Lost library

in need of help · October 10, 2009

I hope someone can help me. My zotero library is gone. Things have been a little weird for a day or two. When i opened firefox an old tiny library came up that I thought was long gone. But then when i shut down and rebooted my newer and complete library came back. I thought it was just a glitch but now after a system update ( ZoneAlarm firewall, firefox new version (current)) it has completely gone.

I have read the data sheet and searched for my firefox profile. I can only find one and the data under that comes up to this tiny library. I have done a system search and can't find any trace of any other files. I searched to see if there are other versions of zotero.sqlite and the only version that comes up this older library.

Are there any other names it could be called?
Is there any possibility this older smaller library could have wiped over the newer and bigger library?
Can this newer library just get deleted? I haven't deleted any files or run any system clean or anything that would have taken this out

The only thing I can think of is that I turned Zone Alarm virtualisation off to try to install a bigtweet plug in. When I turned it back on and then went to firefox for a bookmark to tweet the whole library was gone.

I have done a system search of a keyword from a file i know I took a snapshot of to see where the data might be and nothing is coming up, which it most definitely should, somewhere.

Can someone please please please help me. I am two months away from a PhD deadline and about to go into total meltdown if I can't find this stuff.

dstillman · October 10, 2009

When i opened firefox an old tiny library came up that I thought was long gone.

Were you previously using a custom data directory location (from the Advanced pane of the Zotero prefs)?

Are there any other names it could be called?

No, though you can also look for backup files such as zotero.sqlite.bak.

Is there any possibility this older smaller library could have wiped over the newer and bigger library?

No, not really. You can look at the timestamps of the folders in the 'storage' directory to see when the associated snapshots were saved. If there aren't any recent ones, then, database aside, this isn't the data directory you were using.

Can this newer library just get deleted?

Not by Zotero.

It's almost certainly the case of the custom data directory location pref being reset for some reason and the previous directory being located somewhere else.

I'm afraid I can't really provide any information other than what's on the Zotero data page. Note that Windows Search doesn't search in all folders by default—check the search settings to make sure it's including hidden/system folders.

in need of help · October 10, 2009

Hi Dan
thanks for the prompt response. I didn't set up a custom data directory that I am aware of doing unless it can somehow do this by itself? can firefox mess with this. I have tried looking for other profiles and can't find any. it's all coming back to the same default profile which has the old zotero data.

I have checked the settings to include system files and hidden files and the only things I can find are these old storage folders and
zotero.sqlite stuff associated with this directory which has the smaller files with none of the data I have saved in them.
i don't care so much about the database but the data I saved
is there anyway you can think that I could search or try to retrieve this?
would getting my drives forensically imaged and run through encase turn up any cache data separate to what zotero saved. does zotero leave a footprint anywhere that could be found that way?

dstillman · October 10, 2009

Again, I'm afraid I can't really help beyond what's on the Zotero Data page. The only data Zotero saves is what's listed on that page. But an old folder can't just magically replace a newer one, so the files are probably somewhere. You'll need to figure out where, though.

in need of help · October 10, 2009

Ok thanks. one quick question. I seem to have discovered a corrupt file in my mozilla profile called
places.sqlite.corrupt
would this have anything to do with? i have no idea what this file even is.
i seem to have one large profile file, with mozilla and then a smaller one with less sqlite files in it, which is where my zotero directory is pointing at

dstillman · October 10, 2009

places.sqlite is the Firefox history database. It's unrelated to Zotero.

So you have two Firefox profile folders? Is there a 'zotero' directory in the other? Have your Firefox bookmarks/history changed as well? (The Zotero Data page covers this.)

in need of help · October 10, 2009

I only have one firefox profile where zotero is
C:\Documents and Settings\Anon\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox
and this is where the older zotero stuff is stored but no sign of the newer stuff and I can't find another profile anywhere.
i can't bookmark on firefox at all. that's why i was using zotero more than usual and had all of my files saved there instead.

dstillman · October 10, 2009

OK. I don't know what you meant by "i seem to have one large profile file, with mozilla and then a smaller one with less sqlite files in it" then.

Nothing to do with Zotero, but deleting any places.* files and restarting Firefox might help you be able to bookmark in Firefox again.

in need of help · October 10, 2009

sorry my mistake i just searched profiles on my system and it came up with what looked like different locations but weren't. sorry its 6am i've been up all night trying to fix this.

i appreciate your help, but it seems I am screwed since I can't find any other zotero related files except the very small zotero.sqlite and the.bak file

all the stuff I saved is gone and the larger zotero sql lite files are just gone.

thanks for your help though. i might try getting my computer forensically imaged since i've just lost the research I need to finish my phD. and the backup is coming up to the old smaller file too. with no trace of the larger one.

dstillman · October 10, 2009

and the backup is coming up to the old smaller file too

Which is further evidence that your recent Zotero data was being saved somewhere else.

If this was, in fact, the Firefox profile you were using previously, and if you have a backup of the prefs.js file from a period when you were using the newer Zotero data, you might open the prefs.js file in a text editor and look for lines containing "extensions.zotero.dataDir" and "extensions.zotero.lastDataDir". If you did have a custom data directory location set, that would tell you what it was.

in need of help · October 10, 2009

hi
thanks for this.
i've searched the prefs.js files that i could find and there is no mention of "extensions.zotero.dataDir" and "extensions.zotero.lastDataDir" in either.
should that be there?

dstillman · October 10, 2009

Only if you were using a custom data directory and the backup prefs.js files you found were from dates when that pref was set.

I assume you only have one Windows user account (i.e., Anon)?

in need of help · October 10, 2009

yes i am only using one account.
the only other thing i can think of is that those smaller files are coming up as modified yesterday, which i didn't do but it was around the time all my updates went through.
but it is weird that the first few things i saved in june are in the old library and then nothing from the new one.

dstillman · October 10, 2009

I don't know what "smaller files" you're referring to.

in need of help · October 10, 2009

sorry i'm not a technical person
i mean that the zotero.sqlite. and bak and storage have none of the data in them that i have saved (that's why I mean they are smaller than they should be).

the storage has nothing and both files are way too small for everything i have put in them. i know this because i run a standalone computer as well for other internet research and i also run zotero on that for separate files and there was roughly the same amount of research and files save and they were much larger file sizes.
so what i mean is the that *only* zotero.sqlite. and bak and storage folders/files i can find on this computer are the ones with none of the data i have saved and accessed over the past six months. I have checked the storage files and none of it is there. nor can i find any hint of any of this data on my computer.
all i have is like four files from when i first used zotero in the first few days after i installed it.
that's why i was aksing whether or not zone alarm force protection and virtualisation browser could have messed with it somehow because i seemed to end up with a different library after i installed this. by this i mean i never saw that old stuff again until now and everything else i saved or bookmarked came up into this apparently new library which worked fine till yesterday.
hope that is clearer.

dstillman · October 10, 2009

I don't know what the Zone Alarm virtualization feature does, but if it somehow creates a separate environment for your browser data, that sounds plausibly like it might be the cause. You might want to figure out what exactly it does and where it saves data and whether it deletes the environment when you turn it off and on.

And I'm afraid I'll have to leave you with that. Best of luck.

in need of help · October 10, 2009

thanks for you help i appreciate it.
i'll try to find out.
are there any file extensions apart from the zotero.sqlite. etc i should be searching to try to find this data?

in need of help · October 10, 2009

Dan sorry to bother you again. this is a firefox zone alarm problem i think. my question is the advice from zonealarm forum is to downgrade firefox. will doing so further screw my attempts to locate files? or is this something i should do?
again thank you so much for your effort help.