Why Zotero storage is very high if I don't have any pdf in the Zotero storage?

excited
I always download pdf files and store them in a folder inside my personal folders and not inside zotero storage folders because I can't rely on the limited storage capacity of zotero storage. However, I am still seeing a very high storage on the website. Does zotero also takes into account the metadata of numerous files, notes, etc for calculation of storage?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited September 10, 2021
    You don't have particularly high storage — you're using about 100 MB. You just have a few large PDFs in your library that are still stored files rather than linked files.
  • excited
    Thanks but I had deleted stored for many days but the storage of about 100 MB is still the same when I check on zotero website. How can I see if there are any particular items that are occupying the high space?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited September 14, 2021
    Note that if you delete items, you also have to empty the trash.

    If you're having trouble finding the large files, you can use a utility program that shows disk space usage on the 'storage' folder of your Zotero data directory.
  • excited
    Yes, I had already cleaned up all the pdf files stored in the storage folder at the zotero data directory in my system. Currently, it is just about 7 MB in size, but the zotero website shows otherwise.
  • adamsmith
    if you just delete local PDF files, that doesn't sync up, so won't make any difference. You need to delete the file attachments in Zotero and shouldn't touch files in the storage folder unless you know exactly what you're doing.
  • excited
    Thank you very much! I cleared all the items from the Trash folder too and I am very happy to see that my overall storage has been now reduced to just about 1 MB.

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