My computer got hacked and in restoring, Zotero is gone. The web part of Zotero has some of my citations, but not all. Any way I can restore what was on my laptop Zotero?
Did you have a desktop computer hacked but have a laptop with your Zotero files intact? If so sync the laptop to your Zotero account and then sync your desktop.
If the hacked machine is your only computer, I don't have good news. If you don't have your Zotero records synced and up to date, you are likely to have lost work.
Zotero makes it trivially easy to keep your records backed-up. The reliability of modern computer systems makes it easy to procrastinate taking care to regularly back-up. My system is set to constantly back up my external back-up drive.
To any others who are reading this: You WILL have some sort of system failure maybe not soon but certainly eventually.
It is essential that you use Zotero's free metadata sync to keep your records backed up. You can also back up your PDF documents and notes with Zotero or another service. I recommend that you back up your computer disk drive or SSD with a backup external drive. A third recommended option is to subscribe to a commercial online backup service. I have essential files that are important to me personally and also to my business. In addition to syncing my Zotero records, I 1) back up Zotero and all other files to a local external drive; 2) backup to an additional hard drive that I keep in another location; and 3) backup to an online backup/recovery service. You can purchase a large, high-quality external drive for less than $200US. The cost of an online backup service is not unreasonable if a data loss will bring disaster -- a few coffees a month.
It may be possible that expert technicians might be able to recover some of your files even after a reformatting but that will be very costly and uncertain.
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If the hacked machine is your only computer, I don't have good news. If you don't have your Zotero records synced and up to date, you are likely to have lost work.
Zotero makes it trivially easy to keep your records backed-up. The reliability of modern computer systems makes it easy to procrastinate taking care to regularly back-up. My system is set to constantly back up my external back-up drive.
To any others who are reading this: You WILL have some sort of system failure maybe not soon but certainly eventually.
It is essential that you use Zotero's free metadata sync to keep your records backed up. You can also back up your PDF documents and notes with Zotero or another service. I recommend that you back up your computer disk drive or SSD with a backup external drive. A third recommended option is to subscribe to a commercial online backup service. I have essential files that are important to me personally and also to my business. In addition to syncing my Zotero records, I 1) back up Zotero and all other files to a local external drive; 2) backup to an additional hard drive that I keep in another location; and 3) backup to an online backup/recovery service. You can purchase a large, high-quality external drive for less than $200US. The cost of an online backup service is not unreasonable if a data loss will bring disaster -- a few coffees a month.
It may be possible that expert technicians might be able to recover some of your files even after a reformatting but that will be very costly and uncertain.