Moved attached files

dghumphrey
edited July 25, 2020
Hello,

I have a lot of attachments in Zotero, I use it to manage datasets published by others in my research. Currently I'm on a paid plan and everything is syncing up to Zotero (as I understand, attachments included), I have multiple machines. I'd like to move my attachments only to a NAS service so it's note eating up hard drive. I understand I can do that by changing the the linked attachment base directory. My questions are:
- Is that correct, I need to move to linked attachment base directory.
- How do I move the existing attachments over to the new cloud location and keep all the links and structure, is that Zotfile as this (https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/c.php?g=4472&p=6647803#:~:text=Select all the items with,folder specified in the preferences.)
- If I use groups do they lose access to the attachments?

I'm on Mac for reference. Any help greatly appreciated
  • dstillman
    - Is that correct, I need to move to linked attachment base directory.
    No. The Linked Attachment Base Directory is for just that — linked attachments. You're using stored attachments, which are the only attachments that sync via Zotero syncing.

    You can move your entire Zotero data directory to a NAS, but we don't recommend it, since network filesystems often don't behave like standard filesystems and in some cases can result in database corruption. (You also absolutely shouldn't put it on a NAS that you might access from multiple computers with Zotero at the same time.)

    You can, if you want, switch Zotero to download files "as needed" in the Sync pane of the preferences and then, after confirming that all files are available online, do a search for large files and/or all PDFs within your Zotero data directory and delete those files outside of Zotero. Zotero will then redownload the files as you reopen them. (A future version will let you specify how much space you want it to use locally.)
  • dghumphrey
    thank you,

    The selected sync as needed sounds promising, are the file paths in that absolute ie.
    A. I do some work which references a csv on Zotero as source data via file path.
    B. Then find that csv in the local data directory and delete it because the project is complete.
    C. Some time in future re-visit this code, re-sync (download csv from Zotero cloud) re-run the code which has the file path in from step A

    Also, if I want to move my Zotero data directory to a cloud based folder on my machine is there a guide to do that? Or are the below steps correct;

    1. Shut down Zotero
    2. Copy the data directory to the new folder
    3. Open Zotero and repoint the data directory to the new folder
    4. Check everything is available then remove the old fodler
  • dstillman
    if I want to move my Zotero data directory to a cloud based folder on my machine is there a guide to do that?
    You absolutely can't do that. You'll destroy your database.

    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/data_directory_in_cloud_storage_folder

    But that's the point of Zotero syncing — your data is already stored in the cloud. (You can make a manual backup of your Zotero data directory to a cloud storage folder, but you're really better off just backing up the data directory with a regular, automated full backup of your entire computer, whether that's to a local disk or a cloud backup service.
  • dghumphrey
    Thanks for this, for my needs it sounds like the best setup is:

    - Check everything is synced up to Zotero cloud
    - Back up my attachments and zotero db
    - Remove Zotero and all the attached files
    - Standard install of Zotero
    - Choose download files as needed
    - Sync to cloud to reinstate the database
    - The original files will be saved on the cloud and as and when needed I can download them to my machine?

    This sounds like a good solution especially for my second computer which I use intermittently. The future option of controlling useful space storage sounds ideally, especially if it can intelligently manage this base on something like the time the attachments were last used
  • dstillman
    No, don’t do all that. Just change the setting and do what I said above:
    do a search for large files and/or all PDFs within your Zotero data directory and delete those files outside of Zotero
  • dghumphrey
    Thank you, that works well. Data directory down from 4gb to 60mb. Look forward to the future version which will manage the space automagically
  • dghumphrey
    @dstillman A follow up on this, having now upgraded my storage plan to keep all my attachments on the Zotero cloud is there a backup option for the data directory on that? I can see that I could periodically reinstall Zotero and do a full sync to my machine but it would be easier to have a compressed download I could take from the cloud server - better still would be an automated option to have that pushed to another cloud provider
  • dstillman
    We maintain backups, of course, but no, the only backup you could do yourself would be a full sync from a Zotero client, followed by a backup of the local data directory.
Sign In or Register to comment.