. Use of the classic menu has solved the problem of cite-while-write for the Global Assessment work that only uses the 42k library. But will not help in my other writing. So might still look into the separate profile idea.
I want to clarify, though, that we don't really recommend this. If there are performance issues, we can look into them you provide Debug IDs for specific operations that are slow, but 42K items shouldn't really pose much of a problem, and there are significant drawbacks to using multiple profiles or instances.