Identify the list of items occupying the storage space

peranti
Hello everyone,

Is there any option to see the space occupied by the files in the storage space?

I noticed that my storage space is 99% full and would like to know which files are occupying this space?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
  • adamsmith
    Nothing built into Zotero, but you can use a free disk space analyzer tool on your storage folder to identify the largest files in there, which will mostly reflect their relative sizes online.
  • Lora73
    Hi,

    Same issue here, @adamsmith could you describe how to use an space analyzer tool ? I barely have any computer skills ^^"

    Thanks a lot !
  • adamsmith
    E.g. on Windows, you pick any of the three top apps here: https://www.howtogeek.com/113012/10-best-free-tools-to-analyze-hard-drive-space-on-your-windows-pc/
    You point them at the storage folder in the Zotero data directory
    https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data
    and it will give you the subfolders ordered by size.

    To find an item corresponding to the subfolder in Zotero, you just take the folder name -- an 8 character random combination of letters and numbers like 2A4AI5ZL -- and search for it in Zotero in the quick search bar using "All Fields and tags"

    (Not directly to the question, but since it's often misunderstood, I will note that Zotero's storage quota only affects which files you can sync to the server. If you don't need file syncing, you can simply disable it in the preferences. There's no limit on the size of your locally stored attachments other than your hard disk volume)
  • Lora73
    Great !

    Thank you very much for your help !
  • lschernikau
    is there a way I can see directly from Zotero the file size of an item? I .e. a pdf file or a saved website file? thanks,
  • adamsmith
    No, nothing directly from Zotero, sorry.
  • lschernikau
    thanks, noted, will this be planned to be implemented?
  • moore.709
    I know this is an old issue, but I think I have a wrinkle that is not addressed --
    As is commonly the case when asked, the interest is to manage space in our zotero quota. This means we want to know about our personal library and any group libraries we are the owner of.
    But we may participate in any number of other group libraries where we may not be interested in managing the space.

    When we search for large files on the file system, is there a way to distinguish between libraries?
  • nicolas.lienart
    edited October 4, 2024
    @adamsmith when using advanced search, what is the name of the field to use to specifically target those “8 character random combination of letters and numbers like 2A4AI5ZL”? Instead of being too broad with "All fields and tags"
  • adamsmith
    I don't believe you can search for it in Advanced Search (not even "Any field" appears to work). But are you telling me you're getting more than one result for a random alphanumeric string, or how is this 'too broad'?
  • nicolas.lienart
    I can confirm that I could find it with "Any field" from "Advanced Search" with Zotero 6.0.36.

    I was just surprised that no specific field is connected to this, and using "Any field" seems a bit magic. Indeed, was expecting to have something like "Item ID", or "Zotero ID" in the list of possible fields to search.

    I just wanted to find a way to specifically target those IDs in the search, so I can just type the first few characters.
  • dstillman
    Again, you can just paste the string into the search bar in All Fields & Tags mode. You don't need to use Advanced Search, and I'm not sure why you'd want to.

    These are random, internal strings that aren't meant to be exposed. We provide a way to find an item based on the key if you really need to, but we wouldn't expose it as a visible field in Advanced Search — it doesn't make any sense to construct a multi-field search with one of these, which is the main point of Advanced Search.

    (And the better solution for the issue in this thread is just to be able to sort attachments by file size. We've done some work on that and will likely offer it in a future version.)
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