Sync the storage folder only with Dropbox?

seanh
I know Dropbox has come up on the forums several times before but I couldn't find a definitive answer. It seems that some people are using Dropbox to sync their Zotero folder successfully but that others worry that this might cause conflicts to occur. Ok, I use Zotero Sync but I don't have access to WebDav to I can't sync my attched files. So I had a look and it looks like the attached files are all stored in:

.mozilla/firefox-3.5/xpahqwqq.default/zotero/storage

so I replaced this storage folder with a symlink to a folder in my Dropbox directory. Now Dropbox is syncing my attached files and Zotero Sync is left to sync everything else. Potentially conflicts could still occur in my storage folder, but it would only affect the file attachments. This should work fine shouldn't it?
  • mark
    I guess it should. It is technically little different from syncing over a network, which I do, and which has been working perfectly fine for me over the last year.
  • mguelck
    I've been syncing my entire zotero folder to a Dropbox without problems. Yet, I have only been using this for backup purposes. I don't edit the files on any other computers.

    A note on the side: I've read that box.net offers WebDAV access. It's free for 1 GB so you might want to give that a try. (I haven't tried it myself though.) Google will provide a few pages describing how to do this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=box.net+webdav
  • kryl.martin
    Well, can I have a question about this? If I use the WebDAV somewhere, in my point of view, I loose teh comfort of having shared libraries, no? Because of that I am rinnung the Dropbox solution and so far, it wors well for me.

    I just have to make sure that:
    - I run same version of zotero plugin (although if I don't zotero does a good job telling me that the version is outdated comared to the DB)
    - make sure not to run browsers on more computers that I sync in between at the same time

    Any other experience why I should avoid useing Dropbox with Zotero 2?

    Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    kryl.martin:
    There seem to be a bunch of people doing this succesfully.
    We do hear from people with corrupted databases occasionally, which are most likely due to the second issue you mention. So you will want to make _very_ sure not to run Firefox on two (dropbox) syncing computers simultaneously ever.
  • kryl.martin
    Thanks alot!
  • jwood
    @seanh - I've doing exactly that and it works perfectly. In my case I also use Dropbox to sync between OS X and Vista. Zotero sync takes care of the library itself -- I think that's important, because when I just used Dropbox to sync the lot (sqllite db and all), it worked but would eventually get confused and at the least have multiple conflicted copies of the db.
  • kryl.martin
    @jwood: Thanks alot! I will fo that to.
  • TheMightyBob
    I've been using Dropbox to sync the storage folder, and Zotero sync for the library. In Windows XP onwards the equivalent of symlinks are called junction links. There is a utility called 'Junction Link Magic' that will create them. This has worked successfully for me for a few months now.
  • jwood
    Junction tool from MS: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx
  • brazuca
    I'm trying to start a shared library with some coworkers.

    I currently just have my zotero folder in my Dropbox. No Zotero sync yet. To set up a system to create shared folders, do I need to remove by library from Dropbox (to avoid it duplicating the zotero synch activity?)

    My current setup (dropbox) works great for me. I just want to add a shared folder. I'm open to reworking the entire setup, but I want to do it right.

    I also heard that there might be some news from zotero on this front. I'm not in a rush. Should I wait?
  • jwood
    @brazuca,
    Not entirely sure I know what you mean by shared folders in this context. But sync of the Zotero library to the Zotero servers won't affect what's in your Dropbox storage: it syncs the bibliographic data. The news from Zotero was the launch of personal file storage on Zotero's servers as well. That's the actual library content that is in the Zotero/storage directory -- your PDFs and so on. I think it's 100MB at the moment.
  • adamsmith
    brazuca - what jwood says.
    I assume shared folders are groups - no problem using that together with dropbox - the collaboration features are still a bit limited, but groups work quite nicely if used only as "shared folders"
  • brazuca
    @jwood, @adamsmith

    So to be clear:
    -right now I have my dropbox folder as my storage folder in zotero. This synchs both the library and the attached files.

    -I should then simply be able to turn on zotero library synch (by entering my zotero account info), without problems

    -if I want others to have read and write access to notes, attachments, etc to a group library (a subset of my entire library), what do I do with my attached data?? Right now the whole thing is in the single sqlite file.

    The end result should be a library that I automagically synched between my work and home computers (the reason I use dropbox now) and that has a shared portion for work with my coworkers.
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